1st Grade Determines a Child's Life - How to Help Your Child Successfully Navigate the Beginning of Their Learning Journey?

Author: Luo Shuangyan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-09-01
Features: First-grade primary school children. Their attention is primarily unintentional, and their (conscious attention) is not yet fully developed. Their attention is often easily attracted by active, bright, novel, and interesting things. Therefore, birds outside the classroom, flying butterflies, and insect sounds can easily distract them. Their attention is difficult to sustain on one thing for a long time. Research shows that 5–7-year-old children can maintain their attention for about 15 minutes, while 7–9-year-old children can maintain it for about 20 minutes. Thus, first-grade primary school children should take a break after 15–20 minutes of study and then continue. Throughout the entire first-grade year, helping them learn to control their attention and develop (conscious attention) will be the goal of their attention training.
3. Memory Characteristics. First-grade primary school children have a predominance of mechanical memory, and their level of mechanical memory is relatively high. Therefore, their memory relies on repeated recitation rather than understanding. Due to their high level of mechanical memory, the materials they memorize should be arranged and required according to this memory characteristic. The task of first-grade primary school children's memory lies in cultivating meaningful memory. They should gradually learn to memorize based on understanding rather than simply rote memorization. However, this task can only be achieved alongside the development of children's thinking and the accumulation of knowledge.
4. Thinking and Imagination Characteristics. Imagination is based on images and uses images as its material. Preschool children's play activities strongly promote the development of their imagination. For example, based on recalling their parents cooking, they may roll clay into thin strips and call them "noodles." Based on recalling movie scenes, they may use two bamboo sticks—one as a horse to ride and the other as a sword—to gallop across a "grassland." They may imitate their parents' behavior, play the role of a mother, treat a doll as a child, and give it a bath, dress it, and feed it. Children's imagination powerfully promotes their thinking development, while also helping them learn a lot of social knowledge and promoting their social development. First-grade primary school children's imagination still retains the characteristics of preschool children—strong situationality and weak purposefulness. Their imagination is often influenced by the immediate context. Seeing a bird, they may imagine how wonderful it would be to fly in the blue sky like a bird. Seeing water flowing on the ground during rain, they may imagine it as a river and immediately pick a leaf to use as a boat, floating on the "river." Therefore, the task of first-grade primary school children's imagination lies in cultivating its purposefulness, teaching them to develop their imagination according to the requirements of teachers, parents, and books. Activities like "telling a story based on a picture," "creating their own stories," and "role-playing" can all promote the development of purposefulness in their imagination. Fantasy is the foundation of creativity, so encouraging children's fantasy is another task of their imagination. Encouraging fantasy means not mocking children's naive fantasies and not judging them by adult standards. Opportunities should be provided for children to express their fantasies. First-grade primary school children's thinking is primarily concrete and imaginative. Their thinking relies on the help of concrete images and is difficult to grasp more abstract concepts. Therefore, helping them transition from concrete thinking to abstract thinking remains a constant task in their thinking development. Additionally, "multiple solutions to one problem" (divergent thinking) is another condition for creativity. Therefore, cultivating divergent thinking is also a task in the development of first-grade primary school children's thinking. P4-5