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Developed Mental Strategies: Children in the three to seven years age group are very unlikely to have developed mental strategies like rehearsal, or to be able to organise their thoughts about what they already know, recalling their knowledge in a meaningful way in order to use it for new learning experiences. For this reason the adult acting as facilitator will be, among other things, 'memory bank', 'prompt', 'sounding board', and 'supporter'. It is through this type of modelling that children begin to use metacog-nition - the ability to reflect on their own thinking and learning.
In our school PACT means more than getting parents to help children at home with reading. It means involving ourselves with parents as a way of getting them involved with the school and their children's total education. We realized that making the school somewhere where everyone in the family had a say and a place would forge closer lasting links, and would offer natural opportunities for contact, consultation and cooperation. We decided on certain strategies; others developed as offshoots, as you will see as you read on.
Mass investigations on the basis of age norms, however, have indicated only a slight relation between the mental and physical status of children. A spurt in mental growth does not appear to parallel the preadolescent spurt in physical growth. The pattern of mental development is similar in boys and girls, despite the difference in their rates of physical maturing.
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