The Characteristics of Young Learners in the Elementary School

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a. The Characteristics of Young Learners in the Elementary School

According to Cole 1956: 124 children in the elementary school grow and develop during six years in school when children are in the age of 6 – 12 years old. Within this period, there is a big advance of children in both mentally and physically Mehl, 1950: 20. They grow from infancy to childhood, a period when children enter into a world that they have to make their own decision and solve their own problem. Children in the elementary school are categorized into two grades. The first three years is called primary grade and second three years is called the intermediate grade. Since the subjects of this study directly relate to children in the first grade, the explanation emphasizes more on the characteristics of children in the first grade. Cole 1956: 125-132 says that children in the primary grades have specific characteristics namely physical characteristics, intellectual characteristics, emotional characteristics, and social characteristics which change in a great advance. The explanations of those characteristics are presented as follows: 1 Physical characteristics The physical characteristics of children in the primary grades are that children grow rapidly in size and proportion of parts of the body. During the first three years, children grow seven inches taller and fifteen pounds heavier. Although, basically, children in this age are easily exhausted because their nervous and muscular controls are poor, they are very active in doing any kinds of activities such as jumping, running and shouting. 14 2 Intellectual characteristics The intellectual characteristics of the children in this period are that they still have immature mind with a strong fantasy. It is because children in this period only meet a few people and their knowledge of reality is weak. Another important consideration about the children’s intellectual characteristics is that they are easy to have a feeling of insecurity. It makes children like to hear the same story, to play the same games and to do the same things over again. They feel secure to do the same things than to do something which is unfamiliar. Children in this period are also alert and interested in school work, but they are ignorant, undisciplined, and uncertain of themselves. 3 Emotional characteristics The most obvious characteristic is the lack of self control and inhibition. Children like to do whatever they want to do immediately, for instance, children suddenly cry when they want to cry. Moreover, children have exaggerated fears of all kinds and sorts of things such as winds, thunder, lighting, rain and other natural phenomena. It is common since they have a little knowledge about anything. 4 Social characteristics During this period children are changing from an individualistic dependent being to an independent socialized individual Mehl: 1950. Children in this grade share two quite contradicting characteristics. Children are highly individualistic in both interest and desires; on the other hand they are also highly independent upon others. Children begin to separate from their families to live with other children in 15 the school environment in which they do not know what to do. On the contrary, they find something new that they need to ask the teachers about the things. Children in this period also have a great curiosity as the indicator of the cognitive development. They are interested in learning all kind of things and they want to know as many facts as possible about as many different things as possible. Within this period, children are classified in the concrete operational stage which spans the years from 7 to 11 in which a major for any point in cognitive development Berk, 1994: 243.

b. Principles of Teaching Young Learners in the Elementary School