How Your Students Develop – A Short Profile of Every Age

Planning curriculum, programs, and activities takes care and intention. We can start with a clear-eyed understanding of your students  by taking a page from child development theory .

Here’s what we do at Behrman House:

We start with a comprehensive list of the children’s developmental attributes. For example, here are those of a seven-year-old:

  • - becoming more introspective
  • - is richly imaginative, but interested in here and now
  • - looks for fair play and honesty
  • - growing sense of community beyond home and school
  • - assimilates new information when presented in familiar examples

(*For a more detailed profile of all age groups, click here)

How can you use this knowledge in your curriculum planning and teaching?

Developmental insights such as these help us create all of our learning materials. When we created Let’s Discover Kindness for 1st-2nd graders, for example, we used developmental profiles to choose to include role play scenarios that tapped into familiar experiences and simple reflection activities.

Similarly, developmental attributes of 13-year-olds include a greater interest and power in reasoning and discussion, and language as a useful tool for expressing values. So we used pedagogical tools such as debates, and opportunities to consider alternate viewpoints when we developed More of Today’s Hot Topics for that age group. 

“Trends in education come and go, but norms in how children grow and develop are timeless,” says David Behrman, publisher. “It’s easy to lose sight of that at a time when so many things in society are rapidly changing. Being mindful of the big picture helps us as educators reach students in ways that tap into their emerging skills and interests, in an age-appropriate way.”

We’ve added expert-created development profiles of students ages three to 17 to our collection of planning resources on our website. Find it with other professional development tools under Plan at behrmanhouse.com

 

Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter and connect with us on social media!