Cognitive Development

Cognitive development is how children and adults, develop and process how the world works. This includes how children learn to problem solve and develop skills that will, later on, be used in adulthood. As a learner, this influences me as I am consistently learning and trying to improve. In grade 3 at school, we had compulsory music classes, I started learning the Violin and played that for about 6 months but grew sick of it. After this, I took up the Cello, and 9 years later I was still playing it. I was never the best at playing, but I was one of the top 3. I blame this on myself not committing to putting in the extra hours and would only use class or lesson time to practice unless I had a performance, then I would practice possibly once
By playing the cello, I became a part of ensembles, trios, duets and solo performances, these all helped develop my social skills. Learning to work with others and rely on other people, (e.g. an accompanist or duet) was difficult because you have to trust they’ll read the music and they have to trust me that I will play with the right tempo and pitch. But social skills weren’t everything; over the year’s music taught me responsibility and the role models along the way have instilled that. My first Cello teacher, Diana, helped influence my learning and was one of my first role models. She’d always assist me where I needed it and helped me achieve my potential. She would discover my Zone of Proximal Development, which is seeing where a child is at in their stage of learning and then guiding them to achieving greater. “…The zone of proximal development defines those functions that have not yet matured but are in the process of maturation.” (Vygotsky,
I tried diagrams of the strings and finger-placement, aural explanations, numbers above the notes as to how many fingers to use, and being showed first-hand the note positioning, this worked best. I think it’s important to try different learning techniques with students as each will react differently to various circumstances. To be a good teacher your main goal is to develop and establish a child’s mind to acquire and comprehend learning techniques. To help this diversity in the classroom, as a teacher I can put all the students into groups and allow the students to help each other. By splitting up the different learning strategies students who are visual learners can help students who are better at comprehending information aurally. When I am teaching I can explain my concepts using visuals, games, dictation, and