Psychological readiness of children to study at school: general characteristics, types, methods of determination

2024 Author: Miguel Ramacey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 06:11

The psychological readiness of a child to study at school is a set of properties and skills that will help a first-grader master the curriculum in a peer group. It is determined, as a rule, by a child psychologist, based on the results of tests developed for this.

Features of age development

At preschool age, a child experiences a separation crisis at the age of 6-7. It is not as noticeable as the crisis of negativism in 3-4 years. The main change of this period is the ability to keep in mind the recommendations and attitudes of parents. For a baby, mom and dad are invisibly present when they are away.

Psychologists say that this change determines the ability of children to endure separation from them without neuroses, which are inevitable before the age of 6. Therefore, at this age it is appropriate to determine the psychological readiness of the child for school.

At this time for physiological andpsychological development is characterized by the following major changes:

• The immune system is being rebuilt, which is associated with frequent illnesses in the seventh year of life.
• The areas of the brain responsible for logical thinking and the ability to do what you need and don’t want to mature, the ability to generalize, form and maintain integral images appears.
• The child has a thirst for knowledge, he needs everything, everything is interesting. He starts a lot and gives up half way.
• The game fades into the background after being busy learning new information and skills.
• In addition to loving parents, the child has a psychological need for a mentor who teaches, evaluates, cares and criticizes.

Let's consider what are the characteristics of psychological readiness for schooling.

What is required from the baby to be comfortable learning

Many parents try to get him to read, count, write, but this approach is not entirely correct. In short, the psychological readiness for school is the ability of the child:

• Assimilate material from the school curriculum.
• Trust the teacher and take him as a mentor, not an angry aunt scolding for gaffes.
• Do your homework with interest and without loss of enthusiasm.
• Build relationships with classmates, be part of a team and feel comfortable in it.
• Painlessly endureseparation from parents during class.

In this case, the level of intellectual development and mental abilities are not so important. If a child is psychologically mature, he will catch up in terms of knowledge and skills fairly quickly.

Approaches to definition

Psychological readiness of children to study at school can be determined by 2 approaches. For convenience, we have arranged their features in the form of a table:

Approach name	What's the point
Pedagogical	The subject of diagnosis is the child's knowledge, skills and abilities. Testing consists in performing a series of tasks that, according to the norms, a preschooler should be able to perform. Most often these are tests in mathematics, literacy, reading.
Psychological	This approach is based on determining the psychological characteristics of a preschooler and their correspondence to age development. Evaluated: Child identity. Readiness of the psyche for the learning process. Personal parameters that psychologists study: Self-esteem. Motivation to acquire new knowledge. Willingness to join a new social institution. Development of the intellect and all its components. The readiness of the psyche for the learning process is determined by the following skills: Submit to the rules in their behavior and organization of the educational process. Follow the pattern. Listenteacher, follow his instructions and others.

Types (components)

Psychological readiness of first graders to study at school is a generalized, complex concept. It consists of several parts, equally important and related to the functioning of different parts of the brain, as well as the level of physical development.

Components of psychological readiness for school:

• Personal readiness.
• Strong-willed.
• Intellectual.
• Physical and psychophysiological.
• Voice.

Such a structure of psychological readiness for learning at school allows you to get a complete picture of the level of development of the child. It is necessary to take into account each of the components in the diagnosis, which is carried out by kindergarten teachers, a primary school teacher and a psychologist. Each of the components has its own structure.

Personal readiness

Personal assessment is an important part of diagnosing psychological readiness for school, as it allows you to determine the child's ability to adapt to a completely new way of life. The changes that await him are very serious. This is:

• New team.
• Classroom system.
• Mode.
• Teacher grades.
• New rules he must obey.

Criteria of personal readiness

Psychologists distinguish the following components:

• Social.
• Motivational.
• Emotional.

The social component determines howdevelop relationships between the child and adults and peers. It is determined by the attitude of the preschooler to such people and phenomena:

• School and the regime that must be observed during the course of study (arrive on time, endure a certain number of lessons, do homework).
• The teacher and the rules in the classroom. It is necessary to find out whether the child perceives the teacher as a mentor, whose instructions must be followed (do not make noise, listen carefully, speak only after permission and within the framework of the topic being studied).
• The baby himself. The adequacy of the child's self-esteem is being studied, since too high determines a negative attitude towards criticism, which is inevitable when receiving grades, and too low will make it difficult to adapt among peers.

The motivational component of the psychological readiness of children to study at school is the presence of interest and thirst for new knowledge. With normal age development, this should not be a problem, since seven-year-olds are trying in every way to master new information. A nuance that can cause difficulties is the transition from the usual game form of learning to the lesson. Although most elementary schools practice the presentation of material in the form of a game, this is not the case in all lessons. A child's ability to maintain interest in a subject while doing boring tasks is an indicator of school readiness.

You can determine motivational readiness by the following indicators:

• Persistence and the ability to get things done, even if it doesn't work the first time.
• The ability to work, developed inexercise at home or in the garden.

When learning, the most important way to motivate a child of this age is the praise of adults for any achievement. Parents and educators should express it emotionally, but objectively.

Volitional component

It occupies a special place in the content of psychological readiness for learning at school. This component involves the definition of voluntary behavior, if the preschooler is consciously able to control his actions and obey the rules adopted at school. According to progressive research, this behavior is directly related to the motivational component of the personal and psychological readiness of children for schooling.

A child should be able to:

• Listen to the teacher and complete the tasks assigned by him.
• Be disciplined, don't let yourself do what you want.
• Follow the pattern.
• Perform tasks according to the learned rule.
• Be diligent and spend as much time in class as needed.
• Concentrate even if he is not very interested.

Intellectual component

This criterion is given special attention among all types of psychological readiness for learning at school. The intellectual component includes the level of formation of such basic physical functions: memory, thinking, attention.

A child should be able to memorize:

• Up to 9 or more items (things) in half a minute.
• Rowwords (up to 10, but not less than 6), play phrases repeated 1-2 times.
• Up to 6 digits.
• Details of the picture shown and answer questions about them.

Thinking skills a preschooler should have:

• Selecting logical pairs of words.
• Determine the fragment that is missing to complete the picture, explain your choice.
• Understanding the sequence of events.
• The ability to assemble a picture from 12 parts.
• The ability to find a pattern in a logical chain.

Attention skills a child needs to start school:

• Complete the task completely without losing concentration.
• Find differences between 2 similar pictures.
• Be able to identify the same items from a number of similar ones.

Physical and psychophysiological readiness

Physical readiness is the ability to perform certain physical activities that are considered necessary for this age. It depends on the state of he alth, posture, compliance with height and weight norms, speed and dexterity of movements.

In addition, the concept of physical readiness includes:

• Vision.
• Rumor.
• The ability to take care of yourself (get dressed, put on shoes, eat, fold textbooks, go to the toilet on time).
• The state of the nervous system and its effect on mobility.
• Fine motor skills.

It is worth mentioning separately such an important indicator as phonemic hearing. With normal development, it allows you to recognize and distinguish all sounds inwords. but also consonant words with different meanings.

Voice readiness

It includes a set of these skills:

• Pronunciations of all sounds.
• The ability to divide a word into syllables and sounds, determine their number.
• Word-formation and the formation of statements using the correct grammatical forms.
• The ability to tell and retell.

Determination methods

Knowing the psychological readiness of first-graders to study at school is very important. According to experts, the main achievement after graduating from primary school is that the child retains a desire to learn, a fairly high self-esteem appears, based on success and acquired skills. This is only possible if, upon entering the first grade, he was ready to learn.

Objective psychological readiness for learning at school is determined using the following methods:

• Interview in groups and individually.
• Testing using blanks - printouts on paper, cut out pictures and shapes, toys.
• Drawing on a given topic.
• Graphic dictation.
• A test questionnaire to determine motivational and speech readiness, during which the child answers questions about the school.

Psychological characteristics of readiness for learning is compiled by a psychologist. Toit was as objective as possible, and the specialist was not accused of bias; children perform most of the tasks for testing in the presence of their parents. Diagnostics are carried out in a relaxed atmosphere. Adults should encourage and support the child.

Advice to parents

Although they start talking about psychological readiness for school closer to 7 years of a child's life, but its formation takes place within the framework of general development, starting from birth. Psychologists give such advice to parents:

• Speak often and a lot with children, explain and describe to them everything that happens around. The more live communication with the closest, the better the child's speech will develop.
• Be sure to answer all the questions asked by the kids. Inattention and answers "I don't know", "because", "don't interfere" contribute to the fading of interest in learning.
• Always let you have your say.
• Explain reasons for rejection and punishment in a friendly tone.
• Praise for achievements and help to cope with difficulties. For all children aged 0 to 10 years, adult praise is the main motive for activity.
• Conduct classes at home in a playful way. It is considered the most accessible for learning material in childhood.
• Be creative.
• Read a lot of books to your child.
• Control the child's nutrition, make a he althy and balanced menu so that the baby gets everything necessary for a fulltrace elements development.

According to psychologists, the more a child plays enough before school, the easier it is for him to maintain discipline in the first year of study. Those children who were deprived of the opportunity to play enough are trying to catch up in the first grade.

Main causes of psychological immaturity

A 6-7 year old child may not be ready for school. Common reasons for this:

• Soreness, due to which the baby is less hardy, often misses classes, it is more difficult for him to adapt in the team.
• Lack of systematic training before this age. Regularity disciplines and helps to get used to the lesson system.
• Pathologies of the nervous system, in which the child should be examined and treated by a neurologist, neuropathologist, psychotherapist, attend the consultations of a psychologist and a social worker. Such diseases are often accompanied by mental retardation.

In order for a preschooler to be ready for school in time, it is important that he grows up in a he althy psychological atmosphere, be loved, play a lot and receive the necessary care.