Giving Education a Personal Touch
Pre-K students lining up for small group rotations.
Here at PCPK, we aim to provide high-quality, individualized education from early childhood to kindergarten.
Why is individualization important?
The first step in understanding individualized education is understanding that each child is unique. Every child learns in their way and at their own pace. This means that an educator can only lump some of their first-grade students into the same reading group. If an educator does this, they will quickly find that “Student A” can’t identify any letters, “Student B” is reading at a fourth-grade level, and “Student C” is right in the middle.
Without the opportunity for individualized education, each of those students may possibly become bored, frustrated, lost, or uninterested in learning.
Whole-group activities, like circle time, can be a good tool in moderation. At PCPK, we balance class-wide activities with data-driven small groups.
Children’s differences should be respected.
As educators, it should be a consistent goal to ensure all learners are heard and their learning styles and abilities are offered validation and respect. There are a variety of methodologies educators can use in the classroom. These include, but are not limited to, inquiry-based learning, problem-based learning, collaborative experiences, student-led play, student-to-student mentoring, and more.
A key component to individualized learning in education is ensuring an educator maintains their growth mindset as well as the ability to receive feedback from their team. This also means that an educator must first get to know their students and build a relationship with each of them. From there, educators can expand their lessons to meet students where they are in their learning progress.
A further component of individualization in education is understanding the expectations of appropriate developmental standards for children. For example, if a child is struggling to learn their colors, requiring students to participate in drills for color recognition will not necessarily lead to a positive association with learning for students. If a student enjoys stickers, an educator can create an interactive game with stickers and color recognition.
A parent works on matching numbers with a small group of preschool students with similar needs.
Differentiation matters.
A teacher can also offer differentiation within their classroom. Differentiation is a deeper analysis of individualization in the classroom. It includes challenging students in an appropriate method that leads to a positive and healthy outcome for their learning accomplishments. If a student struggles to understand the concepts, a teacher cannot force them to suddenly learn the concepts by forcing them to complete the same tasks as other students. Instead, a teacher can offer fun and engaging tasks that allow students to build upon their skills and work up to more challenging concepts.
It is my hope that at PCPK, we regularly make observations of students and communicate as a team and with parents to ensure we are creating the best possible learning environment for all students.
Written by Emily Kavanaugh
Director of PCPK
B.S. in Elementary Education