This week's child inspired quote

"If a child is to keep his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in. "

Rachael Carson

www.great-quotes.com/quotes/author/Rachel/Carson

This quote reasonates with me because it encourages children to explore and discover. I am a firm believer that children should be allowed to follow their interests with regard to learning. In addition, the adult's role is to help cultivate these interests by providing the materials and the environment to enable open-ended opportunities for exploration.

Testing for Intelligence

The holistic approach (the whole child)  is focused on developing all areas of a child which are viewed as interrelated (Smidt, 2006 p. 2). The view of this perspective is that one domain does not exist without the assistance of another. These interrelated domains include social/emotional (psychosocial), physical (biosocial) and the cognitive domains.

With the holistic approach in mind, I believe that children should be evaluated, but only minimally during the early childhood years because it can be inappropriate for this developmental stage.  When a child reaches the middle childhood years, children seem to be assessed more. I feel that the assessing at this stage can be quite excessive and strenuous for the children as well.

As a result, I would assess children during the early childhood years to determine if they are demonstrating a set of key developmental indicators during their play based experiences like with the High scope curriculum used in my Early Head Start classroom for infants through preschool aged children.

However, I would assess children within the middle childhood years through a performance based assessment which would show what they know to determine what skills they have mastered for various subjects. I believe that sometimes children are unable to express their knowledge through formalized testing methods, but when they are allowed to demonstrate their knowledge through performance, this method seems to be more effective for children. For instance, when a child can show you an AB pattern using colored blocks in Kindergarten, this would allow them to apply the knowledge they have learned. In addition, another example would be when an older student reads a book to his teacher so she can determine what reading level the child has reached. These strategies would be more effective in demonstrating what a child has learned versus the conventional testing procedures currently used.

 I was curious about how other parts of the world assess children. So, I chose the country of China because I always have viewed the children in this country as very smart. I have observed how some parents are very adamant about their children being academically successful which I feel is not totally negative. As a result, they encourage their children to become white-collar professionals, typically doctors, engineers or attorneys.  As a result, I wondered how this country would assess its school aged children. The China’s National Children Center and Professor Tori Linder has begun to implement a play based assessment in one of the Kindergarten classrooms in Beijing, China. In this assessment, teachers would observe their students in a more natural environment to learn about their development based on their interactions through play experiences very similiar to the US. Implementing this different approach to teaching in China has been met with a challenge because it is not the traditional view of teaching. However, Professor Linder is determined to change the traditional views of teaching in China to help teachers evaluate their students with more developmentally appropriate assessments.

Smidt, S. (2006). The developing child in the 21^st century: a global perspective on child development.

New York, NY: Routledge

CRIEnglish.com. (2008). Assess children through plays: A New Approach Introduced to China. Retrieved

from: http://english.cri.cn/4026/2008/05/30/167@363568.htm.

Consequences of Stress on Child Development

The stressor that I wanted to discuss in relation to child development was hunger and poverty.  Fortunately, I had not experienced any of the stressors mentioned on the list for this assignment. However, I know an adult that is near and dear to my hear that has experienced the stress of hunger and being impoverished as a child. From what I have observed, many times adults who have had traumatic childhoods don’t seem to recall many of the details from their childhood experiences. Furthermore, when I asked this adult about how they coped with the stress of hunger and poverty, they were unable to remember specific details like feelings or behaviors that they might have had. But, they could tell me that as a child they engaged in self-soothing techniques such as thumb sucking and ear stimulation. As an adolescent, selling drugs was a means of getting money for things that were wanted or needed and helped to minimize some of the effects of living a life of lack. In addition, sports, in specific, basketball was a means to cope with the stress of everyday life for this person and they were able to "lay it all out" on the court.

Nevertheless, hunger and poverty not only effect the people within the United States, but it has also had devastating effects for the entire continent of Africa. In specific, it has been estimated by the United Nation Food and Agriculture Organization that 239 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were hungry or undernourished in 2010 (Hunger Notes, 2012). In addition, the entire continent had the second largest hunger-stricken population (Hunger Notes, 2012).

The poverty level of sub-Saharan Africa is the main reason for the problem regarding hunger in this area.

In 2008, 47 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa lived on $1.25 a day or less. (United Nations, 2012).

Although poverty and hunger have adversely affected the entire population of people, children have been affected the most. In specific, 26% of children in Africa are malnourished compared to an astonishing more than 70% in Asia (Hunger Notes, 2012).  However, globally,  5 million deaths each year have been attributed to poor nutrition (Hunger Notes, 2012). Malnutrition has been said to magnify the effects of diseases such as measles and malaria (Hunger Notes, 2012). In addition, poor nutrition also affects expected mothers in developing countries like Africa where 1 out of every 6 infants are born with a low birth weight (Hunger Notes, 2012). As a result, this issue translates into infants born with a higher risk of blindness, learning disabilities, mental retardation, poor health, and last but least, premature death.

Hunger Notes (2012). Africa Hunger and Poverty Facts. Retrieved from:

http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/africa_hunger_facts.htm

Hunger Notes (2012). World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics. Retrieved from:

http://worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm