1. INTRODUCTION AND THEORY TARGET AGE AND COGNITIVE ABILITIES
Go-Fish Working Memory Game
Rachel Chado, Rachael Chavarria, and Alexandra Williams
Department of Human Development and Family Studies
Colorado State University
INTRODUCTION AND THEORY
TARGET AGE AND COGNITIVE ABILITIES
LESSON PLAN
Lesson Overview
For this activity, the children will be directed from their previous activities into three separate groups at the teacher’s discretion. This can be done randomly or based on specific learning abilities/age. Group one will receive a deck of colored cards, group two will receive the deck of numbered cards, and group three will receive cards with shapes. The children will play as many rounds of go-fish that they can within a minute time span. However, halfway through, or when one round is complete, the groups will switch the deck of cards that they have.
How It Relates to Class and Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
The game of go-fish requires children to use their working memory by keeping the rules of the game in mind, while also remembering to use the cards they have in their hand, as well as the cards that their classmates have played. Our lesson will focus on Piaget’s concepts of assimilation and accommodation. Since children are in the preoperational stage of development, we will determine their knowledge of shapes, colors, and numbers to see if they assimilate or accommodate each category.
Objectives and Outcomes
The desired outcomes of our lesson plan stem from the Colorado Department of Education’s standard 4.1: Shapes can be observed in the world and described in relation to one another.
children will be able to match, sort, group and name basic shapes (numbers and colors) found in the natural environment
sort similar groups of objects into simple categories based on attributes (such as color and number).
Procedures
Split the class into three separate groups.
Group one will receive a deck of colored cards.
Group two will receive a deck of numbered cards.
Group three will receive a deck of animal cards.
Each child will be given 3 cards from their assigned deck.
The children will engage in a game of go-fish with their given cards.
When they are done with their games, the class will come together at circle time and discuss the connections between go-fish and their working memory skills.
Materials
Tables
Chairs
Numbered, Colored, and Shape Go-fish cards
Why is This Unique?
Our lesson has made the accommodations needed for 3- and 4-year-old children to be able to play this game more easily. Although the children are playing go-fish, our lesson plan is unique due to the deck of cards in which they are playing with. Instead of playing with normal go-fish cards, or a normal deck of cards, the children are using plain colored cards (red, blue, yellow, and green), cards with numbers up to 5 on them that also shows a picture with 1-5 objects (so they can count them if they need help figuring out the number), and cards with easily identifiable shapes (square, circle, and triangle).
Reference for Lesson Idea
Morin, A. (2014, April 14). 8 Working Memory Boosters. Retrieved March 2, 2015, from
study-
skills/8-working-memory-boosters
Target Age: Preschool (3 and 4 years old)
Population: Typically Developing
Cognitive and Linguistic Abilities
Three-Year-Olds
Children can identify common colors such as red, yellow, blue, and green (Copple & Bredekamp, 2006).
Children are becoming more precise at counting and can recognize a number in a small group of objects (Copple & Bredekamp, 2006).
Children this age can talk in complete sentences of 3-5 words (Copple & Bredekamp, 2006) – should be able to ask classmates “Do you have a ____” for the go-fish game.
Can point to and label objects (Herr & Swim, 2002).
Four-Year-Olds
Children can sort objects using more than two categories (Copple & Bredekamp, 2006).
Naturally interested in colors and can name 6-8 colors.
Children can name typical shapes such as triangle, circle, and square (Copple & Bredekamp, 2006).
Are capable of speaking in 5- to 6-word sentences (Copple & Bredekamp, 2006).
References:
Copple, C. & Bredekamp, S. (2006). Basics of developmentally appropriate
practice: An introduction for teachers of children 3 to 6.
Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young
Children.
Herr, J. & Swim, T. (2002). Creative resources for infants and toddlers. Clifton
Park, NY: Delmar.
Our lesson plan stems off of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, and focuses on his concepts of assimilation and accommodation, as well as the second stage of cognitive development: preoperational stage. Piaget’s overall theory claims that children’s cognitive acts are organized into schemas based on the environment, and are the result of their adaptations to their environments (Hulit, Fahey, & Howard, 2015). This includes the various stages of development such as sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, and formal operations. Piaget’s preoperational stage relates to our plan due to our target age range of three to four, as well as the underlying concepts in this stage. This stage of development targets the ages of two to seven, and claims that children are beginning to organize objects into categories that are in their surrounding environments (Hulit et al., 2015). Our lesson plan includes having children categorize the cards based on certain aspects such as color, number, and shape.  
Assimilation can be defined as the process of using our existing schemata to include new information (Hulit et al., 2015). This lesson plan relates back to assimilation in that the children that are taking part in the game of go-fish with the shape cards may see the blue square and say “door” because they have previously associated a square with a door, and are now putting the blue square into their existing schemata of door.
Accommodation is defined as when we develop new schemata to organize and categorize new information that does not fit in a previously created schemata (Hulit et al., 2015). In our lesson plan, if a child is assimilating a blue square with a door, either another student or a teacher can let the child know that the card they are holding is a blue square. The hope is that later, when the child comes across another blue square, they will know that is what it is, and will no longer call it a door.
References:
Hulit, L., M., Fahey, K., R., & Howard, M., R. (2015). Born to talk: An introduction to speech and language development. Boston: Pearson