2235
DEVELOPMENTALLY-APPROPRIATE TEACHING STRATEGIES
POLICY
The Board of Education recognizes that children enter school diverse in their physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development. Therefore, teaching and learning activities in all primary grades shall meet each child's developmental readiness within Department of Education approved guidelines. Teachers shall appropriately adapt activities based on student data indicative of readiness that have been obtained through sources, such as timely and appropriate assessment, careful observation, interviews of parents, and examination of preschool records, to ensure that all children learn and make adequate progress. Teachers shall make every effort, within available resources, to provide for children who demonstrate special interests and skills or exhibit greater than normal difficulty in learning.
The Department of Education shall provide all teachers and school administrators with research-based information about how all children develop and learn, including: (1) the interrelatedness and interdependency of children's physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development; (2) a planned approach to the development of knowledge and skills as reflected in the Hawaii Content and Performance Standards; (3) recognition that development progresses at varying rates among children within an age group and within individual children; (4) the importance of capitalizing on optimal periods for specific types of development and learning; (5) recognition that children come to understand their world through active physical involvement, social engagement, and culturally-transmitted knowledge; and (6) the importance of play in a child's development. Teachers shall apply knowledge of the above characteristics of students to ensure that all students will receive developmentally-appropriate instruction to support attainment of the Hawaii Content and Performance Standards.
Approved: 01/99
Amended: 01/05/06