UNIVERSITY OF CALOOCAN CITY

Biglang Awa St., Corner Catleya St., EDSA, Caloocan City

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION

FIELD STUDY 1
 
SUBJECT CODE: FS1

TOPIC OR LESSON: MODULE 2: Learning Diversity: Developmental Characteristics,

Needs and Interests
WEEK: 1
OVERVIEW:
This is the first experiential course, which will immerse a future teacher to actual classroom situation
and learning environment where direct observation of teaching and learning episodes that focuses on the
application of educational theories learned in content and pedagogy courses will be made. Observations on
learner’s behavior, motivation, teacher’s strategies of teaching, classroom management, assessment in learning
among others shall be given emphasis.
A portfolio shall be required in the course.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:
1. Discuss the characteristics, needs and interest of learners in different development levels
2. Apply the strategies/ methodologies that could help foster learning in different levels of development

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
At the end of the lesson, the students should be able to:
1. Describe the characteristics, needs and interest of learners from different developmental levels
2. Determine the theories and philosophies accompanied in each of the learner’s developmental levels
3. Identify strategies/ methodologies that could help foster learning in different levels of development

ENGAGE:
The students will watch the short clip about diversity and answer the questions that follow:
[Link]
[Link] would you relate the video to your personal life?
2. How does the clip made you realized after watching it?

EXPLORE:
Students will be asked to watch videos about school facilities. Please click the link,

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EXPLAIN:
To further understand the diversity of learning, the teacher will discuss the lesson using the videos
presented.

A video lesson can also be used to tailor the lesson. [Link]

 Principles or characteristics describe typical development as a predictable and orderly process; that is,
we can predict how most children will develop and that they will develop at the same rate and at about the
same time as other children. Although there are individual differences in children’s personalities, activity
levels, and timing of developmental milestones, such as ages and stages, the principles and characteristics of
development are universal patterns.
An understanding of the principles of development helps us to plan appropriate activities and
stimulating and enriching experiences for children, and provides a basis for understanding how to encourage
and support young children’s learning.

Principles of Development
1. Development proceeds from the head downward.
 This is called the “cephalocaudle” principle.
 This principle describes the direction of growth and development.
 According to this principle, the child gains control of the head first, then the arms, and then the
legs.
 Infants develop control of the head and face movements within the first two months after birth.
 In the next few months, they are able to lift themselves up by using their arms. By 6 to 12
months of age, infants start to gain leg control and may be able to crawl, stand, or walk.
 Coordination of arms always precedes coordination of legs.
2. Development proceeds from the center of the body outward.
 This is the principle of “proximodistal” development that also describes the direction of
development.
 This means that the spinal cord develops before outer parts of the body.
 The child’s arms develop before the hands and the hands and feet develop before the fingers
and toes.
 Finger and toe muscles (used in fine motor dexterity) are the last to develop in physical
development.
3. Development depends on maturation and learning.
 Maturation refers to the sequential characteristic of biological growth and development. The
biological changes occur in sequential order and give children new abilities.
 Changes in the brain and nervous system account largely for maturation. These changes in the
brain and nervous system help children to improve in thinking (cognitive) and motor
(physical) skills.
 Also, children must mature to a certain point before they can progress to new skills
(Readiness).
 For example, a four-month-old cannot use language because the infant’s brain has not matured
enough to allow the child to talk. By two years old, the brain has developed further and with
help from others, the child will have the capacity to say and understand words.
 Also, a child can’t write or draw until he has developed the motor control to hold a pencil or
crayon. Maturational patterns are innate, that is, genetically programmed.
4. Development proceeds from the simple (concrete) to the more complex.
 Children use their cognitive and language skills to reason and solve problems. For example,
learning relationships between things (how things are similar), or classification, is an
important ability in cognitive development.
 The cognitive process of learning how an apple and orange are alike begins with the most
simplistic or concrete thought of describing the two.
 Seeing no relationship, a preschool child will describe the objects according to some property
of the object, such as color. Such a response would be, “An apple is red (or green) and an
 orange is orange.” The first level of thinking about how objects are alike is to give a
description or functional relationship (both concrete thoughts) between the two objects. “An
apple and orange are round” and “An apple and orange are alike because you eat them” are
typical responses of three, four and five year olds.
 As children develop further in cognitive skills, they are able to understand a higher and more
complex relationship between objects and things; that is, that an apple and orange exist in a
class called fruit. The child cognitively is then capable of classification.
5. Growth and development is a continuous process.
 As a child develops, he or she adds to the skills already acquired and the new skills become
the basis for further achievement and mastery of skills. Most children follow a similar pattern.
 Also, one stage of development lays the foundation for the next stage of development. For
example, in motor development, there is a predictable sequence of developments that occur
before walking. The infant lifts and turns the head before he or she can turn over. Infants can
move their limbs (arms and legs) before grasping an object. Mastery of climbing stairs
involves increasing skills from holding on to walking alone.
 By the age of four, most children can walk up and down stairs with alternating feet. As in
maturation, in order for children to write or draw, they must have developed the manual (hand)
control to hold a pencil and crayon.
6. Growth and development proceed from the general to specific.
 In motor development, the infant will be able to grasp an object with the whole hand before
using only the thumb and forefinger.
 The infant’s first motor movements are very generalized, undirected, and reflexive, waving
arms or kicking before being able to reach or creep toward an object.
 Growth occurs from large muscle movements to more refined (smaller) muscle movements.
7. There are individual rates of growth and development.
 Each child is different and the rates at which individual children grow is different. Although
the patterns and sequences for growth and development are usually the same for all children,
the rates at which individual children reach developmental stages will be different.
 Understanding this fact of individual differences in rates of development should cause us to be
careful about using and relying on age and stage characteristics to describe or label children.
 There is a range of ages for any developmental task to take place. This dismisses the notion of
the “average child”. Some children will walk at ten months while others walk a few months
older at eighteen months of age. Some children are more active while others are more passive.
 This does not mean that the passive child will be less intelligent as an adult. There is no
validity to comparing one child’s progress with or against another child.
 Rates of development also are not uniform within an individual child. For example, a child’s
intellectual development may progress faster than his emotional or social development.

Guidelines and recommendations for developmentally appropriate practice are based on the following
nine principles and their implications for early childhood education professional practice.

1. Development and learning are dynamic processes that reflect the complex interplay between a child’s
biological characteristics and the environment, each shaping the other as well as future patterns of
growth.
 Some children appear to be more susceptible than others to the effects of environmental
influence—both positive and negative—reflecting individual differences at play. For children
facing adverse circumstances, including trauma, the buffering effects of caring, consistent
relationships—with family and other community members but also in high-quality early
childhood programs—are also important to note.
2. All domains of child development—physical development, cognitive development, social and
emotional development, and linguistic development (including bilingual or multilingual development),
as well as approaches to learning—are important; each domain both supports and is supported by the
others.
 Early childhood educators are responsible for fostering children’s development and learning in
all these domains as well as in general learning competencies and executive functioning,
which include attention, working memory, self-regulation, reasoning, problem solving, and
approaches to learning.
 Changes in one domain often impact other areas and highlight each area’s importance. For
example, as children begin to crawl or walk, they gain new possibilities for exploring the
world. This mobility in turn affects both their cognitive development and their ability to satisfy
their curiosity, underscoring the importance of adaptations for children with disabilities that
limit their mobility.
 Likewise, language development influences a child’s ability to participate in social interaction
with adults and other children; such interactions, in turn, support further language
development as well as further social, emotional, and cognitive development.
3. Play promotes joyful learning that fosters self-regulation, language, cognitive and social competencies
as well as content knowledge across disciplines. Play is essential for all children, birth through age 8.
 Play (e.g., self-directed, guided, solitary, parallel, social, cooperative, onlooker, object,
fantasy, physical, constructive, and games with rules) is the central teaching practice that
facilitates young children’s development and learning.
 Play develops young children’s symbolic and imaginative thinking, peer relationships,
language (English and/or additional languages), physical development, and problem-solving
skills.
 All young children need daily, sustained opportunities for play, both indoors and outdoors.
Play helps children develop large-motor and fine-motor physical competence, explore and
make sense of their world, interact with others, express and control their emotions, develop
symbolic and problem-solving abilities, and practice emerging skills.
 Guided play gives educators opportunities to use children’s interests and creations to introduce
new vocabulary and concepts, model complex language, and provide children with multiple
opportunities to use words in context in children’s home languages as well as in English.
These meaningful and engaging experiences help children—including those in kindergarten
and the primary grades—build knowledge and vocabulary across subject areas and in
purposeful contexts (which is more effective than memorization of word lists).
4. Although general progressions of development and learning can be identified, variations due to
cultural contexts, experiences, and individual differences must also be considered.
 A pervasive characteristic of development is that children’s functioning, including their play,
becomes increasingly complex—in language, cognition, social interaction, physical
movement, problem solving, and virtually every other aspect. Increased organization and
memory capacity of the developing brain make it possible for children to combine simple
routines into more complex strategies with age.
 Development and learning also occur at varying rates from child to child and at uneven rates
across different areas for each child. Children’s demonstrated abilities and skills are often fluid
and may vary from day to day based on individual or contextual factors. For example, because
children are still developing the ability to direct their attention, a distraction in the
environment may result in a child successfully completing a puzzle one day but not the next.
In addition, some regression in observed skills is common before new developments are fully
achieved.
 For all of these reasons, the notion of “stages” of development has limited utility; a more
helpful concept may be to think of waves of development that allow for considerable overlap
without rigid boundaries.
5. Children are active learners from birth, constantly taking in and organizing information to create
meaning through their relationships, their interactions with their environment, and their overall
experiences.
 Even as infants, children are capable of highly complex thinking.
 Using information they gather through their interactions with people and things as well as their
observations of the world around them, they quickly create sophisticated theories to build their
conceptual understanding. They recognize patterns and make predictions that they then apply
to new situations.
 Infants appear particularly attuned to adults as sources of information, underscoring the
importance of consistent, responsive caregiving to support the formation of relationships.
 Cultural variations can be seen in these interactions, with implications for later development
and learning. For example, in some cultures, children are socialized to quietly observe
members of the adult community and to learn by pitching in (often through mimicking the
adults’ behaviors).
 In other cultures, adults make a point of getting a child’s attention to encourage one-on-one
interactions. Children socialized to learn through observing may quietly watch others without
asking for help, while those socialized to expect direct interaction may find it difficult to
maintain focus without frequent adult engagement.
 Early childhood educators need to understand the importance of creating a learning
environment that helps children develop social identities which do not privilege one group
over another. They must also be aware of the potential for implicit bias that may prejudice
their interactions with children of various social identities.
 Educators must also recognize that their nonverbal signals may influence children’s attitudes
toward their peers. For example, one recent study found that children will think a child who
receives more positive nonverbal signals from a teacher is perceived as a “better” or “smarter”
reader than a child who receives more negative nonverbal signals, regardless of that child’s
actual reading performance.50
6. Children’s motivation to learn is increased when their learning environment fosters their sense of
belonging, purpose, and agency. Curricula and teaching methods build on each child’s assets by
connecting their experiences in the school or learning environment to their home and community
settings.
 The sense of belonging requires both physical and psychological safety. Seeing connections
with home and community can be a powerful signal for children’s establishing psychological
safety; conversely, when there are few signs of connection for children, their psychological
safety is jeopardized.
 It is important for children to see people who look like them across levels of authority, to hear
and see their home language in the learning environment, and to have learning experiences
that are both culturally and linguistically affirming and responsive.
 Brain development, children’s feelings of safety and security are essential for the development
of higher-order thinking skills, so fostering that sense of belonging is essentially a brain-
building activity.
 Beginning in infancy, educators who follow children’s lead in noticing their interests and
responding with an appropriate action and conversation (including noting when interest
wanes) are helping children develop self-confidence and an understanding that their actions
make a difference.
 Educators can involve children in choosing or creating learning experiences that are
meaningful to them, helping them establish and achieve challenging goals, and reflecting on
their experiences and their learning.
 Educators can also intentionally build bridges between children’s interests and the subject
matter knowledge that will serve as the foundation for learning in later grades.
7. Children learn in an integrated fashion that cuts across academic disciplines or subject areas. Because
the foundations of subject area knowledge are established in early childhood, educators need subject-
 area knowledge, an understanding of the learning progressions within each subject area, and
pedagogical knowledge about teaching each subject area’s content effectively.
 Based on their knowledge of what is meaningful and engaging to each child, educators design
the learning environment and its activities to promote subject area knowledge across all
content areas as well as across all domains of development.
 Educators use their knowledge of learning progressions for different subjects, their
understanding of common conceptions and misconceptions at different points on the
progressions, and their pedagogical knowledge about each subject area to develop learning
activities that offer challenging but achievable goals for children that are also meaningful and
engaging.
 These activities will look very different for infants and toddlers than for second- and third-
graders and from one community of learners to another, given variations in culture and
context. Across all levels and settings, educators can help children observe and, over time,
reflect about phenomena in the world around them, gain vocabulary, and build their
conceptual understanding of the content of subjects across all disciplines.
8. Development and learning advance when children are challenged to achieve at a level just beyond their
current mastery and when they have many opportunities to reflect on and practice newly acquired
skills.
 Human beings, especially young children, are motivated to understand or do what is just
beyond their current understanding or mastery.
 Drawing upon the strengths and resources each child and family brings, early childhood
educators create a rich learning environment that stimulates that motivation and helps to
extend each child’s current skills, abilities, and interests.
 They make use of strategies to promote children’s undertaking and mastering of new and
progressively more advanced challenges. They also recognize the potential for implicit bias to
lead to lowered expectations, especially for children of color,59 and actively work to avoid
such bias.
 Educators contribute significantly to the child’s development by providing the support or
assistance that allows the child to succeed at a task that is just beyond their current level of
skill or understanding.
 This includes emotional support as well as strategies such as pointing out salient details or
providing other cues that can help children make connections to previous knowledge and
experiences.
9. Used responsibly and intentionally, technology and interactive media can be valuable tools for
supporting children’s development and learning.
 Young children live in a digital era in which technology and interactive media are pervasive.
 Given rapid changes in the types and uses of new media, the knowledge base of their effects
on children’s development and learning continues to grow and shift.
 Emerging evidence suggests a number of cautions, including concerns about negative
associations between excessive screen time and childhood obesity as well as negative impacts
on toddlers’ performance on measures of fine motor, communication, and social skills.
 Effective uses of technology and media by children are active, hands-on, engaging, and
empowering; give children control; provide adaptive scaffolds to help each child progress in
skills development at their individual pace; and are used as one of many options to support
children’s learning.
 Technology and interactive media should expand children’s access to new content and new
skills; they should not replace opportunities for real, hands-on experiences.

EVALUATION:
Vlog. Based on the discussion done, the students are expected to make a 2 to 3-minute vlog on the
topic: “As future educators, how would you address diversity in classroom?”
 Be sure that the students would be able to give points on diversity on Developmental Characteristics,
Needs and Interests

The students will be graded according to the following criteria:

Content- 50%
Ability to talk to the audience- 30%
Creativity- 20%

Submission is thru google classroom

REFERENCE:
Lucas, MR.D., Borabo, M. L., Bilbao, P. P. and Corpuz, B.B. 2020. Field Study 1- Observation of
Teaching-Learning in Actual School Environment. Lorimar Publishing
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