Individualizing Instruction

Standards

The content of this tutorial aligns with Massachusetts standards and guidelines.

Massachusetts Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS)

Center and School Based:

• Curriculum and Learning 1A: Curriculum, Assessment, and Diversity: Level 2 Educators demonstrate completion of formal professional development in curriculum, screening tools, and formative assessment; Program uses screening tools, progress reports, formative assessments, and information gathered through observation to set goals for individual children across all developmental domains.
• Curriculum and Learning 1A: Curriculum, Assessment, and Diversity: Level 4 Program uses progress reports, appropriate screening tools, formative assessments, and information gathered through observation to inform curriculum planning, and use results to monitor each child’s progress across developmental domains, and inform program decision-making (e.g. curriculum content, strategies for improved staff implementation, and professional development.)   
• Curriculum and Learning 1B: Teacher-Child Relationships and Interactions: Level 4 Staff utilizes teaching strategies that ensure a positive classroom environment, engage children in learning and promote critical thinking skills.

Family Child Care:

• Curriculum and Learning 1A: Curriculum, Assessment, and Diversity: Level 2 Educators demonstrate completion of formal professional development in curriculum, screening tools, and formative assessment. 
• Curriculum and Learning 1A: Curriculum, Assessment, and Diversity: Level 3 Educators have received formal professional development in the curriculum; documenting children's progress; and working with children from diverse languages and cultures and second language acquisition; Either directly or through a network or system, educator uses screening tools, progress reports, formative assessments, and information gathered through observation to set goals for individual children across developmental domains.
• Curriculum and Learning 1A: Curriculum, Assessment, and Diversity: Level 4 Either directly or through a system or network, provider uses screening tools, progress reports formative assessments, and information gathered through observation to inform curriculum planning, and use results to monitor each child’s progress across developmental domains.
• Curriculum and Learning 1B: Teacher-Child Relationships and Interactions: Level 4 Educators utilize teaching strategies that ensure a positive learning environment, engage children in learning and promote critical thinking skills.

National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)

Guidelines for Developmentally Appropriate Practice:

• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning B Teachers make it a priority to know each child well, and also the people most significant in the child’s life.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning B.1 Teachers establish positive, personal relationships with each child and with each child’s family to better understand that child’s individual needs, interests, and abilities and that family’s goals, values, expectations, and childrearing practices. Teachers talk with each child and family (with a community translator, if necessary, for mutual understanding) and use what they learn to adapt their actions and planning.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning B.2 Teachers continually gather information about children in a variety of ways and monitor each child’s learning and development to make plans to help children progress.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning C Teachers take responsibility for knowing what the desired goals for the program are and how the program’s curriculum is intended to achieve those goals. They carry out that curriculum through their teaching in ways that are geared to young children in general and these children in particular. Doing this includes following the predictable sequences in which children acquire specific concepts, skills, and abilities and by building on prior experiences and understandings.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning E Teachers plan the environment, schedule, and daily activities to promote each child’s learning and development.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning F Teachers possess an extensive repertoire of skills and strategies they are able to draw on, and they know how and when to choose among them, to effectively promote each child’s learning and development at that moment. Those skills include the ability to adapt curriculum, activities, and materials to ensure full participation of all children. Those strategies include, but are not limited to, acknowledging, encouraging, giving specific feedback, modeling, demonstrating, adding challenge, giving cues or other assistance, providing information, and giving directions.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning F.2 To stimulate children’s thinking and extend their learning, teachers pose problems, ask questions, and make comments and suggestions.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning F.4 To adjust the complexity and challenge of activities to suit children’s level of skill and knowledge, teachers increase the challenge as children gain competence and understanding.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning F.5 To strengthen children’s sense of competence and confidence as learners, motivation to persist, and willingness to take risks, teachers provide experiences for children to be genuinely successful and to be challenged.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning G Teachers know how and when to scaffold children’s learning—that is, providing just enough assistance to enable each child to perform at a skill level just beyond what the child can do on his or her own, then gradually reducing the support as the child begins to master the skill, and setting the stage for the next challenge.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning G.1 Teachers recognize and respond to the reality that in any group, children’s skills will vary and they will need different levels of support. Teachers also know that any one child’s level of skill and need for support will vary over time.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning G.2 Scaffolding can take a variety of forms; for example, giving the child a hint, adding a cue, modeling the skill, or adapting the materials and activities. It can be provided in a variety of contexts, not only in planned learning experiences but also in play, daily routines, and outdoor activities.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning G.3 Teachers can provide the scaffolding (e.g., the teacher models the skill) or peers can (e.g., the child’s learning buddy models); in either case, it is the teacher who recognizes and plans for each child’s need for support and assistance.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning H Teachers know how and when to use the various learning formats/contexts most strategically.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning H.2 Teachers think carefully about which learning format is best for helping children achieve a desired goal, given the children’s ages, development, abilities, temperaments, etc.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning I When children have missed some of the learning opportunities necessary for school success (most often children from low- income households), programs and teachers provide them with even more extended, enriched, and intensive learning experiences than are provided to their peers.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning I.3 Recognizing the self-regulatory, linguistic, cognitive, and social benefits that high-quality play affords, teachers do not reduce play opportunities that these children critically need. Instead, teachers scaffold and model aspects of rich, mature play.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning J Teachers make experiences in their class- rooms accessible and responsive to all children and their needs—including children who are English language learners, have special needs or disabilities, live in poverty or other challenging circumstances, or are from different cultures.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning J.1 Teachers incorporate a wide variety of experiences, materials and equipment, and teaching strategies to accommodate the range of children’s individual differences in development, skills and abilities, prior experiences, needs, and interests.
• (2) Teaching to enhance development and learning J.4 Teachers are prepared to meet special needs of individual children, including children with disabilities and those who exhibit unusual interests and skills. Teachers use all the strategies identified here, consult with appropriate specialists and the child’s family, and see that the child gets the adaptations and specialized services he or she needs to succeed in the early childhood setting.
• (3) Planning curriculum to achieve important goals D Teachers make meaningful connections a priority in the learning experiences they provide children, to reflect that all learners, and certainly young children, learn best when the concepts, language, and skills they encounter are related to something they know and care about, and when the new learnings are themselves interconnected in meaningful, coherent ways.
• (3) Planning curriculum to achieve important goals D.2 Teachers plan curriculum experiences to draw on children’s own interests and introduce children to things likely to interest them, in recognition that developing and extending children’s interests is particularly important during the pre- school years, when children’s ability to focus their attention is in its early stages.
• (4) Assessing children’s development and learning A Assessment of young children’s progress and achievements is ongoing, strategic, and purposeful. The results of assessment are used to inform the planning and implementing of experiences, to communicate with the child’s family, and to evaluate and improve teachers’ and the program’s effectiveness.
• (4) Assessing children’s development and learning C There is a system in place to collect, make sense of, and use the assessment information to guide what goes on in the classroom (formative assessment). Teachers use this information in planning curriculum and learning experiences and in moment-to- moment interactions with children—that is, teachers continually engage in assessment for the purpose of improving teaching and learning.
• (4) Assessing children’s development and learning D The methods of assessment are appropriate to the developmental status and experiences of young children, and they recognize individual variation in learners and allow children to demonstrate their competence in different ways. Methods appropriate to the classroom assessment of young children, therefore, include results of teachers’ observations of children, clinical interviews, collections of children’s work samples, and their performance on authentic activities.
• (4) Assessing children’s development and learning E Assessment looks not only at what children can do independently but also at what they can do with assistance from other children or adults. Therefore, teachers assess children as they participate in groups and other situations that are providing scaffolding.