A Child’s Theory of Mind, Essay Example

There are a great number of literacy strategies that may help struggling learners with a variety of problems in language acquisition, comprehension, and reproduction. It is natural that the process of learning occurs in a free and unintentional way for children, but there are still many complicated aspects that prevent the child from proceeding from an unconscious to the conscious level of language learning. Hence, a set of strategies have been formulated by pedagogues to assist children in their formation and linguistic self-development.

The majority of literacy strategies are heavily based on the Child’s Theory of Mind – the term explaining the way a child comprehends his/her mental processes, and the mental processes going on in the minds of people surrounding him/her (The Young Child’s Theory of Mind, 2010). The extensive research is being held in the field for more than half of a century, and the results have brought about the understanding that even infants have a much more complex world perception than it had been thought before. As soon as children are two to three years old, they already comprehend the perception mechanisms, wants and emotions of other people (that is, they understand what others feel about this or that event, what they want from them and others, and how they feel about something happening around them) (The Young Child’s Theory of Mind, 2010).

Later in their development (4-5 years old) children can understand false beliefs, and after six years they are ready to comprehend the processes occurring with people beyond themselves, which means the individuality of world interpretation and possession of unique viewpoints. The main emphasis in education and learning is thus not on building the child’s proficiency in the thinking processes, but to manage to understand other people’s emotions and mental processes, as a result growing as an empathic and careful, attentive individual (The Young Child’s Theory of Mind, 2010). Hence, returning to literacy strategies, it is essential to refer them to the Theory of Mind and to assess their contribution into a child’s cognitive development, comprehension of the mental processes occurring in his or her mind, as well as the minds of other children.

The first literacy strategy to be reviewed is the one for struggling readers, non-readers in particular. Non-readers are characterized both by the literacy and behavioral disorders, since they think misconduct will help them avoid reading. Hence, the strategies to be used are the vocabulary notebook and text investigation. Extensive work with the text may include the word recognition tasks performed both with words in isolation and in the text; written activities combined with audio/video tasks that will help memorizing the words, and sharing the responsibility for reading by arranging reading around by the non-reader to younger children (under the condition that the book read is easy and well-studied). The key element of pursuing strategies to help non-readers is to stress ideas and text organization as well as structure when encountering a text. These activities will help the child come to terms with the very essence of a text and feel no prejudice when having to deal with texts (Martin and Pappas, 2009).

The literacy strategy for non-readers is not based on the Child’s Theory of Mind because it refers to more mechanical, basic skills for children to obtain. However, it is possible to refer shared reading to the latter theory: when reading to other people and seeing their reaction, their comprehension of the text, the child gets a much deeper understanding of what is read than while doing it alone. In addition, younger children may ask questions about the meaning of words or text parts, so the reader may think them over and give explanations, thus deepening his/her own understanding of the text. It would be appropriate to replace the strategy with some more analytical and cognitive-based techniques of engagement in reading.

The second strategy is designed for word callers: those children who read carefully but do not comprehend the meaning of what they read. The strategies used to help word callers are ‘envisioning words’ and ‘skim and scan’. Word callers should be involved in comprehension and not simple memorization of text; they should find associations, tie words to pictures, and even detect some situational pictures with text fragments. They should analyze the text structure and literary techniques used within the text; analysis of simplistic visionary of the child’s texts will help children envision words and comprehend the text in a much more correct manner (Martin and Pappas, 2009). The indicated strategy is directly connected with the Child’s Theory of Mind because of its emphasis on the visual capabilities and ability to trigger one thought on the basis of another one. It directly follows the idea of Bower (1993) about the realization of 7-year-olders about the mental chain reaction, the independent lingering of thoughts, the existence of beliefs and desires etc.

The third strategy to be discussed is in the field of teaching social skills. One of the strategies to enhance children’s social skills is the “Working Together Skills” strategy; it involves constructing a chart of what they have to do and to say to improve cooperative learning. Children may try to practice some attitudes and behaviors, tracking their impact on partners within the group. As soon as they identify the positive effect, they can put down the “Look Like” and “Sound Like” graphs indicating what they have to do and to say to possess the indicated social skills (Candler, 2010). This strategy directly refers to the Child’s Theory of Mind because it relies on the children’s perception of emotions and reflections of their activities in other children’s activities and reactions. As soon as the positive impact and the child’s awareness thereof are identified, the strategy is considered accomplished.

References

Bower, B. (1993). A Child’s Theory of Mind: Mental life may change radically around age 4. Science News(July 17), pp. 40-41.

Martin, P., & Pappas, P. (2009). Strategies for Struggling Readers. Content Reading Strategies that Work. Retrieved September 29, 2010, from http://www.peter pappas.com/blogs/toolkit09e.pdf

Candler, L. (2010). Teaching Social Skills. Teaching Resources. Retrieved September 29, 2010, from http://www.lauracandler.com/strategies/social skills.php

The Young Child’s Theory of Mind (2010). Kid’s Development. Retrieved September 29, 2010, from http://www.kidsdevelopment.co.uk/YoungChildrensTheoryOf Mind.html