Running head: RATIONALE

Developmentally Appropriate Instruction Rationale Jordan Lemmon Regent University

RATIONALE 2 Developmentally Appropriate Instruction Rationale Part of being a student-centered educator includes taking students development levels into consideration when creating lessons. I consider my class ages, experience, and ability before designing lessons and activities to engage the students. My goal for each lesson is to challenge them, but also to give achievable goals. Three proven strategies in my experience for designing developmentally appropriate lessons include creating active learning experiences, balancing teacher-directed and student-direct activities, and using varied instructional strategies. The following artifact is an example of a lesson that I designed to developmentally appropriate for my fifth grade class in a number of ways. First, it encouraged an active exploration of the SOL addressed. Students not only listed and discussed examples of resources, but they also created a foldable sorting statement cards of natural, human, and capital resources used by the American Indians (see page 4). Secondly, there was a balance between teacher-directed and student-directed activities. By upper elementary, I believe that students should be encouraged to begin to take responsibility for their learning. In the beginning stages of this lesson, students were guided in developing a definition for resources and creating lists for natural, human, and capital resources in a whole-group discussion. Then, they were expected to apply their knowledge when they sorted the example resources in their foldables (see page 4). Finally, I planned this lesson with varied instructional strategies to meet the learning needs of my class. I used teacher-led instruction with graphic organizers and visuals along with independent learning activities and process writing to address multiple learning styles. My goal with this lesson, as in all of my instruction, was to encourage students to become active and

RATIONALE 3 invested in the learning process. They were to take responsibility for their learning. At the end of the lesson, students were challenged to apply their knowledge of resources in a short research project. They wrote about the types of resources their favorite Indian tribe relied on, and how the tribe used those resources to fill specific needs. Overall, developmentally appropriate instruction allowed this lesson to be engaging and successful across a spectrum of learners in a diverse fifth grade class of thirty-two students. Positive results are only possible when teachers take the learners needs into account when developing instruction.