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Running head: DEVELOPMENTALLY-APPROPRIATE INSTRUCTION 1

Developmentally-Appropriate Instruction

Elizabeth Churchill

Regent University

In partial fulfilment of requirements for UED 495/496, Spring 2018


Running head: DEVELOPMENTALLY-APPROPRIATE INSTRUCTION 2

Developmentally-appropriate instruction is when the teacher gives the students a suitable

level of instruction or work in the classroom to grow the students’ learning. While in the

classroom, it is important to know where your students are coming from and what they will be

doing in the next grade level so that you can prepare them for higher-level learning. It is also

important to know that when planning instruction for students that the instruction is simple

enough that they can do on their own, but challenging enough so that it stretches the students’

learning. To show that I have implemented developmentally appropriate instruction for my

students, I will show one of the books I used to introduce safety to my preschoolers and I will

show a lesson that used a story to focus on story elements for my third-graders.

When teaching students, it is important to note that when teachers are making

“instruction appropriate to children’s age and developmental level, [to] individualize it to them,

and [that] it fits their social and cultural learning background,” (Bergin, 2015, p. 119). For

example, I have been teaching preschool lately and these children come from a poorer

background than the third-graders I taught before. I have had to readjust my thinking to think

about what these students might or might not know at this age that they are at. For example, I

figured that the preschoolers would know how to write the number five, but still some of them do

not know because they have not been getting at home and they do not have the attention span to

sit still and practice their writing. At this age it is more important that they learn play respectfully

with each other and to be introduced to major concepts rather than learning equations or some

sort of higher level thinking.

In this preschool class, most students do not recognize all the letters or cannot count to

ten because their parents do not know how to help them learn their letters or numbers, whereas,

when I was teaching my third-graders, parents were very active and wanted to know where their
Running head: DEVELOPMENTALLY-APPROPRIATE INSTRUCTION 3

children were academically. When I have been student teaching, I try to look at the standards that

my grade level is at and then look at the standards that they will be going into so that my students

are prepared for the next grade level. One book that I have read to my preschoolers is, Always Be

Safe, by Kathy Schulz. This helps teach the students to be safe in different types of

environments, like the playground or school. By using this book, I am reading a predictable book

that helps the students to understand the concept of being safe, (Tompkins, 2016, p. 61). This

introductory concept of being safe needs to be taught to preschoolers because it will help them

learn to be safe and it especially needs to be taught to this group of preschoolers because they

may not be getting this kind of knowledge at home. This type of instruction helps them to be

ready for the following school year because they will be able to explore it more in depth and will

understand the basic concept of being safe in kindergarten.

Now in third-grade, my students should have known what constitutes as being safe,

therefore, they do not need to be taught the rudimentary concepts of being safe. Instead we

focused more academic concepts like how to identify the parts of a story. In my lesson, “Brave

Charlotte,” I read the story of Brave Charlotte by Anu Stohner and used it to help students

identify the elements in a story and how to summarize a text. By teaching my third graders about

story elements I am helping them to learn that “the structure of stories is quite complex…to

produce a story,” (Tompkins, 2016, p. 221). This idea is still somewhat complex to a third-

grader, however they are able to handle that type of knowledge because they have been studying

story elements since first grade. Therefore, this type of instruction is appropriate for them to be

able to do on their own because it has been built upon since they were younger.

Another time that I had to adjust my instruction for the individual learner was when I was

teaching my third-graders how to inference. I brought my instruction down to an emergent reader


Running head: DEVELOPMENTALLY-APPROPRIATE INSTRUCTION 4

level with pictures of children with different emotional expressions. I had my students look at the

picture to see what ideas or inference they could make from that child’s expression, (Serravallo,

2015, p. 38). Once my students were able to do this activity efficiently, then I brought them up a

level and guided them until they were able to master it. When I instructed my students this way,

my third-graders were better able to understand how to inference from a piece of text.

Therefore, when I have instructed my preschoolers and my third-graders I have had to

make the instruction for them individually and have had to make the instruction rigorous enough

so that the students can work at learning how to do the things being taught by themselves. This

type of instruction has been appropriate for their cognitive ability, behavioral ability and cultural

ability at their age level. When writing appropriate instruction, it is important to look at these

types of things so that when teaching them it will be easier to know what the students already

know and what they are capable of doing in the classroom.


Running head: DEVELOPMENTALLY-APPROPRIATE INSTRUCTION 5

References

Bergin, C. C., & Bergin, D. A. (2015). Child and Adolescent Development: In Your Classroom

(Second ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.

Serravallo, J. (2015). The Reading Strategies Book. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Tompkins, G. E. (2016). Language Arts: Patterns of Practice (Ninth ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

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