Educating Young Children Volume 1 – Spring 2025 | Page 73

Small Groups in the Primary Grades

School-age children take increasing responsibility for their decision making and learning choices. To encourage small groups in the primary grades, educators can

› Organize their classroom spaces to include comfortable areas for collaborative learning; silent and shared reading spaces; and learning centers for playful exploration of language, writing, math, science, and fine motor skills

› Organize the daily schedule with flexibility so that children can work collaboratively or become deeply engaged in writing, investigating problems, or finishing projects

› Provide opportunities for collaborative learning and play and for children to exchange ideas with their peers

› Include a range of hands-on, play-based learning experiences, such as play / learning centers to extend children’ s engagement with the concepts from teacher-directed and collaborative learning experiences

Adapted from Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs: Serving Children from Birth Through Age 8, 4th edition.

Sarah Parks-Reese is the assistant director of kindergarten readiness at the Indiana Department of Education in Indianapolis, Indiana, and an online adjunct professor of early childhood education at Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion, Indiana.

Photographs: p. 64 © Getty Images; pp. 65, 68-69, 70-71 © NAEYC; pp, 66-67 courtesy of the author Copyright © 2025 by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. See permissions and reprints online at NAEYC. org / resources / permissions.