Spurlock Master’s Portfolio

Child Development and Learning

I strongly believe in the power of teaching through student interest. In providing variety

and differentiated lessons “make it likely that children will find particular activities that suit

their unique preferences and abilities” (Genishi, 2009, p. 110). This writing lesson,

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BpEoXs8gtvvD-IsxFSMhejX0VTS0ZirW/view?usp=sharing, is an

example of teaching that supports my understanding of child development because it allowed

students to bring their meaning to a newly introduced writing structure. Students were

motivated by choice, interest, and because they were given enough support to be successful in

exploring a new style of creative writing through a variety of learning styles and materials.

Piaget (1977) rejected the idea that learning was a passive absorption of knowledge. He

suggested and continued to prove with his research that learners actively construct their own

knowledge by creating and then testing their own ideas of the world through experiences. Dr.

Maria Montessori (1996) also advocated at 6-12 years old the child possesses a "rational mind"

to implore the world with imagination and abstract thinking. With the learner ready to actively

build their understanding, it is my job as the teacher to create a classroom that provides an

entry point for each learner. Getting to know my students’ interests and learning their

developmental levels is necessary. All children bring what knowledge they have to build on. In

my classroom, I responsively champion every student who enters with a firm belief that every

learner has a hidden and extensive capacity to learn (Tomlinson, 2014).

When using differentiated strategies, the learning activities are more developmentally

appropriate, effective, and engaging. The basis of Lev Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development

(ZPD) theory is that instruction should be designed to reach a developmental level just above
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Spurlock Master’s Portfolio

the student’s current developmental level because that is where learning takes place (Vygotsky,

1978). With the use of differentiated strategies in my classroom, instruction echoes the

concept of ZPD and benefits learners at all levels to enter the learning activity at their

appropriate learning level and strive to stretch to the next level.

Although it is not always possible in every lesson to access every learning style or every

material/modal, it is one of my focuses as a teacher to provide as many entry points for each

learner. A variety of materials aide in naturally scaffolding lessons and each student can access

the activity. This artifact is an example of how I approached multiple learning styles, readiness,

and materials offered. For audio and visual learners, I presented a video, demonstrated with

teacher modeling and guided practice using a large poster, and distributed a student graphic

organizer, an example poem, and a resource worksheet of examples of adjectives on each

student’s desk. Differentiation came in the form of readiness, suggesting students could use

and animal they had prior knowledge about through personal experience or previous research.

The completion of the poem was multimodal as students could choose to write a poem on a

worksheet, type and print a poem, or audio type and print their poem.

Motivating and engaging students is an important consideration in my classroom. Ron

Miller's Holistic Education Theory (Miller, 2000) is the belief that all aspects of a child's

education must be connected for learning to be meaningful. Holistic education is concerned

with connections in the human experience, connections between mind and body, between

linear ways of knowing and intuitive ways of knowing, between the individual and the

community (Miller, 2000). As students participate in learning activities, tapping into subjects

students are intuitively drawn to, open up more doors for students to construct their
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knowledge. Providing students with opportunities of choice support the ideals of holistic

education connecting and honoring students in the human experience. In this poetry lesson,

students' interest was propelled by their ability to choose their animal from the previous day's

writing or use a topic of prior knowledge or previous research. Students also had an open

choice for multimodal completion of a poem: a formatted worksheet, a typed, audio typed, and

an option to include artwork.

I continue to engage students in my second-grade classroom weekly with choice boards

for language arts and math, student-driven science exploration, an "I wonder" discover table,

and a writer’s workshop honoring student authors with the highest hopes in tapping into

students’ curiosity and passion for learning at their developmental level.

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Spurlock Master’s Portfolio

References

Genishi, C. & Honig, A. (2009). Children’s language: Learning words from experience. In M.

Burnham & E. Essa (Eds.), Informing our practice: Useful research on young children’s

development (pp. 101-110). Washington DC: National Association for the Education of

Young Children.

Miller, R. (2000). A brief introduction to holistic education. The encyclopedia of informal

education. http://infed.org/mobi/a-brief-introduction-to-holistic-education/

Montessori, M. (1996). From childhood to adolescence. Amsterdam: Montessori-Pierson

Publishing Company.

Piaget, J., Gruber, H.E., & Jacques, V.J. (1977). The essential Piaget. New York: Basic

Books.

Tomlinson, C. (2014). The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners

(2nd.ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes.

London: Harvard University Press.