Description
1. State two reasons why it is helpful to an infant’s cognitive and language development to have a caregiver talk to him or her.
2, Select one emotional and one social skill. Explain how a teacher would select caregiving strategies that demonstrate responsiveness and are appropriate for each skill.
3, What are some of the social challenges by schools today? What can schools do differently to address these social challenges in schools?
4, What are your opinions about children who skip a grade because they are academically advanced, or are retained a grade because they are academically behind? How do these experiences affect the social skills of those children? Provide examples.
5, What are parent education programs? What impacts parental involvement and how is it different if parents are partners instead of merely consumers of the educational service?
6, What blocks communication with parents and what are some ways to open up communication?
Explanation & Answer
Attached.
State two reasons why it is helpful to an infant’s cognitive and language development to
have a caregiver talk to him or her.
A caretaker speaking to a child can simply be referred to as baby talk or caretaker speech. Others
prefer to call it child-directed speech. Nothing can replace the role human interaction plays in a
child’s growth and development, especially when it comes to acquiring language and developing
communication skills (Apel, K., & Masterson, J. J. (2001). Talking with your baby or toddler can
help his language and cognitive development. The more you talk with your baby or infant, the
better. And it’s not just about better language skills. Talking with babies helps their brains
develop and can help children do better at school when they’re older (Apel, K., & Masterson, J.
J. (2001).
One can start baby talk by talking about everyday things in your home and family life – just
whatever you’re doing with your baby at the time. For example, you’re outside with your baby
and he points to a tree. You could say, ‘It’s a great big enormous tree, isn’t it? I wonder what
kind of animals live in that tree? Maybe a possum? Experts recommend that parents talk to their
babies as much as possible from day one. Reading stories and telling babies about the things they
see and do is the best way to verbally interact with babies and encourage their cognitive
development.
Studies have shown that from birth, infants prefer to listen to child-directed speech, which is
more effective than regular speech in getting and holding an infant's attention (Murray, A., &
Egan, S. M. (2014). Other researchers believe talking to an infant is an important part of the
emotional bonding process between the parents and their child, and helps the infants learn the
language (McClure, V. (2018).
Other reason or benefit of talking to an infant is that the talk helps in supporting the ability of
infants to bond with their caregivers. Although infants have a range of social cues available to
them regarding who will provide adequate care, talking to them serves as an additional indicator
as to which caregivers will provide developmental support. When adults engage in talks with
infants, they are providing positive emotion and attention, signaling to infants that they are
valued.
The talk may also contribute to the modulation of infant attention, assist infants in determining
relevant syntactic qualities including phonetic boundaries, and convey positive emotion to
infants. It promotes processing of word forms, allowing infants to remember words when asked
to recall them in the future. As words are repeated, infants begin to create mental representations
of each word. As a result, infants who have such experience are able to recall words more
effectively than infants who do not hence helping in language development.
References:
McClure, V. (2018). Infant massage: A handbook for loving parents. Souvenir Press Ltd.
Murray, A., & Egan, S. M. (2014). Does reading to infants benefit their cognitive development at
9-months-old? An investigation using a large birth cohort survey. Child Language Teaching and
Therapy, 30(3), 303-315.
Apel, K., & Masterson, J. J. (2001). Beyond Baby Talk: From Sounds to Sentences--A Parent's
Complete Guide to Language Development. Prima Publishing, 3000 Lava Ridge Court,
Roseville, CA 95661.
2, Select one emotional and one social skill. Explain how a teacher would select caregiving
strategies that demonstrate responsiveness and are appropriate for each skill.
In a nutshell, social and emotional learning is all about recognizing our emotions, having some
control over them, having empathy for others, handling conflict well, and making good choices
about personal and social behavior. Responsiveness is seen when an adult changes how he or she
interacts with a child to match the child’s needs (Cortes, R. C., & Greenberg, M. T. (2007). The
adult supports the child, responds immediately...