Running head: DEVELOPMENTALLY-APPROPRIATE INSTRUCTION

Developmentally-Appropriate Instruction

Tiffany Crisp

Regent University

In partial fulfillment of UED 495 Field Experience ePortfolio, Spring 2018

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Introduction

As an educator, I believe students should not only hear curriculum content but experience

it first-hand. Looking back on all of my schooling from age 4 up until the present, I’ve realized

that I don’t remember the content of what was taught through lecturing by former teachers. I

primarily remember the content that I was able to touch, manipulate, observe, move, dissect, etc.

With the use of experiential learning in the classroom, I strongly believe curricular content will

be absorbed and retained rather than memorized and forgotten. In the following reflection, I will

be examining two different hands-on activities—clock manipulation and coin counting—that

gave second graders an experience with the curriculum material.

Artifacts

Plastic Clocks-
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Plastic Coins-

Rational for Selection of Artifacts

Small Plastic Gear Clocks-

The first artifact I chose to use as an example of experiential learning in the classroom

was plastic gear clocks given to each student. The reason I decided to have the students use the

plastic clocks was to let them experiment and manipulate the clock to see if they could create and

tell time. I had the students using these clocks for the entire unit on time. I discovered that

organizing small groups and working with smaller groups of students helped me to see where

students were at with telling and creating time.

In addition to the plastic clocks being a beneficial tool for me to see how students were

progressing, students could practice using a clock and seeing how the minute and hour hand

move together. The more the students were able to manipulate the clock, the more they learned

about how clocks and time itself worked. I thought this was a very developmentally-appropriate
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activity for the students to participate in because time is a foundational concept that they will

always need to know how to use.

Plastic Coins-

The second artifact I chose to exemplify developmentally-appropriate instruction in the

second-grade classroom was using plastic coin money. The students were given multiple

activities to complete using the plastic coins. For example, the students played a game called

“Coin Clutch” which is an activity that has students grab a large pinch of the play coins and

count out the total. The students repeat the activity 10-20 times for practice repetition.

I discovered that counting coins is difficult for students that don’t have the manipulative

to move and touch. With the coins, students could use the strategy of making groups of similar

coins to help with counting. In addition, the students can stack and compare the coins to see size

and thickness differences in the coins. This hands-on activity is an appropriate manipulative for

the students. It gives the students practice for skills they will need in everyday life with money.

Reflection

One primary thing that I’ve learned from being a student almost my whole life is that I

forget. Paula Rutherford, author of Instruction for All Students, writes that “47 percent of

forgetting occurs in the first twenty minutes with 62 percent occurring within the first day”

(Rutherford, 2008, p. 86). Essentially, over half of the information that is taught to students in

one day is forgotten by the next. Understanding these facts encourages me, as a future teacher, to

find ways to make the curriculum material stick in a students’ minds. Project Learning Tree

writes that learning should be active. They state, “Children learn by interacting, moving, playing,

smelling, and taking things apart. They learn while doing everyday routines and special

activities” (Project Learning Tree, 2011, p. 4).

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I love to teach using kinesthetic learning where the students get involved in my lessons.

Rutherford points out that the ways to emphasize this type of learning is through demonstrations,

model building, drawing pictures, experimenting, role playing, and using manipulatives, to name

just a few (Rutherford, 2008, p. 204). One drawback for teachers to using interactive methods for

students is that these tasks usually involve a lot more work from the teacher.

I believe that one of my strengths is having the desire to incorporate hands-on activities

in the classroom because I know how important they are for the retention of learned material. It

is easy for me to go the extra “mile” for the students and put in extra preparation work in order to

see comprehension and recalling skills and scores increase. On the other hand, one of my

weaknesses may be that I try to incorporate too make kinesthetic learning activities when I

should be trying to equally balance all the learning styles in a unit. Additionally, “hands-on”

activities can be very time consuming of classroom instruction time which could potentially

delay the timely delivery and pacing of the curriculum.

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References

Project Learning Tree. (2011). Environmental Experiences for Early Childhood. Washington,

D.C.: American Forest Foundation.

Rutherford, P. (2008). Instruction for All Students. Alexandria: Just ASK Publications &

Professional Development .