The extended day group (hereinafter – AFT) is a model for organizing extracurricular activities of schoolchildren, creates favorable conditions for improving the efficiency of students’ performance of homework, contributes to the personal growth of children.
Currently, one of the main objectives of educational work is the formation of children’s intelligence, and the basis for the development of mental abilities in the primary school age is the purposeful development of cognitive mental processes: attention, imagination, perception, memory, thinking.
Attention – a form of organization of cognitive activity, so the game material include meaningful-logical tasks, aimed at the development of various characteristics of attention: its volume, stability, the ability to switch attention from one subject to another, to distribute it to different subjects and activities.
Perception is the main cognitive process of sensory reflection of the activity, its objects and phenomena in their immediate world, in society. Psychological studies have shown that one of the most effective methods of organization is the perception and education observation, comparison.
Perception in this case becomes more profound. As a result of play activity, perception itself passes into independent activity, into observation.
The task of the homeroom teacher:
– To ensure that our children grow up to be not only conscious and healthy members of society, but also, necessarily, proactive, thinking, capable of a creative approach to business.
One of the most important qualities of a modern person is an active thinking activity, critical thinking, search for new things, desire and ability to acquire knowledge independently.
The problem of the development of cognitive activity of junior high school students is one of the topical problems, as this quality plays a major role in the development of the child’s personality. Cognitive activity is necessary for a person to be able to know himself, to reveal his abilities, to find his place in life. Pedagogical reality proves every day that the learning process is more effective if a schoolchild demonstrates cognitive activity.
The cognitive process of younger students is not always purposeful, mostly unstable, episodic. Therefore it is necessary to develop cognitive interest, activity of the younger schoolboy in various kinds of his activity.
The problem of activation of cognitive activity has always been faced by educators.
Sh.A. Amonashvili developed a holistic system of training and education based on the excitation of cognitive interest of schoolchildren, on the organization of their joint interested activity with the tutor.
Success is the most important stimulus for active human activity. This psychological phenomenon is especially evident at children’s age when other motives and stimuli are still unstable or weakly expressed. The child who does not do well, lags behind his peers, quickly loses interest in learning and his cognitive activity in class is close to zero.
Cognitive interest is the highest stimulus of the educational process, a means of activation of cognitive activity of students. To activate the cognitive activity of children, it is necessary to introduce an element of amusement in both the content and form of work.
While working at school as a homeroom teacher, I use a variety of methods to develop the cognitive activity of younger students. In my work I include: games, game exercises, crossword puzzles, riddles, rebuses, information bingo, passing through mazes, virtual excursions, trips to the country of fairy tales, trainings for the development of intellectual and creative abilities of children in the afterschool program.
The blessed children’s age is open and receptive to the wonders of knowledge, the ability to wonder, the richness and beauty of the world around them. In order to implement the developmental goals of teaching, it is necessary to activate cognitive activity, to create a situation of interest.
Developmental learning – it is learning in which students not only memorize facts, learn the rules and definitions, but also trained in rational methods of applying knowledge in practice, transferring their knowledge and skills in both similar and altered conditions.
Play is an independent activity in which children enter into communication with their peers. They are united by a common goal, joint efforts to achieve it, common experiences. Game experiences leave a deep trace in the child’s mind and contribute to the formation of good feelings, noble aspirations, skills of collective life.
To help me still come up with developmental games aimed at developing children’s intellectual and creative abilities: observation, flexibility, ability to analyze, compare, use analogy, think logically; ability to find dependencies and patterns, to classify the material, to find mistakes and flaws; ability to combine, spatial representation and imagination, the ability to predict the results of their actions, steady attention, well-developed memory. You should not worry about mental overstrain of children after school because research conducted by physiologists and psychologists prove that the child can independently control his mental load, especially in free play activity. When playing, a child is not responsible for mistakes (make as many mistakes as you want). After all, this is not a lesson where everything is right or wrong, where you can not say “I do not know.
Highly appreciative of the value of play, play is a huge bright window through which the child’s spiritual world is filled with a life-giving stream of ideas, concepts about the world around him. Game is a spark that lights the spark of curiosity and inquisitiveness.
Game for younger students – a favorite form of activity. In play, mastering playing roles, children enrich their social experience, learning to adapt in unfamiliar surroundings. In the game they are ready to learn as much as they want, practically without getting tired and enriched emotionally.
To develop the personality of children of primary school age, I also include didactic games and exercises of cognitive and entertaining nature in the educational process. They allow to painlessly carry out the transition from play activity to learning activity. In conditions of entertaining game a variety of knowledge, abilities and skills are mastered more successfully, mental, aesthetic, moral education of child is realized, such valuable qualities of personality, as self-control, persistence, diligence, self-criticism, honesty, objectivity are formed. In play activity children acquire skills of group work, that is there is a development of communicative abilities and creation of a joyful working mood, which is also important in conditions of the long stay of the child at school. However, play should not be perceived by children as a process of deliberate learning. Because this would destroy its essence. Planning the game activities, the teacher should be clearly aware. On formation of what skills and abilities the game should be directed and what abilities of children it should develop. Non-standard game tasks and exercises for the development of creative abilities are used by educators in order to make the stay of children in the after-school group more interesting and meaningful. Moreover, wise teachers conduct such activities regularly, not from time to time, when there is nothing to occupy the bored children. The conditions necessary to organize systematic work in the elementary school to develop interests and abilities are very difficult to provide in lessons full of educational material. The possibilities for teachers of the PYP are much wider: walks, excursions, sports hours, circle work, club hours, self-training time.
In the after-school group, the organized form of active recreation is a walk. It solves, first of all, the problem of restoration of mental capacity for work, as well as widening of the horizons of children, development of their cognitive interests. In my work, I use the following kinds of walks:
sports walk – children play sports games: basketball, volleyball, soccer;
an observation walk – purposeful observation by the junior schoolchildren of seasonal observations in nature, the features of the flora and fauna (in the schoolyard, the nearest park);
a walk-assignment – the content of this walk is determined by the objectives of the social life of the school or plans for after-school club work;
an excursion walk to acquaint students with the history of their city or neighborhood;
a walk-walk-a real hike is not possible for an hour or an hour and a half, but it is possible to create situations where there would be a lot of movement on the ground, testing orientation skills (game-search);
walk-creativity: its task is to provoke an emotional lift in children and organize their creative activity (in communion with nature);
walking-entertainment – on these walks one can sing, joke, have fun (solving amusing problems, charades, showing tricks).
Walks give the child a certain social experience of his or her childhood life, which simply cannot occur in the classroom or on the television. It is as if the child enters the real world during the walk and chooses what to touch, what to contemplate, what to pass by, what to transform in his or her own way. It is the walk, and no other activity in the after-school program, that gives the child the opportunity to feel like a participant in life.
We can’t forget about the hobby club. I dedicate an hour and a half daily for hobby club activities. This time is usually reserved for the work of the clubs. Circle – the most common form of extracurricular work with the younger students. It allows me to expand and deepen knowledge gained in the classroom, to apply them in practice, in children’s art.
Participation of pupils in Internet competitions became a tradition. It yields positive results. My pupils take part in the contest and receive certificates of participation. I help with preparations, advise, look for answers to questions in literature and on the Internet together with my students. This work of the teacher and the pupil leads to the victory of the child.
Taking into account the psychological peculiarities of young pupils, it is necessary to note that their age peculiarities do not allow them to set too distant tasks, to propose long-range prospects, to demand several directions of activity. In this connection, the significance of the project is seen in the fact that a small concrete project of younger schoolchildren may act as “a kaleidoscope glass” from which the overall picture is formed. Each project is a small step, a drop in the sea of life experience, which formulates a personality.
Thus, the development of cognitive activity of students is one of the main directions of improving the educational process at school.
