BJU Press Blog

teaching

What Is Age-Appropriate Learning?

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green bean casseroleMy go-to fall/winter side dish is green bean casserole. It’s impossible to mess up the recipe because there’s no such thing as too many fried onions or too much cream of mushroom soup. I always make green bean casserole for Thanksgiving. It’s gotten to the point that my aunt doesn’t even ask me what I’m bringing to her house for the family meal.

Should our roles ever reverse and the whole family came over to my place for the Thanksgiving feast, I think I might be in trouble. Despite the hours I spend in the kitchen happily cooking and baking, I’ve never had to roast a turkey. There’s not even a roasting pan in my kitchen.

The pleasure I find in preparing food can quickly turn into frustration or anxiety when I’m asked to prepare a dish that goes beyond my skill level. It’s the same way with your child’s academic learning. You want to challenge her potential but not frustrate or overwhelm it. What she learns should be age appropriate.

Is your child’s education the right kind of learning for her age? Your child’s learning should be guided by what is right for her age based on her cognitive, emotional, social, language, and motor skill development. There are three elements that contribute to age-appropriate learning—teaching style, book layout, and student assessment.

        1. Teaching Style—How a topic or subject is approached can make a difference in your child’s learning. A science lecture on frogs’ muscular system is not appropriate for a seven-year-old any more than playing leap frog would be for a teenager (although you might be debated with on that point!). Activities, discussions, lectures, guided questions, and manipulatives all have their place. How you teach should also be influenced by your child’s learning style.
        2. Book Layout—Illustrations are the more obvious contribution to age appropriate learning with their numbers, sizes, and styles (painting versus photograph, imaginative versus realistic, simple versus detailed) varying by grade. But the text in a book also plays an important role. Font size, color, and placement all assist in captivating your child’s attention and inviting her to learn. Compare these pages from BJU Press Reading 2 (page 45 on left) and Explorations in Literature (page 89 on right).BJU Press Reading 2 page 45 and BJU PRess Explorations in Literature page 89
        3. Student Assessment—This element may sound scary, but it’s simply an evaluation of your child’s understanding. Having your five-year-old find the triangle would be an appropriate assessment and so would asking your twelve-year-old to label triangles as acute or obtuse. Assessments can be questions, writings, or presentations. They can also be formal (like tests) or informal (like discussions). The purpose of an assessment is to find out if your child understands what you’re teaching.

How age appropriate is your child’s learning? It’s important to know whether she is overwhelmed or not challenged enough. Your child probably has strengths and weaknesses in different areas than other students her age. Here’s my challenge to you: Find good materials that increase your child’s learning appropriately. As you teach at home, customize her education by slowing down or speeding up.

You’ll be glad you did, and she probably will be too.

From Student to Teacher

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One summer as a young teenager, I begged my parents not to give me a teaching role in our backyard Bible club. My big sister was the one that all the kids adored, and besides, I got stage fright, even in front of a crowd of five-year-olds. Somehow, I still ended up teaching the missions story for the club. At the first meeting, I read the story directly from the book, making little eye contact with the children. To my surprise, they eagerly listened, and I slowly started to engage them more.

Another summer during my high school years, my parents sent me to a Christian youth camp that focused on preparing teens to lead Bible clubs. We learned how to creatively introduce, explain, and review memory verses and songs. We took notes on the components of a Bible lesson and the basics of classroom management. We practiced sharing the gospel. After our training, we spent the rest of the summer going into the neighborhoods of our city and leading week-long Bible clubs. It was during that time that my heart was irreversibly captured with a love for teaching children, especially teaching them biblical truth.

photograph of a teen teaching a group of children at a Bible clubThe next few years brought more opportunities to sharpen my newfound desire to educate—from teaching in Sunday school, vacation Bible school, and after-school Bible clubs to teaching English as a second language in China. I eagerly consumed articles, books, and courses on effective teaching. I even took notes while observing my favorite teachers at church, on BJU Press Distance Learning videos, and at college. Now I have the joy of teaching my own children, the most challenging and rewarding teaching role I’ve ever had. I’m thankful my parents gently pushed me into teaching, unlikely candidate though I was.

I’d like to encourage parents to think of ways they can give their teenage students opportunities to develop teaching skills. It may not come naturally, but students can learn through avenues such as mentoring under an experienced Sunday school teacher, taking a teaching class, reading a book on effective teaching, practicing with younger siblings, and volunteering for children’s ministries at their local church.

The benefits your students will receive from improving their speech and communication skills through teaching might initiate a lifelong career. Learning to teach will likely be an asset in their future families (perhaps even through home education), church ministries, and careers. How will you encourage your teenage students to step out from behind the student desk, face the crowd, and teach?

Apples for My Teachers

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Autumn is the season for apples. Nearly every teacher has been the recipient of an apple before—at least the glass, gold, or plastic variety if not a real one. Giving a teacher an apple is a student’s way of saying thank you for helping him or her understand something. An apple is both tart and sweet. Like apples, some lessons can be swallowed with joy, and others go down with a sharp tang. Today I would like to say thank you for both kinds of lessons. Here are some apples for my teachers.

Image of a basket full of apples next to yellow flowers.

To my kindergarten teacher—thank you for getting so excited when I told you I had trusted Jesus as my Savior the night before. Thank you for asking me to share the news with the other students. You gave me my first early taste of the magnitude of what Christ had done for me and the importance of sharing it with others.

To my first-grade teacher—thank you for cleaning the blood off my chin when I disobediently ran after you told me to walk and fell on the slippery floor. Thank you for still letting me be a Pilgrim in the Thanksgiving play the next day, and for not allowing the other kids to tease me about my stitches. I still have the scar, and I still have the memory of your kindness.

To my second-grade teacher—I remember all those red checkmarks on the clock page in my math book. I honestly thought I would grow up never being able to tell what time it was. Thank you for working a little extra with me so that I could understand.

To my fifth-grade teacher—thank you for not letting me get out of doing oral book reports, even when I cried at the thought of standing and speaking in front of the class. Now I stand in front of a class on a regular basis. I’m so glad you stretched me to trust God and overcome my fears.

To my high school English teacher—thank you for assigning us so much writing. Thank you for teaching us that we could write “I don’t know what to write” in our journals until we thought of more words to put down. I wrote that statement less and less often as the years went on because there was just so much to say, and I felt like you would be interested in whatever I put on the page.

To my high school math and science teachers—thank you for making me think. Thank you for making me work hard. Thank you for bringing joy even to subjects that were difficult for me.

To my high school speech teacher—thank you for letting me do duet acting with my best friend for the speech contest. You will probably never know how many nights I spent wakeful hours dreading that contest. But being able to act with a friend took almost all the fear away and actually made it fun. Thank you for teaching me that with God’s help, we can actually enjoy doing hard things.

To my high school history teacher—thank you for challenging me to think critically about the events in my history book. Thank you for teaching me that if we don’t learn from the mistakes of the past, we are in danger of repeating them.

To all my teachers—you would probably be surprised how often I still think of you. Now that I’m a teacher too, I realize how much I learned from you—not just from what you said, but from who you were and how you lived. I realize how you prayed, labored, and sacrificed to invest in my life. You deserve so much more than an apple. Thank you is the very least I can say. May the Lord bless you as richly as He has blessed me through you.