Very little time left before the start school year. If you are the mother of a future first-grader, you simply need to know whether your child is ready for school. The answer to this question is complicated by a complete misunderstanding of the essence of a child’s readiness for school, which occurs all the time. To the question: “Is your child ready for school?” Many mothers answer with dignity: “Of course! He can count to 100 perfectly, knows how to write and reads large texts!” Meanwhile, the child’s psychological readiness for school is much more multifaceted concept than just the ability to read, write and count. Today we’ll talk about what a child’s psychological readiness for school is!
What is a child’s psychological readiness for school?
Psychological readiness child to school is a collection personal qualities, skills and abilities, as well as a certain level of development mental functions. Thus, a child’s psychological readiness for school involves several components: intellectual readiness, social and personal readiness, emotional-volitional readiness, motivational readiness.
Different psychologists call these components differently and identify different amounts of them. However, without availability certain signs, which constitute the essence of a child’s psychological readiness for school, his normal education is impossible.
Child's intellectual readiness for school
Intellectual readiness is understood as a certain level of development of mental functions that facilitate the learning process. These are memory, thinking, imagination, logic, the ability to generalize, analyze and some others.
Without a sufficient understanding of the essence child's intellectual readiness for school, you might think that this is the same ability to read, count and write, as well as some ideas about the world around us. Of course, all this will be a good basis for a child’s education at school, but all these skills and knowledge are not enough. In fact, we need to take a broader view - a child’s intellectual readiness for school implies not only and not so much specific skills and abilities, but his readiness for intellectual work in general.
By the time a child enters school, he or she must have accumulated a certain amount of knowledge gained through experience. To do this, the child must not just ask endless “why?” mom and dad, but independently find answers to all your questions, comprehending cause-and-effect relationships.
The ability to establish cause-and-effect relationships is indicated by the child’s use of phrases in speech such as: “...if, then...”, “because,” “therefore,” etc.
Concerning analytical thinking, which is also extremely important for the formation of a child’s psychological readiness for school, then it begins to develop already in infancy. When a baby rattles rattles, watches the behavior of a ball, and checks what will happen if he hits a soft carpet with a toy, he develops his analytical thinking.
To check the level of memory development of your preschooler, it is enough to find out whether he is able to remember 3-5 words out of 10, not thematically related, on the first try.
To understand how developed a child’s imagination is, give him an impromptu map with a picture of a “treasure” - for example, a map of an apartment. Let him find the treasure indicated on the map.
Logical thinking determines the child’s ability to classify objects and phenomena based on certain characteristics. The child must be able to list pets, vegetables, fruits, berries, trees, etc.
It should also be reflected in how quickly he understands the essence of the tasks assigned to him, how accurately he follows the provided algorithms, and how well he plans his activities.
The personal and social readiness of a child for school is understood as his readiness for a new role for himself - being a schoolchild - and, naturally, the responsibility that falls on him along with new role. The student must be ready to interact with peers, with adults, and also be able to control himself and set some restrictions.
Unfortunately, many children are not ready for school precisely according to this criterion. They cannot rationally build a dialogue with the teacher, with their peers, and are not able to diligently do their homework if their friends are playing outside the window at the same time.
Often the absence of this component of a child’s psychological readiness for school is expressed in his inability to do homework paired with. This is usually pronounced in children who did not go to school. kindergarten, and who do not have sufficient experience communicating with peers - including experience in handling conflict situations and making joint decisions.
For the child to feel personal and social readiness for school, parents at some stage need to “separate” from him and give him the opportunity to communicate with different people. Let the child establish contacts himself; there is no need to push him or partially take over his functions, “helping” him get acquainted.
If your home child, try to get out to crowded places more often to accustom them to the group.
It is very important for the formation of a child’s personal and social readiness for school. adequate self-esteem. A child should neither underestimate his abilities nor put himself above others - both will create problems for him when studying at school.
Child's motivational readiness for school
Motivational readiness means correctly formed motivation for learning. When future first-graders are asked why they want to go to school, many give as arguments anything but the desire to study: a beautiful briefcase, a friend who will study in a parallel class, the desire to be like his older brother...
In this case, parents must explain why children go to school and create in the child a desire to learn, a responsible attitude towards learning and, naturally, positive motivation:
For school,
To the teacher
To educational activities,
To yourself.
To form the child's motivational readiness for school, give him more independence in actions. If earlier you praised him for every step, now you praise him only for finished result. Without scaring the child, explain that at school he will not be praised for every little thing, he will have tasks that need to be completed. At the same time, set him up for success and let him know that you believe in him.
Emotional-volitional readiness represents a readiness for difficulties and the search for ways to resolve them. You can recognize a child’s lack of emotional-volitional readiness for school by his words: “I won’t do this because it’s not interesting,” “I don’t want to go to school because they don’t allow me to run during lessons,” etc. 
It often happens that a child who has successfully completed preparatory classes with a teacher before school refuses to go to school and refuse to learn lessons. What's the matter? It's all about different forms activities at school and at home. If preschool activities pass in game form, then the school education system may at first glance seem boring and uninteresting.
Of course, much in this case depends on the teacher, but parents should not sit idly by, expecting that emotional-volitional readiness of the child for school she will come herself. And playing by the rules can help with this - one where you have to wait for your turn, follow all the rules and solve problems that arise. These can be games with cubes and chips, dominoes, etc. Such games will not only teach the child self-control, but will also help him learn to lose with dignity.
Prepare your child in advance for a change in activity. Let him either sit at the table or play outdoor games. Even psychologically, it will be easier for a child to sit through a lesson if he knows that he can run during recess.
You need to prepare for school in advance - and it’s better to do it gradually throughout preschool period. Only then will the child’s psychological readiness for school be formed – and he will pass first grade without any problems!
Probably everyone baby is coming to first grade with the hope that everything will be fine at school. And the teacher will be beautiful and kind, and his classmates will be friends with him, and he will study with straight A's. But then a few weeks pass, and the baby is no longer eager to get ready for school in the morning. On Monday he starts dreaming about the weekend, and comes home from school bored and stressed. What's the matter? But the fact is that the child’s expectations associated with a new interesting life were not met, and he himself turned out to be not quite ready for the reality called “school everyday life.”
Why might this happen? Because children imagine school as something very interesting and associate entering first grade with positive changes in their lives. Not all children understand that school life is, first of all, work. The same work as work activity adults, not always interesting and not always pleasant. While conducting a survey of future first-graders on the topic: Why do you want to go to school?, I was faced with the fact that some children want to go to school not at all in order to study, but in order to somehow change their life, which is not theirs. very satisfied. So, among the answers there are the following:
- At school you won’t have to sleep during the day.
- At school they will serve delicious cheesecakes for breakfast.
- I will make new friends at school.
- When I go to school, they will let me drive around the city alone.
It is clear that a child who expects school to be a continuous holiday soon begins to experience dissatisfaction from the fact that he has to do something that he does not like, namely: put effort and effort into difficult and not always interesting work.
Psychologists believe that a lot depends on how the child is psychologically prepared for school. I'll explain what it is. Psychological readiness for school has nothing to do with whether a child can read (and how quickly), or count (and to how much). Although it is precisely these skills that teachers test when enrolling a future first-grader in school. But already in the first months of training, it suddenly turns out that children who read quickly and count well do not show interest in learning, violate discipline in class and, as a result, have problems with conflictual relationships with the teacher. Parents are worried and don’t understand what’s going on. After all, they intensively prepared the child for school, sometimes even in several preparatory groups. But the fact is that in preparatory groups for school children most often go through the first grade program. Thus, for children with a weak level of development, repetition of material in the first grade makes it easier to learn. And even more so for middle-aged children good level development, this repetition causes boredom, as a result of which interest in learning disappears.
So, you ask, shouldn’t a child be taught to read and count before school? Of course it is necessary, but not in lessons in preparatory groups, but at home, in a relaxed, often playful environment, in every possible way stimulating the child’s interest in mastering reading and counting. Fortunately, today there are many educational books that will help parents, as well as grandparents, deal with their children correctly. But the main thing in these activities is not to overdo it. Under no circumstances should you force your child if he no longer wants to study. Studying through force or under threat leads to the fact that later the child does not want to study at all. So, I answered the question whether it is necessary to teach a child to read and count before school. But, I repeat, psychological readiness for schooling, the presence of which depends on the well-being of your child at school, this is not directly related.
What then is psychological readiness for school and can it be formed?
Psychological readiness for schooling is understood as the necessary and sufficient level of mental development of a child to master the school curriculum in a learning environment with peers. The necessary and sufficient level of actual development must be such that the educational program falls within the child’s “zone of proximal development.” The zone of proximal development is determined by what a child can achieve in cooperation with an adult, while he cannot yet achieve this without the help of an adult. In this case, cooperation is understood very broadly: from a leading question to a direct demonstration of the solution to a problem. Moreover, learning is fruitful only if it falls within the child’s zone of proximal development.
If current level mental development of the child is such that his zone of proximal development is lower than that required for mastering curriculum at school, then the child is considered psychologically unprepared for school education, since, as a result of the discrepancy between his zone of proximal development and the required one, he cannot master the program material and immediately falls into the category of lagging students.
Psychological readiness for school- This complex indicator, which allows one to predict the success or failure of a first-grader’s education. Psychological readiness for school includes the following: mental development parameters:
1) motivational readiness to study at school, or the presence of educational motivation;
2) a certain level of development arbitrary behavior allowing the student to fulfill the teacher’s requirements;
3) a certain level of intellectual development, implying the child’s mastery of simple generalization operations;
4) good development phonemic hearing.
Let's take a closer look at each of these indicators.
1. Motivational readiness to learn at school, or the presence of educational motivation.
When we talk about motivation, we talk about the urge to do something. IN in this case about motivation to study. This means that the child must have a cognitive interest, he must be interested in learning new things. But since learning at school consists not only of interesting and entertaining activities, then the student should have an incentive to complete unattractive, and sometimes even boring and tedious tasks. In what case is this possible? It is when a child understands that he is a student, knows the duties of a student, and also tries to fulfill them well. Often, at first, a first-grader tries to be an exemplary student to earn the teacher's praise.
Academic motivation develops in a first-grader when there is a pronounced cognitive need and the ability to work. The baby has a cognitive need from birth, and then it is like a fire: the more adults satisfy the child’s cognitive interest, the stronger it becomes. That's why It is very important to answer the little ones’ questions, read them fiction and educational books as much as possible, and play educational games with them. When working with preschoolers, it is important to pay attention to how the child reacts to difficulties: tries to complete the task he has started or abandons it. If you see that a child does not like to do something that he cannot do, try to come to his aid in time. The help you offer will help your child cope with a difficult task and at the same time feel satisfaction that he was able to overcome a difficult task. In this case, the adult must emotionally praise the child for completing the work he started. Necessary, timely assistance from an adult, as well as emotional praise allow the child to believe in his abilities, increase his self-esteem and stimulate the desire to cope with what is not immediately possible. And then show an adult how great he is in order to hear praise addressed to him.
Gradually baby will come in make it a habit to try to finish what you start, and if that doesn’t work, then turn to an adult for help. But adults must carefully evaluate the situation each time, whether their help is really needed or whether the child is too lazy to work on it himself. Sometimes emotional encouragement and confidence that the baby will succeed can be helpful. Such communication with a child, as a rule, allows one to form learning motivation by the time the child enters school.
2. A certain level development of voluntary behavior, allowing the student to fulfill the teacher’s requirements.
Voluntary behavior is understood as consciously controlled, purposeful behavior, that is, carried out in accordance with specific purpose, or the intention formed by the person himself.
At school, poor development of voluntary behavior is manifested in the fact that the child:
- does not listen to the teacher in class, does not complete assignments;
- does not know how to work according to the rules;
- does not know how to work according to a model;
- violates discipline.
My research has shown that the development of voluntary behavior directly depends on the development motivational sphere child. You can read more about this in my book “Psychological readiness for school.” So, mostly those children who are not interested in school and who do not care how the teacher evaluates them do not listen to the teacher in class.
The same applies to violation of discipline. Behind Lately The number of first-graders who cannot cope with the work according to the model has increased. Namely, teaching in the first grade is mainly based on work based on the model. On the one hand, the same motivational reasons appear here: reluctance to perform difficult, unattractive tasks, indifference to the evaluation of one’s work. On the other hand, those children who practically did not engage in this type of activity in preschool childhood cope poorly with model work. From conversations with their parents, it turned out that they did not put together cubes with fragments of drawings according to drawing samples, did not lay out mosaics based on patterns, did not assemble construction sets based on given pictures, and simply never copied anything. I would like to note that the puzzle games that are common today do not always teach the child to work according to a model. It all depends on how to collect them. If you first analyze the color scheme of a drawing, highlight the background, and carry out a primary grouping of elements, then such work contributes to the development of the ability to work with a sample. But if the picture is assembled by trial and error, that is, if the child randomly tries elements one after another to see which fits with which, then this method of work does not lead to the ability to work with the model.
Also, mostly those children who did not play games with rules before school cannot cope with work according to the rules. For the first time in a game, a child learns to obey the rule when, playing role-playing games with other children, he must fulfill his role according to the rules established by children or according to a model seen in the lives of adults. A child who has played role-playing games without much difficulty takes on the role of a student if he likes it at school and follows the rules prescribed by this role. A child who has not had any experience in his life of role-playing games with clear performance of the role may at first experience difficulties in accurately fulfilling all the teacher’s instructions, both regarding diligence and discipline.
But the main problems with working according to rules arise among first-graders who have not played games with rules before school, when the teacher sets a certain rule, which then must be applied in work.
3. A certain level of intellectual development, implying the child’s mastery of simple generalization operations.
Generalization allows a person to compare various items, highlight something common in them, while simultaneously taking into account their differences. Based on generalization, classification is carried out, that is, the identification of a certain class of objects that are characterized by general properties, for which they are applicable general rules working with them (for example, solving problems of one type or another).
The child’s learning ability depends on the process of generalization. Learning includes two stages of intellectual operations. First - mastering a new work rule (solving a problem, etc.); second - transfer of the learned rule for completing a task to similar, but not identical ones. The second stage is impossible without the ability to generalize.
Basically, by the time a child enters school, he or she has mastered empirical, that is, experience-based, generalization. This means that when comparing objects, he finds, identifies and denotes in words their outwardly identical, common properties that allow all these objects to be classified into one class or concept. So, for example, a child understands that a car, train, plane, bus, trolleybus, tram, etc. - These are all transport, or means of transportation.
Generalization develops in the process of the child’s cognition of the properties of various objects. That's why It is very important to give your baby the opportunity to explore the world around him. Children love to play with sand, water, clay, pebbles, pieces of wood, etc. They are interested in preparing the dough with their mother or grandmother and then baking a pie. They are interested in what smells like, what is edible and what is not, what will happen if they plant something, etc.
To develop generalization, you need to play educational games like lotto with children. In the course of such games, the child learns various concepts and learns to classify objects. At the same time, his horizons and ideas about the world expand significantly.
The development of generalization is facilitated by the child compiling a story based on sequential plot pictures, as well as retelling what was read to him work of art.
4. Good development phonemic hearing.
Phonemic awareness refers to a person's ability to hear individual phonemes, or sounds, in a word. So, a child entering school must distinguish individual sounds in a word. For example, if you ask him if there is a sound in the word “lamp,” he should answer in the affirmative. Why does a first-grader need good phonemic awareness? This is due to the existing reading teaching methodology in schools today, based on sound analysis words. How to develop phonemic hearing in a child? The best way to do this is in the game. Here, for example, is one of the games I invented. It's called "Unenchant the Word":
An adult tells a child a fairy tale about an evil wizard who enchants words in his castle. Enchanted words cannot leave the castle until someone frees them. To unspell a word, you need to guess it in no more than three attempts sound composition, that is, name in order the sounds of which it consists. This can only be done at a time when the wizard is not in the castle. If a wizard finds the savior of words in his castle, he will bewitch him too. After a fabulous introduction, the child is explained what a sound is and how it differs from a letter. (This game is played with children, already those who know the names letters and their spelling.) To do this, he is told that all words sound, and we hear them because they consist of sounds. For example, the word “mother” consists of the sounds “m-a-m-a” (the word is pronounced in a chant for the child, so that each sound is heard very clearly). When pronouncing the sound “m”, an adult should pay attention to the fact that it is the sound “m” that is being pronounced (which is precisely the phoneme), and not the letter “em”. When playing this game, adults need to remember that the names of consonant letters do not coincide with how these letters sound in words, that is, with their phonemes. For example, the letter “es” in words sounds like the sound “s”, and the letter “be” in words sounds like the sound “b”, etc.
The difficulty of the words proposed for disenchantment should increase gradually. At first they should be offered completely simple words like: sex cat whale porridge, etc. All sounds of a word should be pronounced by adults very clearly, and vowels should even stretch out.
Good games for the development of phonemic hearing are given in the book Bugrimenko E.A., Tsukerman G.A. “Reading without coercion,” published in 1993, and in the book by the same authors, “Learning to Read and Write,” published in 1994.
So, psychological readiness for school consists of the four components listed above: 1) motivational readiness to studying at school; 2) the ability to arbitrarily fulfill the teacher’s requirements, whether it concerns a specific task or rules of conduct at school; 3) the child’s proficiency in simple generalization operations; 4) good phonemic hearing.
The indicated components of psychological readiness for school represent the necessary and sufficient level of mental development of a child for a normal start to school according to a program of any complexity, but competent and adequate for the age of a first-grader. If a child wants to learn, diligently fulfills all the teacher’s requirements, knows how to work according to a model and according to a rule, and has good learning ability, then such a first-grader should not have any special problems at school.
Can parents themselves determine whether their child is ready for school?
In general, yes. This can be done using the following simple tests.
Sample No. 1. Children drawing a graphic pattern consisting of geometric shapes and elements capital letters. The sample should be drawn on a white sheet of paper without rulers or boxes. It must be redrawn on the same white sheet of paper. When drawing, children should use simple pencils. The use of a ruler and eraser is not permitted. The sample can be arbitrarily invented by an adult.
This task will allow you to determine whether the child can cope with the work according to the model.
Sample No. 2. Playing games with rules with children. For example, this could be the folk game “Black, don’t take white, don’t say no.” In this game, you can immediately see children who do not follow the rules and therefore lose. But it’s easier to follow the rules in a game than in educational task. Therefore, if a child has a problem of this kind in play, then it will manifest itself all the more in school.
Sample No. 3. A mixed up sequence of plot pictures is placed in front of the child. You can take pictures from a fairy tale known to children. There should be few pictures: from three to five. The child is asked to fold correct sequence pictures and make up a story based on them. To cope with this task, the child must develop the necessary level of generalization.
Sample No. 4. In a playful way, the child is offered words in which he must determine whether the desired sound is there. Each time they agree on what sound will need to be found. There are several words for each sound. Two vowels and two consonants are offered for search. An adult should pronounce the sounds sought in words very clearly, and chant the vowels. Children who find this task difficult should be shown to a speech therapist.
Dear mothers and fathers, grandparents, I hope that after reading this article, you understand what psychological readiness for school is and can help your child properly prepare for the start of school.
N.I.Gutkina, Candidate of Psychological Sciences
“Being ready for school does not mean being able to read, write and do math.
To be ready for school means to be ready to learn all this” -
Wenger L.A.
When a child reaches the age of six or seven years, many parents are concerned about issues related to his enrollment in school. How can you make sure that your child learns easily, goes to school with pleasure, and is a good student? Is there a criterion that allows us to adequately assess the degree of readiness of a child for school life? There is such a criterion, it is called school maturity or psychological readiness of the child for school.
What does psychological readiness for school mean?
Under school maturity is understood as the child’s achievement of the necessary and sufficient level of mental development, when the child is able to take part in school education.
The necessary and sufficient level of actual development must be such that the educational program falls within the child’s “zone of proximal development.” The zone of proximal development is determined by what a child can achieve in cooperation with an adult, while he cannot yet achieve this without the help of an adult. In this case, cooperation is understood very broadly: from a leading question to a direct demonstration of the solution to a problem. Moreover, learning is fruitful only if it falls within the child’s zone of proximal development.
If the current level of mental development of a child is such that his zone of proximal development is lower than that required to master the curriculum in a particular school, then the child is considered psychologically unprepared for school. This occurs as a result of a discrepancy between his zone of proximal development and the required one; he cannot master the program material and immediately falls into the category of lagging students.
The main criterion for school readiness is the child’s ability successfully study at the chosen school.
So, psychological readiness for school is a complex indicator that allows one to predict the success or failure of a first-grader’s education.
The first years at school. What is important?
The most the main task The first years of schooling is not so much about the child acquiring certain knowledge and skills. It is much more important that after graduation primary school child:
- wanted to study;
- knew how to study;
- was confident in his abilities;
- so that he develops a learning attitude, a desire to learn, faith in his capabilities, and for this he needs success.
Successful experience for the first time school years- it is very important. Therefore, you need to take care to choose a school whose requirements would adequately meet your child's capabilities.
When they talk about a child’s capabilities, we are talking not only about his intellectual development. There are several areas in which to evaluate child's readiness for school.
Components of a child’s psychological readiness for school.
1. the child’s personal readiness for school - independence, ability to self-organize, desire to acquire knowledge, interest in learning. Includes:
- social readiness(child’s communication skills): ability to establish business relationship with peers and with adults.
- motivational readiness(presence of learning motivation).
- emotional readiness for school : positive attitude towards oneself, other children, teachers; sufficient emotional maturity to be able to feel the mood of another person, to be able to cooperate.
2. strong-willed readiness for school- lies in the child’s ability to work hard, doing what the teacher requires of him, to comply with the regime of school life.
3. intellectual readiness for school- we are talking about the intellectual development of the child, the formation of basic mental functions - attention, memory, thinking.
Psychological readiness of the child for school.
According to L.A. Wenger, V.V. Kholmovskaya, L.L. Kolominsky, E.E. Kravtsova and others, it is customary to distinguish the following components in the structure of psychological readiness:
1) Personal readiness , which includes the formation in the child of readiness to accept a new social position - the position of a schoolchild who has a range of rights and responsibilities. Personal readiness includes determining the level of development of the motivational sphere. A child who is ready for school is one who is attracted to school not by its external aspects (the attributes of school life - a briefcase, textbooks, notebooks), but by the opportunity to acquire new knowledge, which involves the development of cognitive interests. The future schoolchild needs to voluntarily control his behavior and cognitive activity, which becomes possible with the formation of a hierarchical system of motives. Thus, the child must have developed learning motivation. Personal readiness also presupposes a certain level of development emotional sphere child. By the beginning of school, the child should have achieved relatively good emotional stability, against the background of which the development and course of educational activities is possible. Two groups of teaching motives were identified:
1) broad social “motives for learning, or motives associated “with the child’s needs for communication with other people, for their assessment and approval, with the student’s desires to occupy specific place in the system of social relations available to him”;
2) motives related “directly to educational activities, or the cognitive interests of children, the need for intellectual activity and the acquisition of new skills, abilities and knowledge.”
Methodology for determining the dominance of a cognitive or gaming motive
The child is invited into a room where ordinary, not very attractive toys are displayed on tables, and is asked to look at them for a minute. Then the experimenter calls him over and invites him to listen to a fairy tale. The child is read an interesting fairy tale for his age, which he has not heard before. At the most exciting point, the reading is interrupted, and the experimenter asks the subject what he wants. this moment I would rather play with the toys displayed on the tables or listen to the end of a fairy tale.
Children with a pronounced cognitive interest usually choose a fairy tale. Children with weak cognitive needs prefer to play. But their game, as a rule, is of a manipulative nature: first they will grab one thing, then another.
An experimental conversation to identify the “internal position of the student,” which is understood as a new attitude of the child to the environment, arising from a fusion of cognitive needs and the need to communicate with adults at a new level. In special experimental studies to study this new development of the 7-year-old crisis, it was found that in the “school” game, children characterized by the presence of an “internal position of a schoolchild” prefer the role of a student rather than a teacher and want the entire content of the game to be reduced to real educational activities (writing, reading, solving examples, etc.).
On the contrary, if this education is not formed, children, playing “school”, choose the role of a teacher, and instead of specific educational activities, they choose the game “recess”, acting out coming to and leaving school, etc.
Thus, " internal position schoolboy" can be revealed in the game, but this path takes too much time. At the same time, the same study showed that some experiments can be replaced by a special experimental conversation that gives a result similar to the experiment. In particular, this applies to an experimental game that allows us to determine the “internal position of the student.”
In connection with the above, a conversation aimed at determining the “internal position of the student” includes questions that indirectly help determine the presence of cognitive and educational motivation in the child, as well as the cultural level of the environment in which he grows up. The latter is essential for the development of cognitive needs, as well as personal characteristics that contribute to or, conversely, hinder successful learning at school.
Methodology “Child’s attitude towards learning at school”
The purpose of this technique is to determine the initial motivation for learning in children entering school, i.e. find out if they have an interest in learning. The child’s attitude towards learning, along with other psychological signs of readiness for learning, forms the basis for the conclusion about whether the child is ready or not ready to study at school. Even if everything is in order with his cognitive processes, and he knows how to interact with other children and adults in joint activities, it cannot be said about the child that he is completely ready for school. Lack of desire to learn in the presence of two signs of psychological readiness - cognitive and communicative - allows a child to be admitted to school, provided that during the first few months of his stay at school, interest in learning will certainly appear. This refers to the desire to acquire new knowledge, useful skills and abilities related to the development of school curriculum.
Practice has shown that in this technique concerning younger children school age, you should not limit yourself only to ratings of 0 points and 1 point, since, firstly, there are also complex questions here, one of which the child can answer correctly, and the other incorrectly; secondly, the answers to the proposed questions may be partly correct and partly incorrect. For complex questions that the child did not answer completely, and questions that allow a partially correct answer, it is recommended to use a score of 0.5 points.
Only a sufficiently detailed, sufficiently convincing answer that does not raise doubts in terms of correctness is considered correct and complete, deserving a score of 1 point. If the answer is one-sided and incomplete, then it is scored 0.5 points. For example, the full answer to question 2 (“Why do you need to go to school?”) should sound something like this: “To acquire useful knowledge, skills and abilities.” The following answer can be rated as incomplete: “Study.” An answer is considered incorrect if there is no hint of acquiring useful knowledge, skills or abilities, for example: “To make it fun.” If, after an additional, leading question, the child fully answers the question posed, then he receives 1 point. If the child has already partially responded to this question and after an additional question he could not add anything to it, then he receives 0.5 points.
Taking into account the introduced intermediate score of 0.5 points, it should be considered that a child who, as a result of answering all questions, scored at least 8 points, is fully ready to study at school (based on the results of the examination using this technique).
And finally, a child whose total score is less than 5 is considered not ready for learning.
To answer this method, the child is asked the following series of questions:
Do you want to go to school?
Why do you need to go to school?
What will you do at school? (Option: what do they usually do at school?)
What do you need to have in order to be ready to go to school?
What are lessons? What do they do on them?
How should you behave in class at school?
What is homework?
Why do you need to do homework?
What will you do at home when you get home from school?
What new things will appear in your life when you start school?
A correct answer is considered to be one that sufficiently fully and accurately corresponds to the meaning of the question. In order to be considered ready for school, a child must give correct answers to the vast majority of questions asked of him. If the answer received is not complete enough or not entirely accurate, then the questioner should ask the child additional, leading questions and only if the child answers them, make a final conclusion about the level of readiness for learning. Before asking this or that question, it is imperative to make sure that the child correctly understood the question posed to him.
The maximum number of points a child can receive using this method is 10 . It is believed that he is almost psychologically ready to go to school if the correct answers are received to at least half of all the questions asked.
2) Intellectual readiness child to school. This component of readiness presupposes that the child has an outlook and the development of cognitive processes. The child must have systematic and dissected perception, elements of a theoretical attitude to the material being studied, generalized forms of thinking and basic logical operations, and semantic memorization. However, basically, the child’s thinking remains figurative, based on real actions with objects and their substitutes. Intellectual readiness also presupposes the formation in a child initial skills in the field of educational activities, in particular, the ability to highlight learning task and turn it into an independent goal of activity. To summarize, we can say that the development of intellectual readiness for learning at school involves:
Differentiated perception;
Analytical thinking (the ability to comprehend the main features and connections between phenomena, the ability to reproduce a pattern);
Rational approach to reality (weakening the role of fantasy);
Logical memorization;
Interest in knowledge and the process of obtaining it through additional efforts;
Mastery by ear colloquial speech and the ability to understand and use symbols;
Development of fine hand movements and hand-eye coordination.
When studying a child’s intelligence from the point of view of readiness for schooling, the characteristics that are necessary and sufficient for starting school should come to the fore. The most striking characteristic is learning ability, which includes two stages of intellectual operations. The first is the assimilation of a new rule of work (solving a problem, etc.); the second is the transfer of the learned rule for completing a task to similar, but not identical, ones. The second stage is possible only when this process of generalization is carried out.
Methodology “Sequence of Events”
The “Sequence of Events” technique was proposed by A.N. Bernstein. It is intended to study the development of logical thinking, speech and the ability to generalize.
Three plot pictures are used as experimental material, presented to the subject in the wrong sequence. The child must understand the plot, build the correct sequence of events and compose a story from the pictures, which cannot be done without sufficient development of logical thinking and the ability to generalize. An oral history shows the level of speech development of a future first-grader: how he constructs phrases, whether he is fluent in the language, what his lexicon etc.
“Sound hide and seek” technique
The “Sound Hide and Seek” technique is designed to test phonemic hearing. The child is asked to play “hide and seek” with sounds.
The conditions of the game are as follows: each time they agree on what sound to look for, after which the experimenter calls the subject various words, and he must say whether the sound he is looking for is in the word or not. It is suggested to look for the sounds “o”, “a”, “sh”, “s” in turn. All words must be pronounced very clearly, highlighting each sound, and vowel sounds must even be drawn out (the vowel sound being searched must be under stress). It is necessary to suggest to the subject that he himself, following the experimenter, pronounce the word and listen to it. You can repeat the word several times.
The described diagnostic program is valid, reliable and has prognostic significance. The program can be used when examining children in kindergartens and primary schools (in particular, when enrolling future first-graders in school). The program is designed for children from 5 years 6 months. It is unacceptable to use it at an earlier age.
3) Social and psychological readiness to schooling. This component includes the formation of moral and communication abilities in children.
Degree of psychosocial maturity (outlook) - test conversation proposed by S. A. Bankov.
The child must answer the following questions:
State your last name, first name, patronymic.
Give the last name, first name and patronymic of your father and mother.
Are you a girl or a boy? Who will you be when you grow up - an aunt or an uncle?
Do you have a brother, sister? Who's older?
How old are you? How much will it be in a year? In two years?
Is it morning or evening (day or morning)?
When do you have breakfast - in the evening or in the morning? When do you have lunch - in the morning or in the afternoon?
What comes first - lunch or dinner?
Where do you live? Give your home address.
What does your dad, your mom do?
Do you like to draw? What color is this ribbon (dress, pencil)
What time of year is it now - winter, spring, summer or autumn? Why do you think so?
When can you go sledding - winter or summer?
Why does it snow in winter and not in summer?
What does a postman, a doctor, a teacher do?
Why do you need a desk and a bell at school?
Do you want to go to school?
Show me your right eye, left ear. What are eyes and ears for?
What animals do you know?
What birds do you know?
Who is bigger - a cow or a goat? Bird or bee? Who has more paws: a rooster or a dog?
Which is greater: 8 or 5; 7 or 3? Count from three to six, from nine to two.
What should you do if you accidentally break someone else's thing?
Evaluation of answers
For the correct answer to all subquestions of one item, the child receives 1 point (except for control questions). For correct but incomplete answers to subquestions, the child receives 0.5 points. For example, the correct answers are: “Dad works as an engineer,” “A dog has more paws than a rooster”; incomplete answers: “Mom Tanya”, “Dad works at work.”
Test tasks include questions 5, 8, 15,22. They are rated like this:
No. 5 – the child can calculate how old he is - 1 point, names the year taking into account the months - 3 points.
No. 8 – for a complete home address with the name of the city - 2 points, incomplete - 1 point.
No. 15 – for each correctly specified application school paraphernalia – 1 point.
No. 22 – for the correct answer -2 points.
No. 16 is assessed together with No. 15 and No. 22. If in No. 15 the child scored 3 points, and in No. 16 - a positive answer, then it is considered that he has a positive motivation for learning at school.
Evaluation of results: the child received 24-29 points, he is considered school-mature, 20-24 - medium-mature, 15-20 - low level psychosocial maturity.
MUNICIPAL EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION
"SECONDARY SCHOOL No. 16"
Report to the meeting for parents of future first-graders on the topic:
“What is a child’s psychological readiness for school?”
primary school teacher
highest qualification category
MOU " high school No. 16"
Balakovo, Saratov region
Tarasova Natalya Vladimirovna
2011
How long has it been since your baby first smiled at you, took his first steps, said his first word? It seems that it was quite recently... And now he is already standing on the threshold of a new life, completely unknown to him - on the threshold of schooling. The beginning of school life - natural stage on the path of every child: every preschooler, reaching a certain age, goes to school.(Slide 1)
At what age is it better to start systematic schooling? What program should I teach my child? Will he cope with the school load, will he be able to study well? How to prepare a child for school? How to help little schoolboy when he encounters the first school difficulties? These questions worry parents of future first-graders. The concern of adults is understandable: after all, the student’s performance in subsequent years, his attitude towards school, learning and, ultimately, well-being in his school and adult life depend on how successful the start of schooling is.
Let's try to figure out what “school readiness” is? Usually, when they talk about readiness for schooling, they mean this level of physical, mental and social development child, which is necessary for the successful completion of the school curriculum without harming his health.(Slide 2)
You need to prepare especially carefully for school if:
- The mother's pregnancy and childbirth occurred with complications;
- the child suffered a birth injury or was born premature;
- the child suffers from gastrointestinal diseases, enuresis, is prone to frequent colds, and has sleep disturbances;
- the child has difficulty finding contact with peers and is emotionally unstable;
- you notice motor retardation or hyperactivity.
A child’s psychological readiness for school includes:
(Slide 3)
- intellectual readiness;
- motivational readiness;
- volitional readiness;
- communicative readiness.
Intellectual readiness involves the development of attention, memory, mental operations: analysis, synthesis, generalization, ability to establish connections between phenomena and events.
By 6-7 years:
The child knows the primary colors and their shades, can correctly distinguish the weight of objects, admits less mistakes when identifying odors, perceives the object well as a whole, identifies the main parts and correlates them with each other, knows how to find similar and features items.
The child has a sufficiently developed random memory: An older preschooler already knows how to set a goal, remember something, and uses memorization methods quite freely.
Preschoolers gradually develop voluntary attention, which is expressed in the ability to do something according to instructions for a certain time. Six-year-old children can already productively engage in the same activity for 20 minutes or more. True, they are not always able to concentrate on several significant objects at once and quickly switch their attention from one task to another. Preschoolers have developed visually - creative thinking with elements of the abstract. However, children still have difficulty comparing several features of an object at once. The child has a fairly large vocabulary. His speech is distinguished by the use of words associated with movement and activity, and an increase in the number of generalizing words. Speech becomes coherent and logical. An older preschooler can already talk about events that happened to him some time ago.
In a preschooler, the imagination needs support from an object to a lesser extent than at previous stages of development. It turns into internal activities, which manifests itself in verbal creativity (counting books, teasers, poems), in the creation of drawings, modeling, etc.
The child has already formed spatial relationships: he can correctly determine the position of an object in space (above-under, front-back, below-above, left-right), correctly identify such relationships as “narrower-wider”, “more-less” , “shorter-longer”. Older preschoolers already perceive time as a category that cannot be returned or accelerated.
(Slide 4)
Also, a first-grader must know:
By the age of 6–7 years, a child should know:
- his address and the name of the city in which he lives;
- name of the country and its capital;
- names and patronymics of their parents, information about their places of work;
- seasons, their sequence and main features;
- names of months, days of the week;
- main types of trees and flowers;
- be able to distinguish between domestic and wild animals.
In other words, he must navigate time, space and his immediate environment.
Motivational readiness implies that the child has a desire to accept a new social role– the role of a schoolchild. (Slide 5)
- To this end, parents need to explain to their childthat children go to school to gain knowledge that every person needs.
- You should give your child only positive information about school. Remember that your grades are easily borrowed by children.The child should see that his parents are calm and confident about his upcoming entry into school.
- The reason for the reluctance to go to school may be that the child “hasn’t played enough.” But at the age of 6–7 years mental development It’s very flexible, and children who haven’t “played enough” when they come to class soon begin to enjoy the learning process.
- You don't have to develop a love for school before the start of the school year, because it's impossible to love something you haven't already encountered. It is enough to let the child understand thatStudying is the responsibility of every person, and the attitude of many of the people around the child depends on how successful he is in his studies.
I suggest you and your child play the game “Collect a Briefcase”. This will help the child become emotionally attuned to school.(Slide 6)
Volitional readiness presupposes that the child has:(Slide 7)
- the ability to set goals
- ability to make a decision to start an activity,
- outline an action plan,
- complete it with some effort,
- evaluate the results of your activities,
- as well as the ability to perform unattractive work for a long time.
The development of strong-willed readiness for school is facilitated by visual activity and design, as they encourage long time focus on building or drawing.
Communicative readiness(Slide 8 ) is manifested in the child’s ability to subordinate his behavior to the laws of children’s groups and the norms of behavior established in the classroom. It presupposes the ability to become involved in the children's community, to act together with other children, if necessary, to give in or defend one's innocence, to obey or lead. In order to develop communicative competence, you should maintain friendly relationships between your son or daughter and others. Personal example tolerance in relationships with friends, family, and neighbors also plays a role big role in the formation of this type of readiness for school.
I suggest you get acquainted with the portrait of a first-grader who is not ready for school:(Slide 9)
- excessive playfulness;
- lack of independence;
- impulsiveness, lack of control of behavior, hyperactivity;
- inability to communicate with peers;
- difficulty in contacting unfamiliar adults (persistent reluctance to contact) or, conversely, lack of understanding of one’s status;
- inability to concentrate on a task, difficulty perceiving verbal or other instructions;
- low level of knowledge about the world around us, inability to generalize, classify, highlight similarities and differences;
- poor development of finely coordinated hand movements, hand-eye coordination (inability to perform various graphic tasks, manipulate small objects);
- insufficient development of voluntary memory;
- delayed speech development (this may also be incorrect pronunciation, and poor vocabulary, and inability to express one’s thoughts, etc.).
How to help a future first-grader?(Slide 10)
1 . School choice.
- If a child was often sick in childhood, if it is difficult for him for a long time keep attention on one thing, if you see that he is not mentally ready to become a first-grader, consult a psychologist. Perhaps it would be useful for him to sit at home for another year or be like preparatory classes. Or you need to take your choice of school seriously: the workload in the first year of study should be feasible for the child.
2. Development of independence.
- In order for a child to quickly adapt to school, he must be sufficiently independent. Try to patronize him less, give him the opportunity to accept independent decisions and be responsible for them. Entrust him with some household chores, he has learned to do his work without the help of adults.
3. Communication with peers.
- If your child has never gone to kindergarten, try to let him spend the remaining time before school to socialize with his peers. Otherwise, it will be very difficult for him to get used to both lessons and a large group at the same time.
- Attendance at pre-school courses.
You have the right to choose in preparing your children for school. I would like to advise parents to read the literature on the issue presented. IN bookstores such literature huge selection, and you can prepare yourself or attend courses at our school.
(Slide 11)
(Slide 12)
Our school will host training courses for future first-graders on Saturdays. Course dates are February, March, April. The first day of class is February 5 at 9 am. These courses are held at our school annually not only with the aim of preparing preschoolers, but also with the aim of adapting them to the learning process (children get used to large school premises, classrooms, and the teacher).
The cost of training is 400 rubles per month. Payment is made through Sberbank. Those who plan to attend courses are asked to stay after the meeting and write an application. Next, you will receive a receipt for February, which must be paid by February 5 and brought to the teacher. On February 5, the entrance will be opened on the 1st floor of the elementary school, there will be lists of groups and the number of rooms where children will undress.
After the meeting, we ask you to donate 250 rubles for notebooks to printed basis, because we need to order them in advance from the bookstore.
The child should have it in every lesson indoor shoes, folder with accessories (show folder): pen (2), pencil, set of colored pencils, thin album.
After the meeting, we will give you the opportunity to write down what you need for the courses. We have pens and paper.