Skip to main content
Early Learning Guidelines

Across all five domains

Early elementary

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.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Include time in the daily schedule during which children may follow their own ideas to make, build, and compose their own works
  • Allow students access to a variety of materials to pursue their interests:
    • Blocks and ramps
    • Writing and drawing materials
    • Books
    • Legos
    • Clay
    • Math manipulatives
  • Visit the library with children and show them how to look for books related to their topics of interest

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Create lists of children’s interests as part of learning about one another
  • Encourage children to ask their own questions about books (e.g., “Do you have any questions about the character?”)
  • As the class begins a study, the educator gathers questions from the children, asking them:
    • “What do you want to find out about this?” and recording their ideas
  • Invite children to create a presentation for the class on a topic or experience they know a lot about

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Talk with families and children about the interests they are pursuing at home
  • Provide access to books and computer resources for children to use in researching their own interests and questions
  • Provide graphic organizers to support children in researching their own questions and curiosities and in using information to create their own works
B

Initiative

Child pursues their own goals.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Include a writing area in the learning environment that has multiple and varied tools, materials, and resources (e.g., different types of paper and blank books with a few lines on each page for children to draw and write their own stories)
  • Engage children in conversation about their own goals
  • Discuss problems and plan solutions; ask for the child(ren)’s ideas for plans of action and document these in writing or drawing

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Engage children in conversation about their unique strengths and approaches to learning
  • Allow children to bring functional materials from one area of work to another, for example tape and paper to the block area to hang signs
  • Observe children’s work with them, reflect on what they have done or created and their ideas, and plan next steps together

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Talk with families and children about skills the child is developing outside of school, such as the ability to play soccer
  • Notice when children are taking initiative, and invest time and resources in helping them to achieve ambitious goals
  • Provide models of individuals who noticed a problem and decided to act
  • Engage children in service learning projects
C

Persistence and Attentiveness

Child focuses on tasks and perseveres in accomplishing them.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Provide large, uninterrupted time blocks for work on projects
  • Ask children to share work in progress, reflect on their process, and plan aloud their next steps; other children can offer suggestions for next steps
  • Create areas in the classroom for “works in progress”

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Encourage children to choose and read books that they need several days to finish; when you check in with them ask them to summarize and predict
  • Support children in planning and carrying out projects over time; offer structures for them to keep track of steps in their work (i.e., check lists, story maps, and planning pages)
  • Create formats for reflective talking and writing about the child’s work processes, including such prompts as
    • “What was hard in making your project?”
    • “Where did you get stuck?”
    • “How were you able to figure out the problem?”

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Notice and provide encouragement when children feel frustrated or impatient (e.g., “I see that this is taking longer than you expected, and sometimes when we have to take many steps to solve a problem, we get tired!”)
  • Acknowledge persistence (e.g., “Wow, you are wrestling with that long text! I bet you are learning so much. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts about it.”)
  • View mistakes as learning opportunities (e.g., “I love seeing your work on this problem; every time I see you find a mistake and use a new strategy, I know your brain is growing!”)
  • Reach out to families to help with establishing a routine for homework time and modeling positive support
D

Creativity and Inventiveness

Child uses their imagination to create and invent.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Include “choice time” in the daily schedule during which the child has access to a variety of materials and may follow their own idea for a project
  • Provide familiar tools such as scissors, rulers, tape, and glue for work
  • Document and facilitate children in recording their work with photographs, drawings, and writing; reflect on the process of creating
  • Introduce the formal vocabularies of music, dance, and visual arts

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Provide specific challenges to see how children encounter them, (e.g., ask chi ldren if they can figure out how to use a piece of paper to support a book)
  • Ask the child(ren) to use drawing and writing to plan a longterm project, alone and in groups, and include a materials list and book/computer resource list for project
  • Support child(ren) in collecting materials to create their project (e.g., collect bottle caps for children to use for wheels when building vehicles)

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Create opportunities for children to work collaboratively on creative projects over the course of several weeks
  • Facilitate group reflection on projects, exploring what children noticed, what observations they made, and what they learned about working together
  • Provide more specialized tools and materials for use in making projects
    • Scales to compare weights
    • Graphite pencils
    • Chalk pastels
    • Editing software
  • Visit museums and libraries to learn about varieties of art -making and engineering
II

Physical Well-Being, Health and Motor Development

A

Large Motor Skills

Child uses and coordinates their large muscle groups.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Sing songs or chants with some dance steps to practice galloping, skipping, side stepping, walking in rhythm, such as
    • “Skip to My Lou”
    • “Going to Boston”
    • “El Juego Chirimbolo”
    • “Sasha 1-2-3”
    • “Little Johnnie Brown”
    • “Funga Alaffia”
  • Provide structured gross motor breaks throughout the day
  • Provide unstructured, outdoor recess time each day

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • View recess as a right, not a privilege
  • Teach playground ball games such as kickball, foursquare, and tetherball
  • Create opportunities for children to choreograph sequences of movements
  • Organize competitive games with children and model sportsmanship

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Talk to families about the importance of gross motor play during out-of-school time
  • Connect families to local opportunities to participate in sports (e.g., soccer leagues, local playgrounds, public swimming pools)
  • Create opportunities for children to learn and practice dances from their families’ communities and cultures
B

Small Motor Skills

Child controls the small muscles in their hands and wrists.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Include materials in the learning environment that foster fine motor skills
    • Legos
    • Geoboards
    • Clay
    • Yarn
    • Sewing materials
    • Hand looms
    • Scissors
    • Hole punches
    • Hammer and nails
    • Drill
    • Pliers

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Provide opportunities for children to use their fine motor skills for meaningful work such as
    • Using a knife to spread cream cheese or nut butter on crackers or celery
    • Cutting and coring apples with an apple corer
    • Peeling carrots and potatoes for soup
    • Tying shoelaces
    • Using a screwdriver to fix a desk
    • Knitting a scarf
    • Making their own books and comics

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Invite a calligrapher to visit the class to demonstrate the beauty of writing
  • Encourage children to pay attention to handwriting in the final revision of their writing projects
  • Continue to provide time for activities designed to strengthen the muscles in children’s hands
  • Provide keyboards for children whose fine motor skills interfere with their ability to express themselves in writing
C

Sensory Integration

The child uses sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, proprioception (deep pressure), and vestibular function (balance) to perceive and respond to the world around them.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Support children in developing self-awareness about their sensory preferences
  • Honor children’s requests for quieter environments, movement breaks, or alternative seating
  • Reflect with colleagues on options available to children during recess, and add elements to the outdoor environment as necessary

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Provide activities that challenge children
    • Bike riding
    • Cooking
    • Obstacle courses
    • Hiking

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

The guidelines don’t define behaviours for this area at this age.

D

Self-Care

Child cares for their physical well-being.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Offer healthy snacks and ask children to try unfamiliar or non-preferred foods
  • Provide independent access to Band- Aids
  • Provide sufficient time for children to independently put on their own coat, hat, and gloves
  • Make plans about what a child should do if separated from the group during outings
  • When practicing fire, lockdown, and other drills with children
    • Invite children to express their fears and provide reassurance and emotional support
    • Inform families that there was a drill
    • Provide families with information about how to address children’s fears about safety at school

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Visit a farmer’s market or grocery store and notice the things you see at different times of the year
  • Talk about safe and unsafe levels of risk-taking
  • Talk about consent with children. Invite them to role play scenarios in which they can practice saying, “This does not feel good to me” and “I don’t like that.”
  • Engage in group conversations about conflict and bullying
  • Invite police officer or fire fighter to visit the class and speak to the children

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Talk with families about chores that children are expected to do in their family and community
  • Invite children to help plan a snack menu and to prepare the snacks
  • Invite children to talk about dangers they have on the news or through social media
  • Engage children in thinking about the ways laws keep us safe and how laws could be changed to keep us more safe (e.g., gun control legislation)
  • Begin a conversation about helping one another stay safe
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.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Check in with families about children’s curiosity regarding partnerships and sexuality
  • Explore the changing and growing body by comparing photos of when children were younger with what they look like now
  • Be sensitive to the variety of family configurations in the classroom in your words and actions (e.g., avoid saying, “Go home and tell your moms and dads.”)
  • Nurture children’s positive self-image; draw self portraits and talk about what they love and appreciate about their bodies

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Talk to families about their cultural norms and expectations for children’s gender and sexuality development
  • Learn from families about their children’s knowledge of sex and sexuality
  • Communicate with families about conversations related to gender and sexuality that arise in the classroom
  • Use books to support direct conversations about questions related to sex when they arise
    • What Makes a Baby , by Cory Silverberg
    • Sex is a Funny Word: A Book about Bodies, Feelings, and You , by Cory Silverberg

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Monitor the comments you make about your own and other people’s bodies and appearance
  • Engage children in ongoing critical literacy activities that support them in developing the skills to analyze literature and media for sexism, sizism, and homophobia
III

Social and Emotional Development

A

Trusting Relationships with Adults

Child develops trusting relationships with nurturing adults.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Help children and families identify and develop supportive relationships with family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, community members, and service providers
  • Model language of assistance and support (“How can we work together to figure this out?”)

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Establish lines of help with children (“You can come to me or the assistant if you need support.”)
  • Take a request for support as a true need (Respond, for example, “I can help you with that. What have you tried so far?”)
  • Chart or map grownups with whom kids have special relationships, both in the school community and outside

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Foster the family’s positive regard for their child by taking a strength-based stance when sharing observations
  • When addressing sensitive issues with a child and/or their family, be sure to do so in privacy. Convey respect and compassion.
  • Thank the child for coming to you when they have a problem, and affirm your desire to be a resource for them
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.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Convey to families that you respect them as their child’s best advocate
  • Create opportunities for children to know each other by interviewing each child in a group as part of a name study or family study
  • Incorporate the four goals of Anti-Bias Education (listed below) into the daily curriculum
    • Each child will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities
    • Each child will express comfort and joy with human diversity; accurate language for human differences; and deep, caring human connections
    • Each child will increasingly recognize unfairness, have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts
    • Each child will demonstrate empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice and/or discriminatory actions

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Support a strong classroom community by allowing children to learn about one another informally and formally
  • Read stories and books to the class that reflect the diversities represented therein
  • Use maps to allow children to locate their homes in the community and their national origins
  • Connect families to work together on volunteering in the classroom, on fundraising projects, and chaperoning field trips, etc
  • Include community-building games in the daily routine at morning meeting and closing meeting

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Suggest out-of-school time connections for children; recommend to families of specific children which classmates or afterschool programs may be good matches, and include this suggestion in mid-year reports and meetings
  • Create multiple opportunities each week for children to share personal experience with their classmates (e.g., include sharing about their lives or reading aloud personal narratives at daily morning meeting)
  • Provide class-wide opportunities for children to build their own social context
    • Write get-well notes to classmates who are ill for many days
    • Make “celebrating you” booklets on children’s birthdays in which each child contributes a note or drawing for the birthday child
  • Incorporate social justice into your curriculum, providing opportunities for children to engage in inquiry and action around social issues that they care about in their community
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.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Create time for children to share their work, either before or after a working period; allow children to choose the work they want to share
  • Display children’s work with their words of guidance or explanation beside it
  • Create structures for children to show their interests and preferences, such as choice time
  • Make time for reflective conversations (“How are you doing in our classroom routines? How is reading going?”)
  • Avoid asking children to line up or choose partners by gender

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Engage in reflective writing as a routine and at key points, such as after finishing a project or before a conference with families; ask such questions as “What is hard for you in our classroom?” and “How have you been working to improve?”
  • Record children telling stories in their home languages, and share those stories with the community
  • Invite family members to come to school to be interviewed by the children
  • Use books to support direct conversations about questions related to gender stereotypes, and bullying when they arise
    • King & King , by Linda De Haan
    • One of a Kind Like Me , by Laurin Mayeno
    • Allie ’s Basketball Dream, by Barbara E. Barber
    • The Gender Fairy , by Jo Hirst
    • Princess Hair , by Sharee Miller
    • My Princess Boy , by Cheryl Kilodavis
    • A mazing Grace , by Mary Hoffman

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Invite students to plan for and participate in a conference with their families
  • Engage in casual conversation with the child about what they like to do outside of school
  • Provide time, space, and materials for chosen work and some choice within assigned work
  • Support and encourage students to participate in identity-based affinity groups
  • Notice and address opinions reflecting societal messages that equate material acquisitions with self-worth
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.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Observe that life seems easier for some people and harder for others, and explore with children the reasons for these inequities; teach that inequities are not a consequence of anything that marginalized people did wrong
  • Teach children to show compassion and support for their peers
  • Assume children’s good intentions
  • When children come to educator with an interpersonal conflict, ask them to start resolving it by first trying to imagine and articulate how the other party feels, and then invite them to articulate to each other how they really feel

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Read books about kindness:
    • Each Kindness , by Jacqueline Woodson
    • Under the Lemon Moon , by Edith Hope Fine
    • The Quiltmaker’s Gift , by Jeff Brumbeau
    • Those Shoes , by Maribeth Boelts
    • One Green Apple , by Eve Bunting
    • The Invisible Boy , by Trudy Ludwig
  • Use empathic group problem solving (“Our friend is having a hard time. Can anyone think of a way to help?”)
  • Work on perspective-taking in interpersonal interaction (“If she did to you what you did to her, how would you feel? What would you want her to do?”)

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Use shared reading to develop perspective-taking, asking, for example, “How would you help this character when they are feeling so worried?”
  • Provide opportunities for children to take meaningful action to address social inequity in their community
  • Offer children structured contexts in which to identify, practice, and receive empathy
    • Play a “jump in” theater game in which two characters act out a conflict and anyone is welcome to “jump in” as a third character to offer empathy to either or both parties if they see a way to help resolve the conflict
E

Cooperation and Negotiation

Child navigates friendships with peers through cooperation and negotiation.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Consider shared interest among children as basis for connection; children who like to build, children who like to read about animals, etc
  • Suggest out-of-school time connections for families
  • Offer shared language for respectful conversation, including respectful disagreeing: (“I disagree” rather than “No! You’re wrong!”)
  • Read books about cooperation and negotiation, such as
    • Click , Clack, Moo: Cows That Type , by Doreen Cronin
    • Cat and Rat , by Ed Young
    • The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig , by Eugene Trivizas

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Offer a variety of games
    • Chutes and Ladders
    • Go Fish, Uno, or other card games
    • Jenga
    • Connect Four
    • Checkers
  • Foster friendships; allow children to choose their own work partners at times
  • Support children’s desire to spend time with peers who affirm their developing social, linguistic, and cultural identifies
  • Help children generate nonviolent, assertive language to communicate; be a supportive witness as children practice these skills

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • When guiding children through conflict resolution, be alert to family and cultural differences in how people handle and navigate conflict
  • Foster social connections among family members; ask families about times and kinds of events that would work best for them
  • Notice children who may be left out and give them special jobs to do with a friendly peer; provide time to openly discuss feelings related to peer group inclusion and exclusion
  • Discuss books about conflict and negotiation, asking children to name the point of conflict, feelings of each protagonist, and effective and ineffective behaviors that each character engaged in
  • Offer “counselor,” a role that helps children resolve conflicts, as a classroom job
F

Emotional Self-Regulation

Child expresses and manages their feelings and impulses.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Read books about self-control, such as:
    • Sophie Gets Angry , Really, Really Angry , by Molly Bang
    • Ahn’s Anger , by Gail Silver
    • Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse , by Kevin Henkes
  • Discuss the books with the children, asking
    • Have you ever felt the same way as ___?
    • What would you do if you were ___?
    • What would you say to___?
  • Create strategy charts for feelings, impulses, and ways to act on them

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Talk to families and past teachers about the development of the child’s ability to self-regulate
  • Notice, recognize, and communicate when children take hard steps to achieve control (e.g., “I saw that you left the game when you were getting upset.”)
  • Sing songs like “I Get Up In The Morning,” which contains the refrain, “Everything’s going to be all right,” to remind children that strong feelings pass; try “Here Comes the Sun,” to recall that feelings change

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Reflect with families and colleagues about the way strong feelings are expressed in the communities and cultures of the children in your class
  • Encourage the development of children’s self-awareness by suggesting that they write about their personal strengths and challenges
  • Let children know which trusted adults are available to be with them when they have strong feelings
G

Rhythms, Rules, and Routines

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

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Reflect on your own cultural expectations related to discipline
  • Create some routines together; ask children, for example, how they think an area could best be organized and use their input to create some routine procedures
  • Decide on logical consequences for rules with all staff; reconsider the use of social exclusion as a consequence

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Learn from families about rules and routines they have at home
  • Create illustrated charts of complex routines, like cleaning up paint or packing up at dismissal
  • Sing songs or chants to remind children of steps in a routine

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Engage children in reflecting on the origins and intentions of social laws
  • Engage children in conversation about social movements to make society more fair
  • Invite children to discuss the difference in rules between various cultures, communities, and families
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.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Provide opportunities for children to engage in informal talk throughout the day
  • Provide opportunities for children to use new content area vocabulary in conversation and with their family by sending home conversation starters (e.g., “Ask your child about the geodes we opened today in science.”)
  • When children are engaged in a content area like visual arts, repeatedly use vocabulary specific to their processes, such as “perspectives” and “dimensions”

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Use translanguaging with children, and scaffold their use of academic language by strategic use of home language and English
  • Learn key words in the child’s home language related to the topic of study
  • Draw on cognates in both English and the child’s home language
  • Provide opportunities for children to represent the meaning of words in a variety of ways (e.g. through dance, in song, or in a drawing)

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Choose a sentence that has a complex structure
    • Engage in word play by altering the vocabulary in the sentence
    • Chart sentence and unpack meaning
    • Use sentence starters to practice making new sentences with a similar structure
  • Research the bases and parts of words with children; look for and point out meaning in the structure of words
B

Listening and Understanding

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

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Listen and provide feedback to clarify and extend understanding; for instance, restate in another way or use an image or a gesture to clarify
  • Engage peers in a variety of activities in a range of different topics that foster sustained interactions
  • Use translanguaging between English and home languages to encourage participation and keep children in the conversational loop
  • Make comparisons with familiar characters and plots to sustain interactions

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Reinforce key vocabulary and content words in activities; for example, play games such as Simon Says to strengthen understanding of prepositions or classification games to deepen understandings of meanings
  • Use role plays with partners or small groups to establish understanding of characters and relationships
  • Model body language as an active listener to extend conversation
  • Draw on home languages or actively encourage partners to speak it to reinforce and ensure understanding

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Model strategies for self-monitoring, understanding, and using questions to clarify
  • Ask peers to elaborate or role play the ways in which partners can request more information to increase understanding
  • Structure activities that include speaking with partners and using specific words or parts of speech; for example, interviewing about something in the past that requires understanding of verbs in past tense
  • Use think-aloud or sentence starters to model the thinking process and encourage understanding of one’s own or a character’s feelings, changes, motivations, and inner thoughts
C

Social Communication

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

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Talk to families about children’s use of social language outside of school; Find out if a child who is quiet at school is talkative at home or in their community
  • Observe emergent multilingual children’s use of social language when they are speaking in their home language
  • During read-aloud time, invite predictions about characters’ relationships and interactions (“What might this character say to this one if she has that feeling?”)

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Observe and reflect on children’s use of social language in non-academic environments such as the playground
  • Provide time for children to discuss social interactions and how those interactions made them feel
  • Be aware of whose voices are not being heard in group conversations and provide supports for all children to participate
  • Teach children language that they can use to resolve social conflicts

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Establish norms for social communication in the learning environment
  • Teach children to identify micro-aggressions: brief hostile, negative prejudicial slights and insults toward any group
  • Ask children to write from the perspective of someone from a different time or place
  • Invite children to develop and share a point of view on a topic of interest
D

Engaging with Stories and Books

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

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Engage in extended conversation and dialogue about what children notice when they read
  • Listen to what children say in response to open-ended questions and clarify, expand, or extend their ideas
  • Ask peers to respond to other children’s questions and comments about their reading
  • Use self-talk to model making connections to a story
  • Ask children if they have ever had an experience similar to the character in the story
  • Ask children to draw a picture in response to a story they heard read aloud

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Scaffold thinking about the narrative structure of stories and books in a variety of genres
    • In fictional genres, think aloud about: 1) the beginning and the introduction to the main character, 2) the middle and the main character’s problem, and 3) predict or ask what might happen at the end
    • For an informational text, think aloud about: the main idea, examples, and key details

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Give children time to respond to texts in a variety of ways
    • Assign parts to act out a book or story
    • Encourage children to collaborate, improvise, and use props to perform the story
  • Establish centers where children can make art or explore science materials in response to books or stories on a theme or topic
E

Phonological Awareness

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

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Explore sounds of the alphabet by playing a clapping game (“When I say a word that starts with an “m,” clap your hands!”)
  • Create an activity in which children can listen to beginning and ending sounds, noting the difference between each

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Play familiar games with rhymes (hand claps, jump rope chants) invite a family member to come in to introduce the game
  • Introduce a book such as Adivinanzas in Mixteco (Riddles in Mixteco) that is written or translated into several different languages and language varieties; ask families about riddles in their home languages
  • Explore vowel sounds by singing songs in a variety of languages (e.g., “Juanito Cuando Baila”)

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Invite children to compose a song for a friend by changing the lyrics of a favorite song to personalize it
  • Play a familiar card game, and replace cards with images and words that match; for example, children can play “Go Fish” and ask for a word that rhymes with the card they have
  • Invite students to create their own rhyming poems, songs, or haikus
F

Composing

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

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Brainstorm ideas for compositions with children
  • Make time for children to share a scene or to act out parts of a story for a peer audience with props
  • Celebrate children’s completed compositions with a publishing party

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Discuss contrasting features of a child’s home language with English, such as use of accent marks in Spanish and English
  • Explore the scene or setting of a play by talking about the author’s word choice
  • Model writing the beginning of a story, and revise it to introduce the main character’s personal voice
  • Ask children for explanations of why they made certain choices while authoring
  • Challenge children to use rich vocabulary and complex sentences in their compositions

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Welcome and celebrate the variety of children’s composing processes
  • Discuss what makes an argument effective and how to find an equally effective counterargument
  • Provide models of approaches to composition; discuss and chart an author’s intent or purpose across various types of texts in an author’s body of work (e.g., discuss the purpose of Patricia Polacco’s Chicken Sunday , Thank You, Mr. Falker , and Pink and Say )
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.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Identify museums and galleries to visit with children
  • Invite children to use drawing as a way to look closely at sculptures
  • Invite a visual artist or filmmaker to visit the classroom
  • Create a slideshow of documentation from the learning environment and share it with children each Friday

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Find out about free or low-cost opportunities to see art in the community, and share these opportunities with families
  • Support children in making connections between popular culture and their own multimedia work in the classroom
  • Look at a block building from different heights and talk about ways to represent with different points of view (worm’s eye view, bird’s eye view, or child’s eye view)

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Invite a video editor to visit the class and ask them to explain the process of experimenting and editing with different tools to modify size, color, and shape for intended message
  • Provide tools for children to make their own videos
  • Support use of critical media literacy by provocations to discuss credibility and evidence
  • Teach children to identify bias in media
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.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Include books in the learning environment that help children understand death
    • And So It Goes , by Paloma Valdivia
    • Goodbye Mog , by Judith Kerr
    • The Goodbye Book , by Todd Parr
    • Ida Always , by Caron Levis and Charles Santoso;
    • The Dead Bird , by Margaret Wise Brown
  • Read non-fiction books about the life cycles of familiar animals (such as cats, dogs, and other animals that children see in their communities); explore rituals and routines for having pets and for pet deaths

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Talk to family members about their beliefs about death and how they would like to explain death to the child
  • Talk to children about the inevitability of the life cycle, and how it applies to everything that is alive
  • Observe food as it turns to compost; discuss how it changes

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Create opportunities for children to explore stability and change in local contexts
    • Visit a local watershed to study water quality
    • Look at photos of the local area in years past in comparison to today
  • Ask about characters in chapter books (“How do they change over the course of the story? Why do they change? What is the same about them throughout?”)
B

Representing

Child uses symbolic thought to represent.

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Ask families about cultural or religious prohibitions to representation; create a welcoming and inclusive learning environment
  • Invite children to use collage materials to make dollhouses out of cardboard boxes and make characters to inhabit the dollhouses
  • Sing songs with space for children’s contributions and allow them to write new verses
  • Create visual art while listening to different types of music

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Invite families to share modes of artistic expression from their family, community, or culture
  • Make paper dolls of historical figures; use cloth and scissors to clothe the dolls in historical costumes
  • Act out stories that the children write
  • Sing songs, such as:
    • “I Had a Rooster”
    • “The Cat Came Back”
    • “The Foolish Frog”

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Notice the particular forms of representation that are motivating for different children
  • Encourage children to use art to represent their feelings
  • Invite families to join children in creating
  • Welcome families to celebrate children’s creations
  • Challenge children to create models of villages, replicating complicated architectural details
C

Memory and History

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

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Include books in the learning environment that tell stories from history
    • Histories of the children’s national and cultural groups (e.g., history of Taíno people)
    • Biographies (e.g., Obama, Lincoln)
    • Stories of historical events (e.g., The March on Washington)
    • Descriptions of life at different periods of history (e.g., prehistoric man)
    • Invite elders to the classroom to talk about their memories

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Research the histories of the national and cultural groups of the children in the class, and be prepared to weave examples from these groups into discussions of history
  • Invite each child to contribute to a timeline of a time period that includes now
  • Sing songs that touch on history
    • “If I Had a Hammer”
    • “If You Meet Me at the Back of the Bus”
    • “Fillimiooriay”

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Use self-talk to describe strategies for organizing information to make it easier to retrieve
  • Ask children to write from perspectives of figures they have read and learned about (What was it like to be a knight’s horse, for example?)
  • Welcome children to link their family histories to larger discussions of historical events
D

Investigating and Exploring

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

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Use photography to gather observations over time; for example, observe a tree through several seasons or watch a pumpkin over the weeks around harvest, and ask children to come up with theories about why changes occur
  • Ask children to do research by looking in books for answers to their questions
  • Question the child’s reasoning to explore their thought process, but without concern for correctness (“What makes you think that? How did you figure that out?”)

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Provide sketchbooks to record natural phenomena, and make predictions; for example, ask children to draw a seed as they plant it, then when it has sprouted, and as a plant growing over time
  • Invite children to document their observations in a variety of ways (charts, notes, or graphs, for example)

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Invite families to share areas of expertise with the class
  • Support children in generating questions for research
  • Provide graphic organizers so that children are able to successfully complete a multiday investigation
  • Create role models for children
    • Visit scientists at work
    • Read about scientists who changed history
    • Ensure representation of women and members of non-dominant racial, linguistic, and cultural groups
E

Understanding Cause and Effect

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

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Ask children why the water in a clear or open container left on the heater or windowsill diminishes over a few days
  • Plant beans in a plastic bag lined with a wet paper towel; ask why some grow and some do not

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Engage in group conversation about children’s theories of causation
  • Analyze choices people made in creating the built environment (e.g. ‘Why did engineers choose to build a vertical lift bridge here?”)

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Create opportunities for children to see how changing certain factors causes a predictable change in outcome
  • Teach children about climate change and engage the class in analyzing and reducing the group’s use of carbon
F

Engineering: Problem-solving with Materials

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

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Include tools in the learning environment that children can access for a variety of purposes
    • scissors
    • staplers
    • hole punches
    • hammers
    • measuring tapes
    • hand drills
  • Invite children to systematically test the stability of their block buildings by rolling balls at them
  • Offer encouragement and guidance (“These problems can be solved! You can figure this out. What if you…?”)

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Observe and reflect on children’s processes as they solve problems with materials
  • Consider which children are most engaged in engineering: Are girls as engaged as boys? Why or why not?
  • Invite children to make complex marble runs, taking into account both the angle and length of the ramps
  • Offer objects in the environment as models for children’s problem-solving; for example, show them a hinge on a door, or point out how bricks are stacked in a building

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

Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Invite families to visit the classroom and share a tool from their culture, nation of origin, or childhood
  • Provide opportunities for children to learn problem-solving strategies from one another
  • Challenge children to invent objects to solve common classroom or household problems (e.g., a magnetic paper-clip picker-upper)
  • Look for texts that show different ways a problem has been solved throughout history (e.g., irrigation)
G

Math

1. Comparing and Categorizing

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

6-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Offer objects for comparison and categorization
    • Photos of animals
    • Collections of rocks or leaves
    • Keys
    • Buttons
  • Engage children in using categorization for social good; for example, categorize recycling materials
  • Provide unit blocks and rulers for measurement
  • Create activities to measure distance (e.g., hold a paper airplane contest, then chart the results in a graph)
7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Offer formats distinctly for comparison and categorization, such as Venn diagrams and three-column charts
  • Offer vocabulary such as “traits,” “similar,” and “category”
  • Use “greater than” and “less than” to compare quantity
  • Compare standard and non-standard units of measure, some of which can be parts of the body; use inches, feet and meters, but also fingers, hands, and items like paper clips
8-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Invite families to visit the classroom to talk about their childhoods; use Venn diagrams to compare and contrast
  • Read books aloud about children who live in different kinds of families; ask the children questions about how the character’s lives are similar to and different from their own
  • Visit a natural history museum or botanical garden and talk about the categories the curators use

2. Number Sense and Quantity

Child understands and explores numbers and quantity.

6-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Create a number line adding one number each day for the whole year, and use it to practice counting by ones, twos, fives, and tens
  • Offer structures like a 100’s chart or number line sections for organizing number systems
  • Play games in which children roll a dice or spin a spinner and move a piece along a path
  • Provide strong context for solving problems with numbers (With 23 children in the class, does everyone have a snack if you have 18 snacks? How many more we need or how many extra do we have?)
7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Play more games on a number line (If you start at 12, how many to get to 15? How do you get to 100 from 64?)
  • Keep locating math in the body; ask questions like how many fingers in the class?
  • Provide base 10 materials to model numbers
  • Play “I’m Thinking of a Number” in which children seek clues of what numbers are smaller or larger than the one in mind
8-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Engage children in a cooking activity that calls for ingredients in ½, ¼, ¾, or ¹∕₃ measures
  • Ask children to write word problems that fit number sentences for their classmates to solve
  • Practice addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division skills using Jeopardy-type games

3. Patterning

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

6-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Continue to notice patterns in the world on numbered streets and avenues or windows on buildings
  • Model addition with materials to ground math ideas in concrete experience; use two colors of tiles to show the commutative property of addition (two green and three red is five tiles; three green and two red is still five tiles)
  • Invite children to make patterns while stringing with small beads or weaving
7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Use materials such as pattern blocks to build growth patterns and describe them (“One hexagon has six sides. How many sides on two hexagons? On three hexagons?”)
  • Invite children to observe, copy, and create patterns that grow; for example, make a square out of four cubes, make the square grow to nine cubes, then 16, and describe the pattern with numbers
8-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Create AABBA patterns for classmates to complete and/or find the errors
  • Practice looking at an analog clock, describing the number correspondences
  • Give children a sense of time (Time sitting in silence for a minute, then do something repetitive such as snapping fingers or drawing stars for a minute, two minutes, or five minutes.)

4. Spatial Sense and Geometry

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

6-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Look at maps with children and encourages them to describe
    • Direction—which way?
    • Distance—how far?
    • Location—where?
    • Identification—what objects?
    • Coordinates—what are they?
  • Encourage children to make representations out of pattern blocks (for example, a ship with a smoke stack and rhombus-shaped smoke); they may trace their pattern block images to create pattern block puzzles for one another
  • Read books by Rebecca Emberly and others that show how to represent objects with different shapes
7-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Invite children to use materials such as clay, straw, and pipe cleaners to construct shapes
  • Encourage children to describe why a figure belongs or does not belong to a shape category
  • Show children how to “test” right angles on rectangles with a “right-angle checker,” (thumb and index finger held apart at 90°, or the corner of a piece of paper)
  • Solve construction problems with blocks
    • Build a bridge from point A to point B
    • Construct the tallest tower
    • Attempt to build buildings observed in the neighborhood
8-year-olds – See this age across all domains Early elementary
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Create realistic and abstract art using shapes, lines, and understanding of orientation of those things on paper
  • Observe the use of shapes in artwork from different cultures, drawing attention to the cultures of the children in the class
  • Describe the properties of a shape and invite the children to name that shape
  • Place shapes in a category, and ask children to name the reason for the classification

Search

Find pages, resources, and information across our site.

Recent searches

Found for ""

No results found

Try different keywords or check spelling.

↑↓ Nav Enter Go Esc Exit