When I think of Child Development..... & To give thanks for the supports...

When I think of Child Development? It is full of life and fluidity.

"Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty.  Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old." ~ Franz Kakfa

I chose this quote because I always felt that children are always carefree. They are curious and do not carry grudge against anyone who is different from them. Children change constantly. Children grow in every aspect of child development.

Thank you for your tremendous support in last 8 weeks of class. I greatly appreciated all of your inputs and will carry them with me for rest of my life.

Thank you and Best Wishes to everyone!!!

Wk 6 Testing for Intelligence?

In my judgment, all children should be assessed or measured especially in a school setting. Without an assessment or some type of assessment tool, how can a childhood professional know the needs of the child or how can the needs of each child be met. Each child should be assesses at the beginning, in themiddle and the end of each school year, so that each child is able to receive the proper resources needed to meed their needs, especially if the child is in need of extra or special resources. All children should be provided the proper resources outside the classroom, jsut as well as inside the classroom. The regular teacher and the outside teacher and /or resources can and should work together to help each and every child reach his or her best potential.

I choose to look at Ugandan, due to the fact of having a child from that country in my classroom and I taught her brother two years ago. I found a study that was conducted on a cohort of 89 healthy children (45 females) aged 5 to 12 were follwed over 24 months and had cognitive tests measuring visual spatial processing memory, attention and spatial learning administered at a baseline, 6 months and 24 months. Nutritional status, child's education level, maternal education, socioeconomic status and quality of the home environment were also measured at baseline. A multivariate longitudinal model was then used to identity predictors of cognition over the 24 months.
RESULTS: A higher child's education level was assessed with better memory (p=0.03), attention (p=0.005) and spatial learning scores over the 24 months (p=0.05); higher nutrition scores predicted better visual spatial processing (p=0.0002) and spatial learning scores (p=0.0008) and a higher home environment score predicted a better memory score (p=0.03).
CONCLUSION: Cognition in Ugandan children is predicted by child's education, nutritional status and the home environment, community intervention to improve cognition may be effective if they target multiple socioeconomic variables.

References:
Bangirana,P., John C.C., Idro, R., Opoka, R.O., Byarugaba, J. et al. 2009. Socioeconomic: Predictors of Cognition in Ugandan Children. Implications for Community Interventions, PLoS ONE 4 (11): e7898. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0007898