By Rebecca Ashby, Tiffany Coffee, Christina Dressler, and Mystie Keller

Today, due to politics, education is primarily concerned with:

1) uniformity of curriculum 2) assessments 3) subjects/content mastered at earlier

ages.  This is not necessarily good for children because it

does not make a well-rounded individual, does not inspire interest in learning, and it adds stress to ALL!

Today’s education may mean exclusion of social, cultural, and civic learning.

  ALSO – we may be leaving behind

imagination, play, creativity, curiosity, pleasure reading, recess, art/music, and computer literacy!

  There have been several attempts have

children fit in a curriculum, but they have IGNORED developmental appropriate variances.

We need teacher discretion based on child development.

Developmental NEEDS vs. time and reaching state standards

Classroom diversity SHOULD equal Cultural Richness- this is crucial in order to diversify teaching 

Examples of theorists who agree: Gesell Piaget Erikson Montessori 

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child • International treaty that delineates universally

accepted rights for children (1989) • Supersedes Declaration of the Rights of the Child

adopted in 1959. Article 31 of the UN Convention:

- Every child has the right to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts

- Member governments shall respect and promote this right  

Note: The United States is the only country that has not ratified the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child!

Concentration on Intellectual as well as: social, emotional, physical, and language strengths

  Author’s additional book: Time to Teach

and Time to Learn has “practical strategies that create time in the school day for reflection, deeper dialogue, more rigorous academics, and more meaningful social interactions as opposed to being “fact factories.”

All children share common growth patterns Four key principles of child development:

1. Children’s physical maturation, language acquisition, social and emotional behavior, cognition, and ways of approaching the world follow reasonably predicable patterns.

2. Children generally go through predictable stages in the same order, but not at the same rate.

3. The various aspects of development do not proceed at the same rate.

4. Growth is uneven.

The Four key principles should guide decisions made about American schooling.

Schools need to address all of a child’s needs in order to provide balance in a child’s life.

Physical activity Food policies Development of social and emotional skills

Not Just Curriculum choices Test results

Food Children need more food than 3 meals a day “Making sure that children have enough good

and water when they need it contributes to healthy physical growth and effective learning”

This acknowledged in younger grades, but ignored as children get older.

Suggestions Children can bring a healthy snack from home Teachers can set up a snack table and allow

students to regulate their own eating

Water Children need water more than they need food Water allows the body and brain to function well A child who’s not drinking enough water may get

a headache, become dizzy, or feel very tired Suggestions

Schedule more water breaks into the day Allow student to bring water bottles from home

Exercise All children need frequent exercise “An estimated 40% of all elementary schools have either

eliminated or are in the process of eliminating recess.” (American Association for the Child’s Right to Play)

Formal physical education classes have been reduced to as little as a half hour a week

Suggestions Make sure students spend time outside at least twice a day 5-10 break to run around the school building or jump rope a break to “Head and Shoulder, Knees and Toes Aerobics to music 5 minutes of the latest dance craze

The order of the school day should follow the flow a children’s developmental needs

Recess and lunchtime Midday break Pacing How much time is allowed for each activity How quickly children are moved from one task

to the next Children have almost no time to reflect on

their learning, to make calm, organized transitions between class, or to delve deeply into learning that they love

Children aged five to 12 need 10-11 hours of sleep.

Increasing demand on their time from school (e.g., homework), sports and other extracurricular and social activities.

School-aged children become more interested in TV, computers, the media and Internet as well as caffeine products

Also adolescents are showing increased signs of sleep deprivation and reliance on stimulants to make their way through the demanding school days (National Sleep Foundation)

Agrarian calendar vs. Extended calendars Curriculum is overloaded Most families do not farm

Cannot just add time, but we need to add time and adjust the way that time is used

Adapt the pace of daily learning to match the developmental tempo of the children

1. Some elementary schools today use single grade, separate classrooms.

2. Students who are retained purely for academic failure do not benefit and are actually harmed by the retention.

3. Connecting with parents is the key to helping students’ families learn about American schools.

4. European Americans and Asian Americans are the two largest minority groups in American schools.

5. Bilingualism is harmful to children since they cannot learn either language well.

6. African American children typically have to learn how to travel between two cultures – home and school - that often have different values and accepted patterns of behaviors.

Most American schools today use the single grade, separate-classroom structure. With this classroom structure, all the children with birthdays between certain cut-off dates are assigned to a grade level.

-This is not the only way of grouping students.

-Mixed age groupings

What is looping? Looping is when the teacher stays with a

group of children as they progress to the next grade and then loops back to begin teaching a new group of students at the younger grade.

-Advantages of Looping

What is retention? The practice of holding a student in the same

grade for a year or longer. -Does retention hurt or help a child?

Research has found that retaining a student for academic failure tends to be harmful to the child and that children who are retained are more likely to drop out of school.

-Children that are developmentally younger overall may need to be retained for an extra year of help and this may ensure future success; so, retention is not bad in all ways.

American school should become more diversified. Why?

Because of the change in the population needs to be matched by changes in school; this means diversifying the profession as a whole, embracing bilingual and multi lingual education, and learning about the children’s home cultures.

According to the US Dept of Education, in 2000-2001 school year, 91% of elementary teachers were females. 82.9% was European American, 9.6% was African American and 5.5% was Latino/Hispanic.

Teachers should deepen their understanding of what each child’s home culture is like and how the interaction of their home culture and their school life affects the child’s learning.

Connecting with the parents is the key to helping families learn about American schools.

One of the largest minority groups in American schools However, African American children are usually devalued.

African American children are conceived as low achievers or lagging because in most standardized measures of school achievement they score lower than the students of the European American race.

African American children tend to have more flexibility and agility in social interactions with teachers and peers.

According to Janice Hale-Benson, author of the book Black Children: Their Roots, Culture and Learning Styles emphasizes that lower achievement among African American children is often a function of the way they are perceived and treated by their teachers, rather than a function of home and community.

This group of students is also one of the largest minority groups in American schools this group of children is often misunderstood

because of their language and their literacy development.

-As educators, we must embrace the bilingualism in these students.

- According to Reyes and Moll, The Latino children, in their first years of learning English will do poorly in English speaking classes and on tests written in English.

Broad Guidelines for Using Yardsticks

Developmental information is sorted into three categories: Growth Patterns

Developmental milestones and common developmental patterns

In the Classroom How children’s typical abilities shape how they

work and play in school Curriculum

How the curriculum should take developmental stages into account

Curriculum Charts in Yardsticks

Based on developmental needs, not standards Ex: Children only asked to memorize at age

10, when they are able Depth over breadth Foster love for learning

Homework choices Note: chronological age and developmental

stage are not necessarily the same

Using the Yardsticks charts

Teachers may use for grouping students or choosing developmentally appropriate material

Parents can use these guidelines for both evaluating the curriculum and comparing their child to the norm

Notes: Guidelines are based on research with European-

American students “Personality” and gender may also play a role in

development