Middle School Tips: Cognitive Development

12- 14 years old

Retrieved from: https://sites.google.com/site/dapforteachers/home/middle-school-tips-

cognitive-development

Introduction

As children grow physically, they grow cognitively; their minds grow more complex
daily. Middle schoolers, early adolescents age 10-14, are in the formal operations
stage. At this cognitive level, the brain is able to complete more complex functions,
such as staying on task for an hour or more. They have a growing awareness of
academic domains.

This cognitive growth allows middle school teachers to link more abstract, complex
ideas with the student's preexisting knowledge. The teacher should incorporate
engaging activities from a variety of learning strategies that engage students and
keep their attention, though some students require more attention than others. Early
adolescent cognitively realize that the concepts they are learning are applicable to
real life situations and should be taught as such

Early Adolescent Brain Development

Adolescents make 5 major gains in cognitive development as they move from

elementary into middle school.

 They can think about possibilities

 They can think about abstract concepts
 Their metacognitive abilities improve (they can think about thinking)
 They can think multi-dimensionally, playing one idea off of another
 They can think relativistically, understanding things from different
points of views.
 Due to the 5 major gain in cognitive
development, their quality for recalling
things improve greatly. Early adolescences
no longer only rely simply on their
memorization skills but are now able to form
different memory strategies. An example of a
memory strategies is using the Acronyms
method. With this method the adolescents
take the first letter of each item they are
trying to memorize and form a new word
with those letter. For example, in math, in
order to learn the order of operation, adolescence will learn the word PEMDAS
(otherwise known as Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.) This Acronym will help
adolescence recall the orders of operation for they know that the order of operation
begins with those letter as seen here: Parenthesis,
Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, and Subtraction.

During early adolescence, the prefrontal cortex of the brain (the frontal lobe) does
not develop as quickly as other regions, and in fact, is not fully developed until the
ages of 18-20. This region of the brain regulates mood, and plays a large part in
planning, decision making, and controlling impulses.

When prompted by visual/auditory cues, early adolescents typically activate the

amygdala (the region of the brain that controls “gut reactions”) rather than their
developing prefrontal cortex. This causes early adolescents to have emotional
responses to stimuli as opposed to adults who have more rational responses. As they
progress from their early teen years, there should be a shift towards more rational
behavior, but this may occur well into high school or college. Because of this
development, adolescents problem solving skills and deductive skills have increased
dramatically. Early adolescents can form a hypothesis and use their reasoning skills
to determine an outcome. They can also use prior knowledge to help them reach a
conclusion. This why it is important for teacher to engage the students with learning
activities that help them develop their problem solving skills.

Adolescents don’t only grow in cognitive ability, during the adolescent growth spurt,
around 12 for girls or 14 for boys, middle school students grow about as fast as
toddlers. This rapid change in physical appearance can sometimes cause emotional
stress for the students as they feel like a whole different person.
 Teaching Tips: Piaget's Teaching Tips

1. Explore children’s reasoning with problem-solving tasks and probing questions.

When presenting a variety of questions to middle school students they begin to use
their reasoning skills and forming hypothesis. For example, if you asked an 11-year-
old sixth grader a question such as “Peggy has three kids. John is taller than Sam.
Kevin is ¾ the height of Sam. Who is the tallest?” the child would have employ their
cognitive thinking and might even draw pictures before coming to the conclusion
that john is the tallest.

2. Present situations and ideas that children cannot easily explain using their existing
knowledge and beliefs.
Teachers must assign activities that put student in disequilibrium. During this
teaching tip, the student must step out of their comfort zone and reevaluate their
original thinking about the topic. For example, the student may wonder why boats
float even though they weigh many tons. Their original thinking is that light objects
float and heavy objects sink.

3. Use familiar content and tasks when asking children to reason in sophisticated
ways.
Teachers should assign activities that relate to the student’s life experiences.
Students are more inclined to pay attention and understand the lesson if the topic is
familiar to them. For example, when teaching about aerodynamics, the teacher could
have the students make paper airplanes, with which most students are already
familiar. They can learn how if you throw a flat piece, of paper, it isn’t going to go far,
but when u fold it into a plane, the air catches its wings and makes the plane fly.

4. Plan group activities in which young people share their beliefs and perspectives
with one another.
Children are more inclined to challenge their peer’s ideas rather than always
accepting the teacher’s ideas. Also, children speak with each other at a level that they
all understand and are motivated to learn from each other’s points of views.

5. Provide opportunities for children to experiment with physical objects and natural
phenomena.
Using hands-on activities help students combine their existing knowledge with their
developing abstract understanding of the world.

Example:
Piaget's idea of "formal operational thinking" is observed. Students must be able to
formulate a hypothesis about different variables that can affect a pendulum's swing.
The students should be able to recognize that there are separate and control variable
and then test each factor separately, keeping a constant. This introdices formal
operational thinking; which is logical thinking and reasoning applied to abstract
ideas as well as concrete objects and situations.
This exercise enables students to recognize statements that contradict what they
know to be true in the real world.
Four factors to be considered are:
a) weight of the object
b) length of the string
c) force of the object pushed and
d) the height the object is released.

sources:

Pertler, J. (n.d.). Adolescent Brain Development | Education.com. Education.com |

An Education & Child Development Site for Parents | Parenting & Educational
Resource. Retrieved March 28, 2011, from
http://Www.Education.com/magazine/article/Middle_School_Brain_Develop

McDevitt, T. M., & Ormrod, J. E. (2010). Child development and education (4. ed.).
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Middle School Development. (n.d.). Education.com: An Education and Child

Development Site for Parents. Retrieved March 28, 2011, from
www.education.com/magazine/article_middle_school_development