Developmentally Appropriate practices is a way of using strategies that fit the child. Children are all different and they should be treated as individuals. When a teacher plans curriculum in a developmentally appropriate way, she is matching what the child already can do to what the child will work up to doing. Each step in development is important as well. You can not expect a baby to crawl before it can walk; it occasionally happens but not often. Teachers have to assess what a child knows so they can move forward from that point. A word of caution would be not to go too fast all at once. Children's brains are like sponges but any sponge can be worked too hard.
Sue Bredekamp has written some text books for child development. I have included a video as my artifact. http://youtu.be/YdyGhmQiGJ8 Sue talks about DAP in the video and mentions a key point that school systems keep pushing material that was used in first or kindergarten down to preschoolers. We can not keep expecting 3 and 4 year old children to do the same course work as children in the first and second. Some children may do okay, but others will fall through the cracks. I believe it is ok to introduce some key concepts but it is not okay to assess them on these concepts that are far out of their understanding.
No comments:
Post a Comment