Cognitive Skills

Ages 10 to 12 years are a great time for cognitive skills (see full Glossary). The children’s thinking is progressing nicely and they are getting ready to start thinking and reasoning “like adults do. They are now able to look at situations from different angles and understand that most situations have more than one aspect. They are also much better at paying attention, even while being mildly distracted.

Children at this age can:

• make inferences (see full Glossary);
• use graphic organizers (Fig. 1) to clarify their ideas;
• understand cause and effect, even in somewhat ambiguous situations;
• use all aspects of class inclusion (see full Glossary), conservation and seriation;
• tell time with an analog clock (Fig. 2) /watch;
• tell the difference between fact and opinion;
• access prior knowledge, in order to link newly acquired knowledge to it;
• clearly describe a goal, and how they are planning to achieve it;
• paraphrase what others are saying, in order to make sure they “got the message;”
• analyze an idea in order to truly understand what it is about.

Figure 1. Graphic organizer

Figure 2. Analog clock

Did you know?

Children at this age love to evaluate ideas, and let you know what they think. Of course, some of the principles behind whether or not an idea is good may not always be sound. Despite that, this is a sure sign that children are now quite capable of looking beyond the “here and now” when they are trying to think and reason.

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