Child Development

At the start of the school year, as new classroom communities are forming, teachers begin planning ways to connect and form relationships with new students. By the middle of the year, a lot has changed: students have established routines, friendships have formed, school assignments and projects are underway, and students…

Traditions feel good. It is why we sing songs that we know well, why we go to the same store each week, and why we drive to work the same way even when we know there will be traffic. Similarly, there are many things we do in schools today because…

  Social distancing. Hybrid classrooms. Remote learning. These are among the many phrases that, in the past year, have become central to every educator’s vocabulary. But of the many terms that have become commonplace for educators since 2020, not all of them are new. While learning loss is a dilemma…

  All of us, students and teachers alike, approach the end of the school year with a wide variety of feelings. Just as teachers might be feeling burned out right now, it is normal for kids to be exhausted and disengaged in the final stretch. The end of the year…

Morning Meeting is a powerful way to start the day. It meets students’ needs for belonging, significance, and fun; provides students with an opportunity to practice social and emotional skills; and prepares students for the days’ learning. As a classroom teacher I enjoyed Morning Meeting with my students and looked…

Suddenly in the last few weeks, I can’t keep enough band aids stocked in my classroom. It seems like every time I look over, I see one of my students putting a band aid on a hangnail, paper cut, or other minuscule hurt. "My eye hurts," "my leg aches," and…

As a kid, I was fascinated by magnets: the force they exert, the way they could push and pull through tables, windows, and papers . . . sometimes without even touching! Now as an adult and a teacher, I've been thinking about those pairs of students I've taught whose attraction…

Natasha hurls a block when her carefully constructed tower falls down. Jose's flower drawing fails to resemble what he envisioned. Ripping up his paper, he stomps away. Abby tells Zara she can't join a math game. Zara scowls and shoves her classmate. Welcome to a fairly typical afternoon in my…

Sometimes, we forget that the children we teach are just that—children. Humor, silliness, playfulness, and showing off are hallmarks of childhood, and we should expect to experience some at every grade. Just for the fun of it Children often act silly or show off because these are ways to have…

Double-digit kids, tens can take on almost anything and love almost every minute of it. It didn’t take me long as a teacher to latch onto the understanding that if you want to teach in “middle childhood,” there is no better age than ten, no better grade than fifth. Children…

Nine is not always an easy age, but it is an age of growing social awareness, of intellectual stretching, wondering, and clamoring. These are the “ing” kids: the kids who are doing, questioning, doubting, arguing . . . sometimes seemingly just for the sake of it, with no clear goals…

One of my favorite times of the school year is right after the winter holiday break. That first week back reminds me of the first days of school—many students come in wearing new clothing and with a mix of nervousness, happiness, and excitement about being back in school. It is…

When eight-year-olds wake up in the morning, new plans for adventure are often percolating before their feet hit the floor. These plans usually involve a friend, or better yet, a group of friends. They may be as simple as rounding up a game of kickball or as complicated as starting…

Sevens notice everything . . . in detail. Their drawing, writing, and play construction is characteristically small, reduced to the microcosm, miniaturized to an intricate and controllable world they're trying to make perfect. Dioramas fit in shoeboxes, providing room enough for furniture, rugs, animals, vases with tiny flowers, people smaller…

No one is more industrious than a six-year-old. Sixes take on every activity with unbridled enthusiasm. Work is completed in no time at all, though quantity, not quality, is the measure that counts for them—along with trying new things. Being first to read a new book, spell a new word,…

Have you noticed an age shift in your class now that it's the middle of the year? It always seemed to me that when we'd come back from February vacation, my students had all grown an inch, seen some new movie that changed the lingo in the room, and were…

There's a discernible turning point in children's fifth year where the focused, centered, rule-following kindergartner becomes the full-fledged explorer. The growth spurt that's beginning will last through the sixth year. "Stretching" is a good word for this age. Children often stretch the truth, test the rules, see what they can…

In almost forty years of problem-solving with children, I learned how important it can be to stay open to surprises. Although I'd always try to figure out what was causing a problem before asking a student to work with me on solving it, my guesses were not always right. When…

Oh, what fun to be five! Busy and loving every moment of it, each day is a brand-new adventure, and if the structure of life around them is strong, they’re good to go. Fives are actively and selectively receptive, as they take in the world through their senses. They see,…

One recent January, I noticed something odd each time my class of first graders settled into their writing workshop tasks: A handful of children had begun writing with tiny, tiny letters. "You need to erase and write bigger," I would say, again and again. "That writing's too hard to read!"…

Question: What are your goals in sharing knowledge about child development with students’ families, and how do you go about it? A: One goal that my teaching partner and I have in talking with families about child development is to help them understand our teaching and assessment approaches. For example,…