Learning Environments and Developmental Domains
As we have learned this week, there are many different aspects to development that we need to know when working with children from birth to age 8. We must ensure that our classrooms help to stimulate the physical, cognitive, and affective development for all students. For this assignment, you will bring together your knowledge of theories, developmental domains, and learning environments to design a learning environment. The steps for the assignment are:
Step 1: Create your learning environment
Access the APA template for assistance with the writing process, formatting, documentation, and citations in your written work.
Choose an age group (birth to age 2, ages 2 to 5, or ages 6 to 8) to design a learning environment for. ( I pick 8 years old)
Go to the Classroom Architect website or to the Gliffy website. You will use this website to design the layout for the learning environment. When designing your layout, consider how the design you have created will support the developmental needs of your students based on the age group you chose.
After creating your learning environment, take a screenshot of your design. Then, copy and paste your screenshot into a Word document. If you need help taking a screenshot, please view this tutorial.
Step 2: Written support for your learning environment design
Introduction (one paragraph)
Describe the learning environment that you have designed including the setting of your learning environment (school, home daycare, center, etc.) along with the age of children with whom you will be working.
Physical Domain
Explain how your learning environment design supports the physical development of the children with whom you are working.
Include at least two specific examples from your design.
Learning environments and development domains
Introduction
The age of the children with whom I would be working is 8. The setting is an elementary school. The designed learning environment comprises wide spaces, 3 computers, 2 classroom rugs, 1 kidney table, 3 student tables, 1 teacher desk and 1 television. There are also 5 shelves, 4 storage areas, 1 fridge, 1 sink, 3 beanbag chairs, and 28 chairs.
Physical domain
The designed learning environment supports the physical development of 8-year-olds in that two areas where the children can engage in play are included in the design. Two specific examples from the design that support the physical development of 8-year-old children are the large open spaces and classroom rugs. Eight-year-old children require active play for their healthy physical development. Active play helps the kids to maintain or build energy, muscular strength, or joint flexibility (Sanchez, 2012). The children can play in the open spaces or in the classroom rugs and the play would contribute to their gross and fine motor development as well as body awareness since they utilize their bodies actively. In small motor development, the natural progression is basically from scribbles to shapes and forms to representational images. It is notable that playing with writing tools will help these kids in refining their fine motor skills. Gross motor development for instance, skipping and hopping develops in the same way (Sanchez, 2012). Playing using their bodies will also enable the 8-year-olds to feel physically secure, self-assured, and confident.
Cognitive domain
The learning environment is designed to enhance the cognitive development of the 8-year old children. There is a square rug and a circle rug. The children can use these two rags to play which supports their cognitive development. In essence, the teacher can develop the cognitive abilities of the children by providing different kinds of play during their school day in the classroom. For instance, children can play board games on the square rug and on the circle rug aimed at enhancing their cognitive development. Games such as hangman, tic-tac-toe and checkers are particularly useful and can be played very well in the classroom rugs.
Affective domain
Besides growing physically and cognitively, 8-year-olds also grow emotionally. Affective development essentially relates to the emergence of emotional capability of experiencing, recognizing, and expressing various emotions and adequately responding to the emotional cues in other people (Sanchez, 2012). The learning environment is designed to enhance the affective development of the 8-year-old kids and two specific examples are the television and expansive play area/open space. They can watch television programs such as Dora cartoon and learn to identify emotions, understand why emotions occur, and the way in which emotions could be managed appropriately. By playing together in the wide spaces, they would become more aware of their feelings. In addition, they would be better able to recognize the feelings of other children and understand them.
Developmental theory
The development theory represented in the learning environment is Piaget theory of cognitive child development. Jean Piaget pointed out that kids are usually born with an extremely fundamental mental structure upon which all later knowledge as well as learning is based. Piaget pointed out that cognitive development is a progressive reorganization of mental processes due to biological maturation as well as environmental experience (McLeod, 2009). The phases of development according to Piaget include: sensorimotor zero-two years; pre-operational two years to seven years; concrete operational seven years to eleven years; and lastly formal operational eleven years and above (McLeod, 2009). The 8-year-olds are in Piaget’s concrete operational phase; at this phase, they begin to solve problems in a manner that is more logical. For the child to build proper mental constructs from her environment, she has to work with actual or concrete objects, should have time for investigating and testing her ideas in her own ways, and should talk about her ideas with other people, include peers (Sanchez, 2012). Two examples from my design that are represented in learning environment which support child learning and development at this phase are objects inside the shelves and objects in the storage compartments.
Conclusion
To sum up, a learning environment has been designed intended for 8-year-old elementary school children. The kids can play in the wide spaces or in the classroom rugs and the play would contribute to their gross and fine motor development. They can play board games on the square rug and on the circle rug and enhance their cognitive development. They can watch television programs such as Dora cartoon and learn to identify emotions and understand why emotions occur. This learning design supports Jean Piaget’s theory.
Screenshot of the classroom
References
McLeod, S. (2009). Jean Piaget. Developmental Psychology.
Sanchez, R. R. (2012). Designing a classroom for inclusive learning. Whole Child Education.
