Play and

Developmentally
Appropriate Practices in
Early Childhood Education
 What is Play and
Developmentally
Appropriate Practices
in Early Childhood
Education?
➢way of teaching that meets young children
where they are
➢all teaching practices should be appropriate to
children’s age and developmental status
➢does not mean making things easier for
children
➢based on knowledge – not on assumptions -
of how children learn and develop
Developmentally Appropriate Practice (also known as
DAP) is a teaching perspective in early childhood
education where a teacher nurtures a child’s
development (social, emotional, physical, and
cognitive) based on the following:
➢theories of child development;
➢what is individually important uncovered through
assessment;
➢the child’s cultural background (community, family
history, and family structure).
National Association for the Education of Young
Children (NAEYC) adopted this approach in 1987.
NAEYC outlines five key areas of early learning
practices for effective teaching, which include: creating
a caring community of learners, teaching to enhance
development and learning, planning curriculum to
achieve important goals, assessing children’s
development and learning and establishing
reciprocal relationships with families.
❑ Creating a caring community of learners
✓ early childhood settings tend to be children’s first
communities …
outside the home,
the character of these communities
✓ how children expect to be treated
✓ how they treat
✓ “community of learners” that supports all children to
develop and learn
❑ Creating a caring community of learners
✓role of the community is to provide a physical,
emotional, and cognitive environment conducive
to that development and learning.
✓Consistent
✓positive
✓caring relationships
❑ Creating a caring community of learners

✓it is the responsibility of all members of the

learning community to consider and contribute
to one another’s well-being and learning.
✓to create a caring community of learners,
practitioners ensure that the following occur for
children from birth through the primary grades.
 A. Each member of the community is valued by the others

✓ By observing and participating in the community

✓ Each child has unique strengths, interests, and
perspectives to contribute.
✓ Children learn to respect and acknowledge
differences of all kinds and to
value each person.
B. Relationships are an important context through which
children develop and learn

✓ construct their understandings about the world

around them
✓ play together, collaborate on investigations and
projects, and talk with peers and adults enhance
children’s development and learning.
B. Relationshipsare an important context through
which children develop and learn

✓ Interacting in small groups provides a context

for children to extend their thinking, build on
one another’s ideas, and cooperate to solve
problems.
C. Each member of the community respects and is
accountable to the others to behave in a way that is
conducive to the learning and well-being of all.

1. Teachers help children develop responsibility and self-

regulation.
2. Teachers are responsible at all times for all children under
their supervision, monitoring, anticipating, preventing, and
redirecting behaviors.
3. Teachers set clear and reasonable limits on children’s behavior
and apply those limits consistently.
4. Teachers listen to and acknowledge children’s feelings and
frustrations, respond with respect in ways that children can
understand, guide children to resolve conflicts, and model skills
that help children to solve their own problems.
5. Teachers themselves demonstrate high levels of responsibility
and self-regulation in their interactions with other adults and
with children.
D. Practitioners design and maintain the physical
environment to protect the health and safety of the
learning community members, specifically in support of
young children’s physiological needs for activity, sensory
stimulation, fresh air, rest, and nourishment.

E. Practitioners ensure members of the community feel

psychologically safe. The overall social and emotional
climate is positive.
1. Interactions among community members (administrators,
teachers, families, children).
2. Teachers foster in children and enjoyment of and
engagement in learning.
3. Teachers ensure that the environment is organized and the
schedule follows an orderly routine that provides a stable
structure within which development and learning can take
place.
4. Children hear and see their home language and culture
reflected in the daily interactions and activities of the
classroom.

❑ Teaching to enhance development and learning

✓ From birth, a child’s relationships and interactions with

adults are critical determinants of development and
learning.
❑ Teaching to enhance development and learning

✓ provide an optimal balance of adult-guided and child-guided

experiences.
✓ “Adult-guided experience proceeds primarily along the lines of the
teacher’s goals, but is also shaped by the children’s active
engagement; child-guided experience proceeds primarily along the
lines of children’s interests and actions, with strategic teacher
support.”
✓ learning experience is adult- or child guided.
The following describe teaching practices that are
developmentally appropriate for young children from birth
through the primary grades.
A. Teachers are responsible for fostering the caring learning
community through their teaching.

B. Teachers make it a priority to know each child well, and

also the people most significant in the child’s life.
1. Teachers establish positive, personal relationships with
each child and with each child’s family.
• Teachers talk with each child and family.
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.
3. Teachers are alert to signs of undue stress and traumatic
events in each child’s life and employ strategies to reduce stress
and support the development of resilience.
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.
children acquire specific concepts, skills, and abilities and by
building on prior experiences and understandings.
D. Teachers plan for learning experiences that effectively implement a
comprehensive curriculum so that children attain key goals across the
domains (physical, social, emotional, cognitive) and across the disciplines
(language literacy, including English acquisition, mathematics, social
studies, science, art, music, physical education, and health).

E. Teachers plan the environment, schedule, and daily activities to

promote each child’s learning and development.
1. Teachers arrange firsthand, meaningful experiences that are
intellectually and creatively stimulating, invite exploration and
investigation, and engage children’s active, sustained involvement.
2. Teachers present children with opportunities to make meaningful
choices, especially in child-choice activity periods.
3. Teachers organize the daily and weekly schedule to provide children
with extended blocks of time in which to engage in sustained play,
investigation, exploration, and interaction (with adults and peers).
4. Teachers provide experiences, materials, and interactions to enable
children to engage in play that allows them to stretch their boundaries to
the fullest in their imagination, language, interaction, and self-regulation
as well as to practice their newly acquired skills.
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.
1. help children develop initiative, teachers encourage them to choose
and plan their own learning activities.
2. stimulate children’s thinking and extend their learning, teachers pose
problems, ask questions, and make comments and suggestions.
3. extend the range of children’s interests and the scope of their
thought, teachers present novel experiences and introduce stimulating
ideas, problems, experiences, or hypotheses.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. enhance children’s conceptual understanding, teachers use various
strategies, including intensive interview and conversation, that
encourage children to reflect on and “revisit” their experiences.
7. To encourage and foster children’s learning and development, teachers
avoid generic praise (“Good job!”) and instead give specific feedback
(“You got the same number when you counted the beans again!”).
G. Teachers know how and when to scaffold children’s learning

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.
2. Scaffolding can take a variety of forms .
3. Teachers can provide the scaffolding or peers can.
H. Teachers know how and when to use the various learning
formats/contexts most strategically.
1. Teachers understand that each major learning format or context.
2. Teachers think carefully about helping children achieve a desired
goal, given the children’s ages, development, abilities,
temperaments, etc.
I. When children have missed some of the learning opportunities

1. Teachers take care not to place these children under added pressure.
2. To enable these children to make optimal progress, teachers are highly intentional
in use of time, and they focus on key skills and abilities through highly engaging
experiences.
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.
o Instead, teachers scaffold and model aspects of rich, mature play.
J. Teachers make experiences in their classrooms accessible and
responsive to all children and their needs.
1. Teachers incorporate a wide variety of experiences, materials and equipment,
and teaching strategies.
2. Teachers bring each child’s home culture and language into the shared culture of
the learning community .
3. Teachers include all children in all of the classroom activities and encourage
children to be inclusive in their behaviors and interactions with peers.
4. Teachers are prepared to meet special needs of individual children.
5. Teachers use all the strategies identified here, consult with appropriate
specialists and the child’s family.
 3 Planning Curriculums to achieve important goals

The curriculum consists of the knowledge, skills, abilities, and

understandings children are to acquire and the plans for the learning
experiences.

✓ Implementing a curriculum always yields outcomes of some kind

✓ The curriculum does this through learning experiences
✓ children learn more in programs where there is a well-planned and implemented
curriculum
✓ Teachers use the curriculum and their knowledge of children’s interests
✓ ensure that children’s learning experiences
✓ teachers have flexibility

The following describe curriculum planning that is developmentally appropriate

for children from birth through the primary grades.
A. Desired goals that are important in young children’s learning and development
have been identified and clearly articulated.
1. Teachers consider what children should know, understand, and be able to do across
the domains of physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development.
2. If state standards or other mandates are in place, teachers become thoroughly
familiar with these.
3. Whatever the source of the goals, teachers and administrators ensure that goals
are clearly defined.

B. The program has a comprehensive, effective curriculum that targets

the identified goals, including all those foundational for later learning
and school success.
1. Whether or not teachers were participants in the decision about the curriculum.
2. If the program is using published curriculum products, teachers make adaptations
to meet the learning needs of the children they teach.
3. If practitioners develop the curriculum themselves.

C. Teachers use the curriculum framework in their planning to ensure

there is ample attention to important learning goals and to enhance
the coherence of the classroom experience for children.

1. Teachers are familiar with the understandings and skills key for that age group in
each domain
2. teachers use the curriculum framework along with what they know (from their
observation and other assessment) .
▪ They carefully shape and adapt the experiences.
3. determining the sequence and pace of learning experiences.
▪ Teachers use these with an eye to moving all children forward in all areas,
adapting when necessary for individual children.
D. Teachers make meaningful connections a priority in the learning
experiences.
1. Teachers plan curriculum experiences that integrate children’s learning within and
across the domains .
2. Teachers plan curriculum experiences to draw on children’s own interests and
introduce children to things likely to interest them.
3. Teachers plan curriculum experiences that follow logical sequences and that allow
for depth and focus.
E. Teachers collaborate with those teaching in the preceding and
subsequent grade levels, sharing information about children and
working to increase the continuity and coherence across ages/grades,
while protecting the integrity and appropriateness of practices at each
level.

F. In the care of infants and toddlers, practitioners plan curriculum

(although they may not always call it that). They develop plans for the
important routines and experiences that will promote children’s
learning and development and enable them to attain desired
goals.
 4 Assessing children’s development and learning
✓ Assessment of children’s development and learning is essential for teachers and
programs.
✓ a tool for monitoring children’s progress toward a program’s desired goals.
✓ the experiences and the assessments are linked; both are aligned with the
program’s desired outcomes or goals for children.
✓ Teachers cannot be intentional about helping children to progress unless they
know where each child is with respect to learning goals.
✓ Sound assessment of young children is challenging because they develop and
learn.
✓ sound assessment takes into consideration such factors as a child’s facility in
English and stage of linguistic development in the home language.
✓ Assessment that is not reliable or valid, or that is used to label, track, or
otherwise harm young children, is not developmentally appropriate practice.

The following describe sound assessment that is developmentally appropriate

for children from birth through the primary grades.
A. Assessment of young children’s progress and achievements is ongoing, strategic,
and purposeful.
B. Assessment focuses on children’s progress toward goals that are developmentally
and educationally significant.

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.
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.
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.

F. In addition to this assessment by teachers, input from families as well as children’s

own evaluations of their work are part of the program’s overall assessment
strategy.

G. Assessments are tailored to a specific purpose and used only for the purpose
for which they have been demonstrated to produce reliable, valid information.
H. Decisions that have a major impact on children.

I. When a screening or other assessment identifies children who may have special
learning or developmental needs, there is appropriate follow-up, evaluation, and, if
indicated, referral.
 5 Establishing reciprocal relationships with families
✓ deep knowledge of child development principles and of the program’s children.
✓ The younger the child, the more necessary it is for practitioners to acquire this
particular knowledge through relationships with children’s families.
✓ Practice is not developmentally appropriate if the program limits “parent
involvement” to scheduled events (valuable though these may be), or if the
program/family relationship has a strong “parent education” orientation.
✓ Parents do not feel like partners in the relationship.
✓ approaches do not adequately convey the complexity of the partnership
between teachers and families that is a fundamental element of good practice.
 The following describe the kind of relationships that are developmentally
appropriate for children (from birth through the primary grades), in which family
members and practitioners work together as members of the learning community.

A. In reciprocal relationships between practitioners and families.

B. Practitioners work in collaborative partnerships with families, establishing and
maintaining regular, frequent two-way communication with them.
C. Family members are welcome in the setting, and there are multiple opportunities
for family participation.
D. Teachers acknowledge a family’s choices and goals for the child and respond
with sensitivity and respect to those preferences and concerns.
E. Teachers and the family share with each other their knowledge of the particular
child and understanding of child development and learning.

F. Practitioners involve families as a source of information about the child (before

program entry and on an ongoing basis) and engage them in the planning for their
child.

G. The program links families with a range of services, based on identified

resources, priorities, and concerns.
 END OF THE
PRESENTATION