Children develop physically, emotionally and educationally in stages.

These stages are explained well by Piaget's four stages of development. In the first stage, from birth to two years, children explore by sensorimotor discovery. Their cognition comes from using their body and their senses to explore the world around them. They usually do not have any language skills until the very end of this stage. The educational implications for this stage include giving the child physical stimulation and a variety of objects to interact with. These objects should be brightly colored, make noise or appeal to the other senses of the human body. The next stage Piaget theorized is the preoperational stage, from ages 2 to 7. In this stage, language development is occurring. The child is beginning to use linked mental representations of the world and is beginning to see the world in more than just concrete, physical terms. The child may begin to exhibit transductive reasoning skills, which is seeing relationships between things that are not related (such as seeing that an orange is also a ball). During this stage the child also may begin to apply human characteristics to inanimate objects, such as toys that talk to each other or playing with dolls. The educational implications for this stage include using symbolic play to teach lessons, drawing,

encouraging the use of mental images and encouraging the use and development of language. Piaget's third stage is the concrete operations stage, and runs from ages 7 to 11. In this stage the child is able to perform mental calculations with the use of concrete objects. The child is beginning to understand conservation; meaning that when a liquid is poured from a large, shallow bowl into a tall, skinny beaker the child understands that it is the same amount of liquid and that none of it disappeared. Seriation, or understanding sequence is beginning to manifest itself in this stage. The child is beginning to show greater verbal understanding in this stage. The educational implications for this stage are to use manipulatives and concrete examples during teaching. Classification activities would benefit a student in this stage. The fourth and final stage of Piaget is the formal operations stage, which occurs from age 11 onward. In this stage, the child begins to think more abstractly and they no longer have to work only with the tangible and concrete. Hypothetical and deductive reasoning develops in this stage, as does abstract language; now the child is able to express emotions and what is possible rather than being limited to what they can experience with their senses. The educational implications for this stage are to

challenge, not to frustrate. Encourage free thinking and allowing the student to draw his or her own conclusions, while being aware of adolescent limitations. Another way to help students learn is to keep them in their zone of proxmial development (ZPD). Lev Vygotsky theorized that the ZPD is the optimal time for a person to learn as it is the span between unactualized potential and actualized potential. Put another way, it is the span in which a student is academically challenged without being totally frustrated. This span can be crossed with the assistance of a knowledgeable other, such as a parent, teacher or trusted expert. Finally, students learn best with scaffolding. The concept of scaffolding was first suggested by Jerome Bruner, and the idea is that the student receives support for a task that is too difficult for them to complete on their own. Scaffolding should be used while the student is in the ZPD in order to support challenging instruction. Scaffolding is provided by the knowledgeable other in this case. One very visible example of this was when I transitioned from a placement in a first grade classroom to a fourth grade room. The physical and cognitive differences between the two groups were obvious, and I had to adjust my teaching skills to reflect the greater

abilities of the older children. I had to develop my question-asking ability to include more examples that required greater thought and not just concrete examples, as the fourth graders are just starting out in the formal operations stage. I was able to ask more detailed questions and ask "why" a lot more, whereas in the first grade classroom I had to use manipulatives and very concrete examples along with simply worded questions. While modeling with a concrete example is still important for the older students, they are able to reason more abstractly and apply the concrete examples to other, non-obvious problems. As I progress in my teaching career, I will keep these thoughts forefront in my mind as students develop and grow over the school year. The methods I use on day one will not be the same as the methods in the last semester. I will always strive to teach in the ZPD and be aware that it is a moving target that I must adapt to.