Plan for and implement engaging and effective teaching and learning

No practice examples available.

• Is knowledgeable about the curriculum’s scope and sequence.
• Is familiar with all of the components, or parts, of the curriculum (e.g., materials, books, guides, assessments, etc.).

• If teaching infants and toddlers, keeps a written record (as a form of curriculum documentation) of how the daily routines and consistent aspects of the schedule support development and learning.
• Uses curriculum-based assessment tools to measure child development and learning.
• Maintains up-to-date lesson plans.
• Communicates with families about the curriculum’s goals.

• When necessary, evaluates the comprehensiveness of a curriculum in its ability to help children meet important development and learning goals.
• Makes decisions about a curriculum’s appropriateness for a given group of children.
• Advocates for continuity in the curriculum across levels and for a curriculum that is based on the principles of developmentally appropriate practice.

No practice examples available.

• Implements universal screening to identify children who might benefit from additional support services, the skill level or the parts of a skill a child might need support with, and/or the foundational skills that might be preventing a child from achieving desired goals.
• Provides high-quality teaching and caregiving to the whole group based on universal desired outcomes.

• Differentiates teaching; matches the most effective and efficient caregiving and teaching strategies to the desired goals and outcomes for individual children, groups of children, and all children in the group.
• Continuously gathers assessment information to monitor children’s progress toward meeting desired goals and outcomes.

• Uses assessment information to identify desired goals and outcomes for individual children, groups of children, and the whole group.
• Provides focused instruction to small groups of children.
• Provides individualized instruction to help some children meet individualized goals.

• Provides support and encouragement to children during child-directed play.

• Intentionally engages with children as they play.
• Supports guided play, following children’s interests and responding to spontaneous learning opportunities as they arise.
• Provides children with control and input even during adult-led learning experiences.

• Uses an understanding of child development and has clear outcomes in mind when deciding how to extend children’s development and learning during play.
• Is able to explain the choices they make to support children’s development and learning.
• Selects ideas, experiences, concepts, and topics for adult-led learning experiences.
• Leads structured learning experiences that are challenging, engaging, and promote high-level thinking.

• Combines child-directed play, adult-led learning, and guided play to encourage all children to learn, problem-solve, and socialize.

• Demonstrates warmth and inclusivity during play times.
• Pays close attention during children’s play times to make sure all children are safe, engaged, and included.

• Helps all children participate in play; uses modeling and demonstration to support children’s play (e.g., how children can join, how to share materials, or how to take turns with equipment).
• Creates inclusive, flexible play spaces and provides materials that support and inspire children’s play.

• Uses children’s play as an opportunity to observe children and collect documentation to track their learning and development across domains.
• Builds in authentic opportunities for children to practice emerging skills during play.
• Talks with families and professionals about the value and role of play in children’s development and learning.

• As children play, responds to spontaneous learning opportunities to develop children’s knowledge and skills, especially around literacy, math, social studies or science concepts; supports inclusion by asking questions that help children build empathy and consider choices (e.g., “How do you think it feels when someone says you can’t play?” or “What do you think would be a fair thing to do?”).
• While children play, asks open-ended questions, makes suggestions, encourages children to make predictions, and discusses how children’s ideas might be further developed to extend learning.

• Listens carefully to children’s comments, questions, and answers, and responds to them.
• Shows interest and enjoyment in children’s communication efforts.

• Uses careful attention, questions, prompts, and reminders to encourage children’s conversation.
• Uses songs and rhymes as a way for children to experience joy, playful experimentation, and vocabulary-building with language play.
• Combines pictures and words or actions to support children’s understanding, especially to create access for children who experience challenges with communication.

• Uses words and phrases in a child’s home language as much as possible.
• Is sensitive to the diversity of children’s conversation and interaction skills and styles; adjusts their approach to conversation and interaction accordingly to support children’s engagement, understanding, and ability to express themselves.

• Encourages children to reflect and explain their thinking (e.g., “What makes you think that?” or “Tell me about why you like that red truck so much”) rather than providing only simplistic responses such as “Good job.”
• Listens for children’s attempts to hypothesize or make meaning; asks questions and engages in intentional conversation to extend children’s learning.

• Learns about each child and works to understand their unique strengths, interests, approaches to learning, and challenges.
• Supports children’s social interaction, collaboration, cooperation, and teamwork during learning experiences.

• Plans and implements learning experiences that build on children’s skills and interests.
• Plans and implements learning experiences that reflect an understanding of children’s current level of development.
• Makes deliberate decisions about when to lead to support and extend learning and when to let children take the lead.

• Plans and implements learning experiences with real-world context and that connect to children’s lives and communities.
• Plans and implements learning experiences with clear goals, objectives, and criteria for success.
• Plans a coherent sequence of learning experiences and ample time for children’s inquiry, autonomy, reflection, conversation, and collaboration.
• When age- and developmentally appropriate, teaches children pre-academic content through adult-led learning, including explicit teaching, hands-on experiences, and guided play.

• Includes varied ways for children to access content and express their understanding, including through reading, discussing, searching, and documenting through various media and technology.
• Ensures learning goals are culturally and linguistically responsive and tailored for
• individual children and groups of children.
• Plans opportunities for children to learn, practice, and master academic language.
• Plans for supports and extensions when designing learning experiences. Anticipates
• points of challenge; plans ways to provide flexibility, choice, autonomy, and explicit
• modeling of steps and expectations involved in the learning experiences.
• Makes adjustments to plans and teaching based on real-time evidence of children’s
• needs, questions, and suggestions, as well as specific events.
• Responds flexibly and adjusts the curriculum and learning experiences to promote
• greater learning, as needed.

• When using technology (with children older than 2), co-views the technology with them to help them understand and engage with the content.

• Provides a wide range of resources and materials.
• Uses technology to track and monitor child progress.

• Relies on a strong set of developmentally, culturally, and linguistically appropriate curriculum materials.
• Evaluates resources and materials and makes decisions about which to use with children. Considers if the materials are practical and authentic; open-ended; reflective of diversity and connected to children’s lives and communities; interesting and provoke curiosity; natural; beautiful; engaging.
• Includes a range of informational and media technologies in learning activities.
• Uses technology to make learning accessible.

• Evaluates instructional resources, including technology and media, for quality, accuracy, effectiveness, and cultural and linguistic appropriateness.
• Uses technology to enhance and individualize instruction to meet diverse needs.
• Integrates additional instructional resources as necessary to maximize children’s engagement and to help all children meet development and learning goals.

• Expresses a positive belief in children that they can reach their goals.
• Encourages children’s choice and autonomy.
• Emphasizes to children the role of practice rather than inherent ability or intelligence.

• Works to create an environment conducive to productive play and learning; intentionally minimizes distractions.
• Offers children multiple options for participation to help them stay motivated and engaged.
• Helps children manage frustration.
• Provides feedback to children that focuses on effort and persistence, rather than performance or compliance.
• Clearly articulates the goal of a task or learning experience and the value of that goal.

• Intentionally helps children self-regulate.
• Teaches children strategies to help them cope with strong emotions.
• Ensures learning experiences are relevant and valuable to children’s family and cultural contexts, interests, and goals.
• Leads learning experiences that encourage social interaction, teamwork, and collaboration.

• Helps children self-reflect, articulate, and name their own goals.
• Adjusts the demands of tasks for individual children to support success.
• Provides alternatives during learning experiences to help children manage their own engagement.
• Provides prompts, checklists, and rubrics that help children set self-regulatory goals, increase the duration of their focus, and encourage self-reflection.

• Uses multiple media (e.g., photographs, illustrations, physical or virtual manipulatives) to help children understand content area concepts.

• Uses flexible formats so perceptual features can be adjusted. Examples include:
  • Font style
  • Size of text, images, or other materials
  • Contrast between text and background
  • Color used for emphasis
  • Volume or speed of speech or sound

• Ensures alternative guidance is available for information presented orally.
• Presents information in different ways so learning does not depend on just one sense, such as sight, hearing, or touch.
• Reduces reading barriers for early elementary children when decoding is not the main focus of the lesson.

• When teaching, clearly connects spoken information to visual or media support.
• Provides language support to make learning accessible.

• Removes unnecessary distractions that might conflict with the goal of a learning experience or lesson.

• Chunks information into smaller, more manageable elements.
• Provides explicit prompts for each step in a sequential process.

• Intentionally uses strategies that activate children’s prior knowledge, or provides prerequisite information to scaffold comprehension.
• Provides explicit cues and prompts to highlight important patterns, features, big ideas, and relationships to help children attend to what is most important.

• Provides children with multiple ways to explore content and big ideas.
• Makes explicit connections across curricular areas (using literacy strategies during a science or social studies experience, for example).
• Helps children apply learning to new contexts and to use explicit strategies. Supports might include checklists, charts, and organizers or teaching strategies for remembering, such as singing silly songs, chunking information, or using multisensory strategies.

• Makes sure children can engage with materials and tools that are accessible to them.

• Considers the motor demands of routines and learning experiences and provides alternatives when needed.

• Offers options for how children respond, make choices, and compose their ideas.
• Provides different ways for children to engage with media and tools for composition and expression.
• Provides different options (e.g., different strategies, skills, and approaches) for children to accomplish the same outcomes.

• Provides optimal access to assistive technology, as appropriate and relevant.
• Adjusts the degree of scaffolding needed for children to demonstrate fluency with skills.
• Gradually releases scaffolds as children gain skills and independence to ensure all children can accomplish mastery of skills.

• Helps children use checklists or templates that help them understand tasks, prioritize, and plan or complete a sequence of steps.

• Uses prompts and questions when interacting with children during play to intentionally help children categorize and self-monitor.
• Provides models or examples of a process and product to support children’s goal planning.
• Uses graphic organizers to help children arrange essential information.

• Helps children practice goal-setting through projects and learning experiences.
• Models thinking aloud and coaches children through the process of breaking up a bigger task or project into smaller chunks.
• Provides individualized feedback to children that is clear, immediate, helpful, and accessible, and allows them to monitor their own progress and guide their own effort and practice.

• Supports children’s goal-setting by asking them to think about the level of difficulty, the estimated amount of effort required, and any support they might need.
• When working with children in the primary grades, especially in the academic content areas, provides sufficient scaffolding by sharing completed step-by-step examples and checklists, rubrics, and other samples of work or performance to help guide children’s efforts and goal-setting.