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Early Learning Guidelines

Across all five domains

7-year-olds

Stage Infants Toddlers Preschool Early elementary
Age 0–9 months 8–16 months 15–24 months 24–36 months 3-year-olds 4-year-olds 5-year-olds 6-year-olds 7-year-olds 8-year-olds
Domain All domains I. Approaches to Learning II. Physical Well-Being, Health and Motor Development III. Social and Emotional Development IV. Communication, Language, and Literacy V. Cognitive Development
Show Both What educators might observe Ways educators might support the child's development
I

Approaches to Learning

A

Curiosity and Interest

Child approaches the world with curiosity and develops knowledge about specific topics.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Recognizes that reality is not directly knowable and that people may have different interpretations of the same event
  • Pursues a particular interest by reading multiple books about the topic and writing and drawing about it
  • Observes and records information over time (e.g., observes and records notes about the guinea pig in its cage each day)
B

Initiative

Child pursues their own goals.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Applies learning in new contexts (e.g., learns about gardening in school and then brings seeds home and plants them in back yard)
  • Attempts to master styles of drawing and creating (e.g., sees manga in a graphic novel and tries drawing in that style)
  • Selects materials to create engineering solutions (e.g., uses wire, tape, and pieces of wood to create a drawbridge)
  • Uses writing to meet their goals (e.g., writes a card to a friend when they are out sick)
C

Persistence and Attentiveness

Child focuses on tasks and perseveres in accomplishing them.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Is able to concentrate for extended periods of time (30 minutes or more), even on non-preferred tasks
  • Makes several attempts to solve a problem, but doesn’t give up until they find a solution
  • Tries multiple strategies for solving a problem
  • Remembers essential facts over a period of days
  • Is conscious of the presentation of their work and makes revisions to improve their work
D

Creativity and Inventiveness

Child uses their imagination to create and invent.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Uses standardized tools to assist them in their projects (e.g., uses a yardstick to measure the amount of string they need to hang up a curtain)
  • Thinks flexibly about how to create a project
  • Creates variation of existing games with peers
  • Adds functional details to a project (e.g., sews on a button and makes a rough buttonhole to hold on a cape)
II

Physical Well-Being, Health and Motor Development

B

Small Motor Skills

Child controls the small muscles in their hands and wrists.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Uses saws and hammers to build a construction
  • Peels carrots and potatoes efficiently with a peeler
  • Writes using letters that are the same size; stays on line when writing
  • Knits a scarf
  • Uses appropriate pressure when writing
D

Self-Care

Child cares for their physical well-being.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Differentiates between conflict and bullying
  • In play with peers, establishes and follows own safety rules (e.g., says, “Let’s play tag, but no pushing hard, just tagging.”)
  • Checks in with educator before assuming new levels of risk, for example, says, ‘We are going to go down to play by the woods, ok?
E

Healthy Sexuality

Child develops a healthy relationship to their body, pleasure, and others. This healthy sense of self is supported and demonstrated through respectful, caring, and loving relationships with families, educators, and other children.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Looks to peers, media, and other sources for information about sex and sexuality; knows that not everything they hear from peers or see on T.V. or the internet is true
  • Children have questions about sex, crushes, dating, and relationships
  • May express internalized patriarchy and homophobia through teasing, using sexually explicit language (or slurs), and/or talking about girls’ bodies
  • Expresses their wants and needs with respect to their body (e.g., “Can I have some space?”) and respects the wants and needs of others (e.g., will stop roughhousing with a peer when told to)
III

Social and Emotional Development

A

Trusting Relationships with Adults

Child develops trusting relationships with nurturing adults.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Discusses a problem with classroom teacher, resource teacher, or volunteer
  • Talks to educators and staff about what they do at home with their family
  • Seeks assistance from an educator when a task is too difficult to accomplish by themselves
  • Initiates conversation with adult to “be together”
B

Sense of Belonging

Child experiences a sense of belonging in environments that link, extend, and affirm the child’s family and community. Child expresses comfort and joy with human diversity.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Represents themselves as part of racial, cultural, linguistic, or national groups
  • Forms groups of friends who share their gender, racial or cultural identities
  • Describes how they adjust their behavior between home and the learning environment
C

Sense of Self

Child develops a sense of self through noticing and developing their own interests, preferences, and abilities. Child increasingly develops self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Describes likes, dislikes, needs, wants, strengths, challenges, and personal opinions
  • Asks for help from a educator or peer when a task is too difficult to accomplish alone (e.g., “Can you help me with this math problem? I don’t remember how to do it.”)
  • Identifies goals for individual progress, accomplishment, or success
  • Identifies strategies that help them to be successful as a learner (e.g., “It helps me stay focused if I clear off my desk.”)
  • Internalizes societal messages related to gender and body image (e.g., girls may internalize a belief that they aren’t good at math or may express a desire to be thinner)
D

Empathy

Child forms deep, caring, human connections by imagining what someone else may be thinking or feeling and responding with care. Child recognizes unfairness and understands that unfairness hurts.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Stands up for others when they encounter unfairness
  • Feels strongly about equality of outcome
  • Understands that people think about what others are thinking or feeling (e.g., says, “He invited her to the party because he didn’t want her to feel left out.”)
E

Cooperation and Negotiation

Child navigates friendships with peers through cooperation and negotiation.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Is concerned about having friends and being liked
  • Engages in competitive games with peers
  • Works cooperatively on a group project (e.g., a mural or group collage)
  • Lets others join a game that is already in progress (e.g., “We just started playing but you can join us and go after Alex.”)
  • Listens to others’ points of views and considers ways to compromise
  • Identifies strategies to successfully resolve conflicts (e.g., “Let’s read the rules so we all agree on how to play.”)
F

Emotional Self-Regulation

Child expresses and manages their feelings and impulses.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Demonstrates flexibility and socially appropriate behavior at school (e.g., “When we are in the hallway we keep our voices down so other classes can work.”)
  • Manages strong emotions using known strategies (e.g., talks to a friend about being reprimanded by the educator)
G

Rhythms, Rules, and Routines

Child follows the rhythms, rules, and routines of the learning environment.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Knows the daily and weekly schedule and routines and follows routines accordingly (e.g., time for art, physical education, recess, lunch, etc.)
  • Adapts to the majority of a group even when the group’s ideas differ from their own (e.g., group plays a game with rules different from the actual rules)
IV

Communication, Language, and Literacy

A

Speaking

Child will develop the ability to speak and/ or sign in increasingly complete, complex, precise, and varied ways.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Speaks clearly, modifying volume so that all listeners can understand
  • Asks and answers “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” and “why” questions about an topic of interest
  • Refines vocabulary so it better expresses the meaning that they want to express
  • Categorizes vocabulary by parts of speech
  • Enjoys puns
  • Artfully combines English with home language(s) to better convey meaning, play with language, and/or strengthen relationships
B

Listening and Understanding

Child will develop their ability to listen and understand complete, complex, precise, and varied language.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Understands positional and directional words (e.g., here, there, over, next to, in front, under, or between)
  • Becomes logical in their comprehension of vocabulary (e.g., figures out the meaning of words based on their root)
  • Demonstrates knowledge of sequence of events and understands cue words and phrases (e.g., before, yesterday, later that day, after, next year)
  • Uses clues in story they have heard to make inferences
C

Social Communication

Child uses language to relate to others according to the social expectations of their family, community, and culture.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Makes up secret languages
  • Uses language to include or exclude children from peer groups
  • Navigates different ways of using language and flexibly uses different forms and variations to improve communication or affiliation
D

Engaging with Stories and Books

Child enjoys, attends to, understands, and makes meanings from spoken and written language of storytelling and books.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Reads independently for pleasure
  • Paraphrases a part of a book and explains why it is important
  • Monitors own comprehension and understanding in a variety of ways
  • Reads an informational book to learn about an area of interest, using text features such as the glossary to find information
  • Hears a well-known story told by a friend and compares it to a movie version of the same story, pointing out differences in the main character
E

Phonological Awareness

Child develops the ability to recognize and manipulate the different sounds in spoken language(s).

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Explores and identifies the concept of silent “e” (e.g., adds “e” to “hid” to change the word to “hide” and understands the vowel sound has changed)
  • Develops awareness of letters that have more than one sound (e.g., notices the “o” in “row” makes a different sound than the “o” in “dog”)
  • Incorporates blends, digraphs, prefixes, and suffixes into their invented spelling
  • Uses segmenting in order to read larger words by breaking word down into initial sounds or syllables (/fac/ /tor/ /y/ for factory)
  • Recognizes the base of a word and common prefixes and suffixes and uses them to make different words (e.g., “trans,” “port,” and “ed” or “ing”)
F

Composing

Child uses materials and/ or language to make meaning for themselves and/or an audience.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Varies the types of sentences that they use in their compositions
  • Writes stories with a beginning, middle, and end
  • Collaborates with a peer to plan, write, and illustrate a story
  • Plans and develops a writing composition over the course of several days
  • Uses an editing checklist to try to incorporate features of non-fiction (For example, to revise the non-fiction book All About Birds , the child uses a checklist and adds a Table of Contents)
G

Creating and Interpreting Multimedia Texts

Child views, creates, and makes meaning of visual communication and multimedia documentation, which includes drawings, collections, photographs, videos and displays.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Uses vocabulary, such as “audience” and “represent,” to discuss the work of a filmmaker
  • Discusses an artist’s decision to use memory, imagination, or observation in their creation
V

Cognitive Development

A

Understanding Stability and Change

Child recognizes and develops the ability to explain how material objects change and how they remain stable.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Discusses what happens to the body after death
  • Understands the patterns of the days of the week and the months of the year
  • Asks questions about the properties of materials (e.g.,”What is the air made out of?”)
B

Representing

Child uses symbolic thought to represent.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Represents specific details from architecture in their constructions
  • Plans artistic representation with peers (e.g., child writes a story with friends and then makes puppets and scenery to dramatize the story)
  • Experiments with different forms of representation they have learned about through media and trips to cultural institutions (e.g., child attends a field trip to see Balinese shadow puppets and then experiments with creating shadow puppets themselves)
C

Memory and History

Child develops the ability to store, retrieve, and share information about past experiences.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Groups items they have to remember into easy-to-remember categories (e.g., animals, foods, shapes)
  • Begins to identify which events happened long ago and which happened in the more recent past
  • Starts to make connections between how history has shaped our present experience (e.g., “My friends and I can swim at the same pool because of Martin Luther King, Jr.”)
D

Investigating and Exploring

Child becomes a scientific thinker by manipulating objects, asking questions, making observations and predictions, and developing generalizations.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Seeks scientific solutions that are rational and consistent and that work in similar situations
  • Plans simple experiments (e.g., child builds spinning tops and hypothesizes that a wide top will spin for a longer period of time than a flat one)
  • Observes changes in living organisms and the natural environment over time (e.g., independently checks corn plants every morning to see how they are growing)
  • Works with peers to collaboratively plan experiments
  • Compares their observations to those of their peers
E

Understanding Cause and Effect

Child understands and explores the causes and effects of actions and events.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Designs experiments that will prove their previously held beliefs about causes, rather than objective experiments
  • Describes choices people make based on availability of resources (e.g., talks about how lack of food causes migration)
  • Asks questions about how things change over time
F

Engineering: Problem-solving with Materials

Child plans and uses hands, tools, and technology to solve problems with materials.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary

What educators might observe
  • Uses a second problem-solving strategy if the first one is unsuccessful
  • Pays attention to the relevant part of solving a problem (e.g., examines the attachment of the axles and wheels when the toy car won’t roll)
  • Uses logic and reasoning to solve problems with materials (e.g., uses their knowledge of how the physical properties of objects affect their behavior and motion)
G

Math

1. Comparing and Categorizing

Child recognizes some similarities and differences between familiar and unfamiliar people, objects, or experiences.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary
What educators might observe
  • Reverses mental actions (e.g., knows that a ball of clay rolled into a long snake contains the same amount of clay as the ball)
  • Chooses a strategy for comparison (e.g., uses graphs to compare their observations of the natural world)
  • Understands the need for a standard unit when measuring length

2. Number Sense and Quantity

Child understands and explores numbers and quantity.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary
What educators might observe
  • Realizes that the number is unchanged, even when the arrangement looks different (e.g., when counters are spread out, says that there are the same number of counters as when they were together)
  • Understands the reversibility of operations (e.g., subtraction is the reverse of addition)
  • Uses groups, skip counting, and place value to quickly identify sets shown quickly (“I saw three sets of ten and three sets of two, so the answer is 36.”)
  • Uses a mental number line to compare numbers
  • Counts forward and backward by ones and using skip counting
  • Solves all types of single digit addition and subtraction problems, with flexible strategies and known combinations

3. Patterning

Child develops the ability to identify, describe, extend, and create patterns.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary
What educators might observe
  • Skip counts by hundreds, tens, fives, twos
  • Identifies the rule needed to extend a pattern or identify a missing number in a pattern (2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17)
  • Tells time to the nearest five minutes on different types of clocks

4. Spatial Sense and Geometry

Child understands how objects, points, lines, and shapes fit in space.

7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary
What educators might observe
  • Pays attention to the spatial relationships of all the parts of complex figures
  • Folds paper squares to make two triangles, folds them again to make more triangles, and describes the process
  • Uses simple coordinates to locate a place on a map or a move on a chessboard
  • Systematically checks that two shapes are the same by comparing all attributes
  • Recognizes and describes situations in which angle knowledge is relevant (e.g., “I need to change the angle to make the car go faster down this ramp.”)

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