Running head: DEVELOPMENTALLY-APPROPRIATE INSTRUCTION

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Developmentally-Appropriate Instruction

Maria Sutton

Regent University
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Introduction

Content knowledge and instructional strategies are important for pre-service teachers to

acquire as they begin their occupational journeys. With that being said, providing

developmentally-appropriate instruction is just as essential in order for them to be effective. Not

only does it encourage differentiation, but it also promotes personal growth for every student. I

believe that this is important because learning should be an individualized experience based on

specific learning, social, and emotional needs. All students should have the opportunity to stretch

the boundaries of their learning, but we should address basic needs first and foremost in order to

scaffold learning in a way that leads to achievement and growth. To provide evidence for this

competency, I will describe my lesson plan and class practice activity. I designed them to meet

the needs of my students based on their current educational development.

Rationale for Selection of Artifacts

The lesson I created took place the day before our short story unit test. As a result, it

focused on review through practice. The test involved reading a short story and analyzing literary

elements such as characters, plot, and theme. For Block 2 students, this summative assessment

mainly consisted of multiple-choice questions. With that being said, some short answer items

were thrown in as well, although these were limited due to the current level of understanding for

most students in this class. In order to help students review, I asked questions that targeted

multiple levels of Bloom's Taxonomy (understand, apply, and analyze to name a few). I also

presented these questions in ways that all students could understand. This is something I have

been working on during my student teaching, so I am glad to be making progress in this area.

Instead of asking “What is an important theme in this story?”, I asked students “What lesson can

we learn from the main character’s experiences?”. This allows them to focus on the idea the
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question is targeting in order to answer it. The majority of Block 2 needs this guidance even on

assessments because they struggle with a plethora of mental and emotional disorders. My goal is

always to assess their learning despite any perceived limitations, and I believe this lesson

achieved exactly that.

My second artifact is a sixteen question class practice test review activity, which contains

a variety of multiple-choice and short answer questions. The latter form of items cover both easy

and difficult material and skills so students are challenged as they progress throughout the

assignment. I mentioned a few of the questions from this activity earlier, but I’d also like to

mention a few more as well. After having them express the beliefs of the main character and her

father, I asked students this: “How would you describe the relationship between the main

character and her father?”. I also presented students with an excerpt from the story and asked

them, “What does this tell us about the dad's view of his daughter? How has he changed his

opinions since the start of the story?”. Both of these questions require students to notice and

explain the development of important characters. This is part of the reading standard for ninth

graders in Virginia. By creating developmentally-appropriate questions, I am empowering

students to meet the learning goals through questions and methods that best suit their needs.

Reflection on Theory and Practice

In order to provide developmentally-appropriate instruction, we as educators must first

get to know our students as individuals and as learners. I discovered this in UED 444 (Content

Reading and Differentiation), although it has been reinforced heavily during my time while

student teaching. In the second edition of Child and Adolescent Development in Your

Classroom, the authors advise teachers to “learn about your students’ home cultures in order to

build bridges between school and home” (Bergin & Bergin, 2015, p. 23). Similar to
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differentiation, developmentally-appropriate instruction requires teachers to respond to student

needs by taking standards-based concepts and presenting them in a way that matches those

needs. For Block 2, this includes additional guidance and scaffolding than I typically plan for my

other classes. Block 3 specifically covered the same content and skills from the class practice

review activity except they did so using a Jamboard instead of a Schoology assignment. This was

developmentally-appropriate for them in regards to maturity and current learning levels. They

had demonstrated both the previous day during another Jamboard activity, so I used the data

from that to adjust the format of my class practice for the other two blocks. That is one way I

have addressed developmentally-appropriate instruction with my classes.

The last thing I would like to mention in relation to developmentally-appropriate

instruction is engagement. Students will have a hard time engaging if they are unable to

understand the content because it is not developmentally-appropriate. On a similar note, students

who benefit the most from individualized developmentally-appropriate instruction tend to come

from culturally diverse families. Mary-Virginia Feger describes her own experience with this in

an article for Multicultural Education. After choosing and implementing culturally relevant texts

with her students, she found that doing so made a huge impact and boosted not only engagement,

but academic achievement as well. Her response was this: “it [is] my responsibility to stimulate

their interest” (Feger, 2006, p. 18). In order to provide students with the best possible learning

experiences, we must make sure that our instruction is appropriate for their age and abilities. We

should not force them to run when they are still learning how to walk. In 1 Corinthians 3:1-2,

Paul says he cannot consider his original audience to be “spiritual people” because they are

“people of the flesh [and] infants in Christ” (Crossway, 2008, ESV). Similarly, our students will

inevitably fall into different categories based on their age as well as mental and emotional health.
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We must plan and implement our instruction accordingly so that students have the chance to

reach their full potential. At the end of the day, I know that I have done my best to provide them

with optimal learning opportunities based on their needs.

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References

Bergin, C. C., & Bergin, D. A. (2015). Child and adolescent development in your classroom

(2nd ed.). Cengage Learning.

Crossway. (2008). ESV study Bible.

Feger, M. V. (2006). "I want to read": How culturally relevant texts increase student engagement

in reading. Multicultural Education, 13(3), 18-19. http://eres.regent.edu/login?

url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.regent.edu/scholarly-journals/i-want-read-how-

culturally-relevant-texts/docview/216509391/se-2?accountid=13479