Jean Piaget Observation

When I first walked into my classroom at Pine Meadow Elementary, I was greeted by a group of curious faces staring back at me, all seated in a circle on the floor. I volunteered in a first grade classroom with the main teacher, Mrs. Stainbrook, along with three other adults. We had Mrs. Nelson, a paraprofessional for some of the students; Mrs. Voigt, a student teacher; and the occasional parent that liked to volunteer. So the children in that classroom never had a shortage of help and attention. Most days the children would start off with a math lesson that was followed by a time for snack, and then the kids would head to gym and music. The first thing I noticed as I walked in the classroom was how the desks were grouped together like pods,

He created Piaget’s Theory of Intellectual Development that divided life into a series of stages where certain abilities develop. Similar to Erik Erikson, Jean Piaget was a stage theorist. As I mentioned earlier I volunteered in a first grade classroom, with ages ranging from 6-7 years old. Piaget classifies this age as being in the Preoperational Period. This stage mainly describes children as beginning to learn to think abstractly and expanding their vocabulary. Another skill usually acquired at this age is the habit of solving problems through imitation or by pretending. Mrs. Stainbrook took advantage of this newfound skill quite often whenever someone in the class brought up a situation they were experiencing. For example, one day during morning meeting, a boy named Xavier brought up that he was feeling left out during recess. Mrs. Stainbrook took this as an opportunity to let the children try and solve this problem on their own. She had the class split into groups and create some skits reenacting the situation at hand, and then we all discussed what some appropriate reactions could