MIDDLE CHILDHOOD

(PRIMARY SCHOOLER)
A. PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
• Children will have started their elementary grades, grades 1 to 3.
• During primary school years, the physical growth is slow but
steady
• At about age 6 up to age 12, children are in the period of
middle childhood often referred to as the "school years".
• Physical development during this period are developing;
1. good personal hygiene
2. eye and hand coordination
3. good muscle control and coordination
4. awareness of good safety habits
• Children are extremely active in this stage
• Boys and girls gain from 5 to 7 pounds a year during middle childhood.
• Variations of height and weight can be affected by poor nutrition and
racial or ethnic background.
• Other factors on child’s growth and changes in the body are;
1. genes 5. climate
2. medical condition 6. illnesses/diseases
3. food
4. exercise
Muscles and Bones

• Children at this period has large muscle control over fine

motor.
• Other children may find difficulty in proper holding of pencil
and coloring within the lines
• Teachers should limit the time in letting children write
because they may develop negative attitude towards writing.
• Bone development is in its peak in this period, it grows
broader and longer
• Parents and teachers should educate children about proper
diet and exercise for them to have healthy and strong bones
• Primary teeth are being replaced by permanent teeth at ages 6
to 7 until 12.
• Adequate calcium intake of children in this stage will greatly
help for a strong bones and muscles
• During this stage, growth of bones and muscles are not still
complete, thus heavy pressured activities for children is not
advisable for their growing muscles, bones, and ligaments
 Gross Motor Skills

Gross motor skills continue to develop and

advance across the middle childhood years.
 MOTOR DEVELOPMENT

• Young school-age children's gross and fine

motor skills develop substantially over
middle childhood.
• An important improvement in gross motor
skills is muscle coordination and good
sense of balance
• Children in this stage move a lot from
running, skipping, hopping, jumping, rolling,
dancing, catching a ball and a lot of playing
because the gross motor skills are already
developed.
• Children can now button their shirt, zipping their shorts and tying
their shoelaces

• Children can now perform activities easily using a unimanual

(requiring the use of one hand) and bi-manual (requiring the use of
two hands)
 DIFFERENT MOTOR SKILLS

• 1. Coordination – series of movements organized and timed to occur in a

particular way to bring about a particular result ( Strickland 2000)
• 2. Balance – the child’s ability to maintain the equilibrium or stability of his/her
body in different position. This is basic skill needed especially in this stage, when
children are very active
• Static Balance –equilibrium in a fixed position, like balancing on one foot
• Dynamic Balance - the ability to maintain equilibrium while moving (Owens, 2006)
• Speed- the ability to cover a great distance in the shortest possible time
• Agility – one’s ability to quickly change or shift the direction of the body
• Power – the ability to perform a maximum effort in the shortest possible period
 Some Motor Milestones of Primary School-age Children

Fine Motor Skills Gross Motor Skills

Zip zippers and lace shoes Hop

Able to learn piano or violin Skip on alternating feet

Control pencil with the finger and thumb. Jump rope

Movement comes from the elbow
Write and draw with more control, but
writing looks choppy and uneven. Letters are
getting smaller. Uppercase letters are
somewhat mastered, but lowercase letters
continue to be challenging through 3rd grade,
especially letters with slants and curves
Walk on a balance beam
Throwing, catching, and kicking become
smoother
Begin to participate in organized games (e.g.
hopscotch) and sports (e.g. basketball)
Skate, ski, bike and other specialized skills
with training

(Bergin and Bergin, Child and Adolescent Development in your Classroom, 3rd. Edition:
2018, Boston, MA,USA)
Proper nutrition has effects on positive
personality traits which are;

◼More involved with peers

◼ more positive emotions

more often
◼ less anxiety

◼ more investigative

◼ more alert

◼more energy

◼ more persistent

◼ more self confidence

Balanced Diet?

Recent studies have found that children’s diets are almost opposite the diet
recommended by the US department of agriculture, which can lead to an increase in
obesity.
 Some Issues Affecting Physical Development

Obesity is defined as body weight that is more than 20 % above the average for a
person of a given height and weight.
• 10 % of all children are obese.
• Parents and health care providers are concerned about this
• World Health Organization (WHO) – Western Pacific Region stated that Philippines
is not spared from this situation
• The national nutrition results showed a 5.8% increase in overweight and obesity
rates among children 5-10 years old in 2003 and 9.1% in 20013
• Undernutrition & Malnutrition definitely lead to physical, social and cognitive
difficulties for children in middle childhood
• BUT, Overnutrition (the intake of too many calories) also presents problems!
• Obesity can be caused by a combination of genetic and social
characteristics.
• School-age children tend to engage in little exercise and are
not particularly fit.
• The correlation between TV viewing and obesity is strong.

Sleep

➢ Children in primary school need 9-11 hours of sleep everyday (which include daytime
naps)
➢ Children may go to sleep early in midday naps is not possible.
➢ In the current landscape of social media, internet, TV, computer games, children almost
spend a lot time and led to difficulty in sleeping and sometimes even experience
nightmares.
➢ Inadequate sleep may lead to mood swings and other behavioral problems and
cognitive problems
B. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
• According to Jean Piaget, intelligence is the basic mechanism of ensuring
balance in the relations between the person and the environment
• Persons experiences are continuous process of assimilations and
accommodations

CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE of Jean Piaget

Concrete operation is the 3rd stage in Piaget Theory
✓ From ages 7 to 11 years old
✓ Children have better understanding of their thinking skills
✓ Children begin to think logically particularly their own experiences
✓ Children have difficulty in abstract or hypothetical concepts
✓ Most of the children still have hard time to solve problem solving
✓Characterized by the active, and appropriate use of logic.
Logic
- According to Piaget, concrete operational thinkers can
already make use of inductive logic (involves thinking from a
specific experiences to a general principles)

- At this stage, children have difficulty in using

deductive logic (from general principle leading to specific event)

Reversibility
- an awareness that actions can be reversed. This is
one of the most important development that children understand in
this stage.
example : being able to reverse the order of
relationships between mental categories – 2+3 = 5 and 5-2=3
• Children at this stage can easily solve conservation
problems—logic used over appearance.
(for example whether the amount of liquid stays the same
although poured into different shaped containers)

• Because they are less egocentric, they can take multiple

aspects of a situation into account, a process known as
DECENTERING
• They attain the concept of reversibility, realizing that a
stimulus can be reversed, returning to its original form.
During Middle Childhood, Cognitive Advances Continue And
The Development Of Concrete Operational Skills Becomes
More Established.

• Children at this stage can

understand such concepts as
relationships between time and
speed…
At the beginning of the concrete operational stage, kids
reason that the 2 cars on these routes are traveling the
same speed even though they arrive at the same time.
Later, they realize the correct relationship between speed
& distance.
 INFORMATION PROCESSING IN MIDDLE
CHILDHOOD
• Children become increasingly able to handle
information because their memories improve.
• MEMORY is the process by which information is
initially encoded, stored, and retrieved.
• Encoding is the process by which information is
initially recorded in a form usable to memory.
• The information must be stored, or placed and
maintained in the memory system.
• Information must be retrieved, located and brought
into awareness.
• During middle childhood, short-term memory
capacity improves significantly.
• META-MEMORY, an understanding about the
processes that underlie memory emerge and
improve during middle childhood.
• Children use control strategies, conscious,
intentionally used tactics to improve cognitive
functioning.
• Children can be trained to use control
strategies and improve memory.
 Education, Child Care, And Parenting
Implications
Children have varying intelligence profiles. These profiles may be based on
influences and achievement. Parents, child care providers and teachers should be
able recognizes these by:
• Helping children draw on their strengths and promote growth in their
weaknesses;
• Planning lessons that cater to multiple intelligences based on instructional
objectives;
• Encouraging children to read more every day to increase their vocabulary;
• Bringing children to museums, art and historical landmarks to widen their
perspective about the world and people; and
• Lessening children’s screen time and increasing their personal and face-to-face
interactions.
 VYGOTSKY'S APPROACH TO COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT &
CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION
• Vygotsky's approach has been particularly influential in the
development of several classroom practices.
• Classrooms are seen as places where children should have the
opportunity to try out new activities.
• Specifically, Vygotsky suggests that children should focus on
activities that involve interaction with others.
Cooperative learning is a strategy used in education that incorporates
several aspects of Vygotsky's theory (kids work together to achieve goals).
• Reciprocal teaching, a technique where students are taught to skim
the content of a passage, raise questions about its central point,
summarize the passage, and finally, predict what will happen next,
help lead students through the zone of proximal development.
• Significant success rates with raising reading comprehension levels
 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT DURING MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
• Vocabulary continues to increase during the school years.
• School-age children's mastery of grammar improves.
• Children's understanding of syntax, the rules that indicate how words and
phrases can be combined to form sentences, grows during childhood.
• Certain phonemes, units of sound, remain troublesome (j, v, h, zh).
• School-age children may have difficulty decoding sentences when the
meaning depends on intonation, or tone of voice.
• Children become more competent in their use of pragmatics, the rules
governing the use of language to communicate in a social context.
• Language helps children control their behavior.
• One of the most significant developments in middle childhood is the
increase in METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS, an understanding of one's
own use of language.
→ BILINGUALISM is the use of more than one language.
• Being bilingual may have cognitive advantages.
• greater cognitive flexibility , greater metalinguistic awareness may improve scores
on IQ tests
C. SOCIO-EMOTIONAL
DEVELOPMENT
• Erik Erikson’s 4th Stage of Psychosocial Development
❖ In our previous lesson, you learned that Erik Erikson formulated 8 stages of
psychosocial development. In each stage, a psychosocial crisis arises and
needs resolution before the next stage can be achieved.
❖ Primary schoolers belong to the 4th stage of psychosocial development of
Erikson.
❖ Children in this stage have to resolve the issue on industry vs. inferiority
Industry – refers to a child’s involvement in situations where long,
patient work is demanded from
Inferiority – refers to the feeling created when a child gets a feeling
of failure when they cannot finish or master their school work
❖ Children have begun going to school in this stage
❖ School activities become their priorities and children become so busy with
school works
❖ This is the best time for parents and educators to encourage children to get
involve in many skills thereby building children’s self esteem, confidence, and
ability to interact with the world positively.
Understanding the Self
➢ One’s self concept – in the knowledge about the self ( such as beliefs
regarding physical characteristics, personality traits, values, abilities, goals, and
roles.
➢ It includes a sense of good and a sense of being capable of doing good, and a
sense of belonging and acceptance

➢ Self concept of primary school children is influenced by many persons around

them, from their parents, teachers, classmates, other significant persons they
encounter with.
➢ Primary schoolers have a growing understanding of their place in the world.
➢ They become aware that they can please their parents and teachers in doing
things they are good at.
➢ They also shows frustration in things they are not good at or find difficulty in
doing.
• Primary School Years
➢ Children become more confident and shows an increase in their social skills
➢ They tend to think on others too no more than of themselves only.
➢ Fairness and equality are important issues as they learn to care for people not
part of their families
➢ Loyalty, reliability, responsibility, and kindness are characteristics developed in
this stage
• Making Friends
➢ A very important part in children’s social and emotional growth is making
friends
➢ A natural inclination to be with other children is evident once they are able to
talk and walk
➢ Children usually belong to peer group (characterized by children who
belong to same age group) which last from primary age up to adolescence
➢ Primary schoolers choose to be with peer group of the same gender.
Education, Child Care, and Parenting
Implications

Primary school children’s socio-emotional competency should be viewed in

the context of the child’s developmental age. Health-care providers, teachers
and parents should be able to:
• Gain understanding of their child’s socio-emotional strengths and
weaknesses by observing the child’s behavior at home.
• Work collaboratively with the child’s parents and health-care provider to
expand one’s insights on the child’s development.
• Provide a supportive setting where children have opportunities to practice
emotional regulation and social skills with peers.
Education, Child Care, and Parenting
Implications

• Give children activities when they can practice taking turns, sharing and
playing cooperatively.
• Be a role model of healthy emotions and expressing these emotions
appropriately.
• Demonstrate calmness and staying in control of one’s own feelings.