Running

head: DEVEPOLMENTALLY-APPROPRIATE 1

Developmentally-Appropriate Instruction

Victoria Sandridge

Regent University

In partial fulfilment of UED 496 Field Experience ePortfolio, Fall2019

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Introduction

When it comes to teaching elementary education, it is important to create lessons that are

developmentally appropriate. Developmentally appropriate, “refers to applying child

development knowledge in making thoughtful and appropriate decisions about early childhood

program practices” (Gestwicki, 2013). Aside from the curriculum being different, you wouldn’t

teach the same type of lesson to a class of kindergarteners and a class of 5th graders. What is

important for all grades however is hands on instruction. Students need to be involved in their

learning, which hands on instruction allows. Plus, giving students hands on instruction allows for

them to be more engaged than when they are filling out a worksheet. Going through my student

teaching, I have been able to help develop developmentally appropriate lessons that are hands on

for both 3rd grade and kindergarten.

Rational for Selection of Artifacts

When teaching 3rd grade, I found myself getting into the habit of having the students do a

lot of activities online. In Virginia Beach, students are one to one with Chomebooks, so it can be

easy to just have them do online assignments. While I was there, one of the math units the

students were learning about was place value. It can be hard to keep students engaged with math,

so I came up with a hands-on activity to help them stay focused and involved. It was important to

come up with an activity that was also developmentally appropriate so that they didn’t feel like

the activity was too challenging or too young of them. I came up with a lesson/activity called the

place value man. The students worked in groups which were the other people at their table. I

went around and gave each group a bad full of place value blocks. They had 10 flats, 10 rods,

and 20 cubes. The students were given 10 minutes to work in their groups to make a person out

of their place value blocks. When time was up, I instructed the students to count up their place
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value blocks to find the value of their person. I went around to each group to find the value of

their place value person. We compared all of the different values in the class to show that

everyone did it correctly, but there were different ways to make the person. We did this 2 more

times to get the students to make the highest value they could, and the smallest value they could.

The students were very engaged during the activity and were able to practice counting their place

value blocks while remembering what each one represents. This activity was both hands on and

developmentally appropriate. This worked well for 3rd grade because it would have been too hard

to count the blocks for a younger grade, and 5th graders might have found it too young for them.

Along with it working well for their age, the activity promoted collaboration with others. This

was beneficial because, “brain growth is maximized through meaningful activities that include

interaction with concrete materials and other people” (Charlesworth, 1998).

When teaching kindergarten, almost every lesson has to be very hands on, or the students

will lose interest. Lessons also have the be short with brain breaks so that they don’t get

overwhelmed. My favorite hands on and developmentally appropriate I did with my

kindergarteners was on pumpkin day. The school I am at holds an event called pumpkin day

every year before Halloween where the classes all have to do some sort of an activity with

pumpkins. My cooperating teacher let me plan the activity. I decided to have each table get a

pumpkin and do math activities with it. This included counting the rings around the pumpkin,

measuring how tall it is with blocks, identifying the side (small, medium, large), and pulling the

seeds out inside to put them in groups of 10. The students had so much fun and they were

engaged the entire time. This was very developmentally appropriate because at this age, just

working on counting can both be challenging and fun. Even though its hands on, if you did this
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activity with a group of 5th graders, they would find it “childish” and wouldn’t get anything from

it.

Reflection on Theory and Practice

Using hands on and developmentally appropriate lessons in the classroom are important

to reach the needs of all students. Most students cannot learn simply by listening to lectures and

completing monotonous worksheets. Students need to almost feel entertained while learning so

that it grasps their attention and makes them want to be involved in their learning. Having these

hands-on activities while making them developmentally appropriate is equally as important so

that it isn’t too frustrating for the students or too easy. Throughout my classes at Regent, I was

thankfully able to learn this before entering the classroom, so I wasn’t shocked when I had to

make activities like this. While at Regent, a lot of my classes had us pretend we were a certain

grade and do activities that were appropriate to the grade level. Practicing lessons from the

students’ perspective while getting on their level helped to see what kind of activities were

engaging for them and which were not. I remember in a particular class where we pretended to

be in first grade, but did an activity more suited for a high grade and how frustrating it was. This

was an important perspective I needed to help me keep in mind what would be best for my

students in my future classroom.

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Resources:

Charlesworth, R. (1998). Developmentally appropriate practice is for everyone. Childhood

Education, 74(5), 274-282. Retrieved from

http://eres.regent.edu:2048/login?url=https://search-proquest-

com.ezproxy.regent.edu/docview/210387261?accountid=13479

Gestwicki, C. (2013). Developmentally Appropriate Practice: Curriculum and Development in

Early Education (5th ed.). Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.