What is Intentional Teaching in Early Childhood Education?

Intentional teaching is a purposeful and deliberate educational process that targets specific developmental goals and outcomes for young children. In early childhood education, this approach uses children's existing interests and strengths to create meaningful learning opportunities and support long-term growth.

By combining structured learning objectives with a child's natural curiosity, educators can engage children more deeply and guide them through foundational experiences.

What is intentional teaching?

Intentional teaching is an educational approach where educators are deliberate, purposeful, and thoughtful in their decisions and actions. It actively uses a child's specific needs, strengths, interests, and ideas to build a foundation for growth and development.

According to the Australian Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), intentional teaching requires educators to create a positive learning experience and environment while remaining acutely aware of what each child requires to succeed. This means you must determine the most appropriate way to interact with children on an individual basis. It also demands deliberate thinking, decision-making, and planning regarding the curriculum, relationship-building, and daily administrative duties.

Intentional teaching encompasses a variety of activities that support active learning, identity development, children's wellbeing, communication, and relationship building. It spans all core areas of early education, including social, emotional, physical, language, literacy, and cognitive development.

How does intentional teaching work in early childhood education?

Intentional teaching works by combining a child's self-guided discoveries and curiosities with an educator's purposeful observation and planning. As an intentional teacher, you take a calculated approach to educating a child by establishing a specific goal and developing a well-thought-out plan for achieving it.

You'll use well-defined objectives to engage children, regularly assess their progress, and make any necessary changes to your teaching strategies based on their performance. Although intentional teaching relies on deliberate plans, it also requires flexibility, allowing you to make spontaneous adjustments based on the children's needs in the moment. Your interactions are regularly impacted by the children's responses and competence levels, leading you to adapt your methods to achieve desired learning outcomes. A child's unexpected curiosity may introduce a new learning experience, guiding you to find creative ways to incorporate it into your curriculum.

When using intentional teaching in your childcare program, you purposefully incorporate materials and equipment designed for the children's skills, interests, and needs. Throughout your lesson planning, you must constantly consider what activities to use, when to introduce them, and for how long. You'll also determine if and how to address certain learning areas and how much time to dedicate to each lesson. This teaching method relies heavily on demonstrating skills to the children or guiding them with questions, prompts, and suggestions.

Intentional teaching doesn't just fall on the educator; the families' aspirations for their children are essential. Therefore, it's important to have open and effective communication with families. By doing so, you can jointly determine the priorities for the children's learning and how they influence the curriculum, assessment, evaluation, environment, instruction, and interactions.

In addition, family engagement supports the process by providing insight into cultural values, community background, and a child's unique strengths outside of the classroom. It also allows you to keep families informed of their children's progress against their developmental goals.

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How does intentional teaching benefit young children?

Intentional teaching benefits children by providing personalized learning experiences that support their unique cognitive, social, and emotional development. Because the curriculum and lesson planning adapt to each child’s interests and skills, it offers individualized advantages as well as a broader array of benefits to the classroom community.

All children stand to benefit by:

• Building a stronger sense of self and autonomy.
• Learning and building positive relationships.
• Engaging their curiosity by exploring new interests and ideas.
• Sparking new areas of interest and extending their learning potential.
• Collaborating with peers and teachers to build trust and respect for one another.

Whatever areas are identified as priorities for the child, intentional teaching provides meaningful experiences that contribute positively to their growth. For example, if a child struggles with completing tasks unassisted, an intentional curriculum may incorporate activities that prompt them to take responsibility for their items, such as cleaning up after themselves. If the goal is better communication, an intentional teacher might encourage them to socialize using topics that interest them, like dinosaurs or space, guiding them to communicate effectively with peers.

What are the intentional teaching strategies?

Effective intentional teaching strategies include practices like scaffolding, active listening, modeling, and asking open-ended questions to guide discovery. Several specific practices contribute to creating highly intentional environments and interactions in your childcare program.

You can create intentional interactions using:

• Encouragement: Providing a child with reassurance, motivation, and support when they're experiencing difficulties in completing a task. This minimizes frustration and influences positive social reactions.
• Demonstrating: Breaking down a task and using clear, concise language to explain your actions. This is useful when showing children how to use different tools and materials.
• Modeling: Demonstrating different actions, attitudes, and values in a particular setting. This can show children how to solve problems or cooperate with others.
• Questioning: Encouraging children to seek information or gain a deeper understanding of a topic. Open-ended questions enable them to make sense of the world, reflect on experiences, and improve language skills.
• Suggestion: Offering children ideas, support, and recommendations about what to do next, while allowing them the freedom to think independently if they choose another path.
• Scaffolding: Providing a child with temporary support and guidance until they can accomplish a task independently.
• Facilitation: Incorporating materials, people, equipment, time, interactions, and space into the learning process to make it easier for children to practice a new skill.
• Grouping: Bringing children together to complete an activity so they learn how to collaborate, work alongside others, and engage in group discussion.
• Positioning yourself: Placing yourself in support of a child's learning. This may include taking a step back to allow independent effort, or providing comfort through eye contact or a supportive smile.
• Documentation: Providing children with a photographic or written record of their past experiences to use as a tool for supporting more learning opportunities.
• Description: Using words to help children visualize how something sounds, tastes, looks, or moves. This encourages them to notice detailed information and supports sensory experiences.
• Telling: Providing a verbal explanation of how something should be done in a specific context (e.g., explaining how to interact kindly with others during recess).
• Shared problem-solving: Working directly and intentionally with children to solve a problem together by asking for their ideas and opinions.
• Co-construction: Allowing children to provide you with their understanding or meaning of something, rather than just providing them with facts.
• Listening: Concentrating on what a child is saying verbally and non-verbally, then responding with follow-up questions that allow them to expand on their thoughts.
• Feedback: Giving children verbal and non-verbal feedback about an experience, such as acknowledging their efforts with, "You did it! I can tell you've been practicing."
• Prompting recall: Encouraging children to reinforce past concepts or remember details to help them complete a current task.
• Observation: Conducting daily observations to understand students better, measure development, and plan effective curriculum changes.
• Assessment: Keeping a reliable record of a student's growth and social behavior to inform future planning and share progress with families.

When creating an intentional environment, you may rely on strategies like:

• Collecting: Working with children to gather objects based on size, color, or physical properties.
• Positioning: Placing specific objects together to prompt an activity (e.g., placing crayons, scissors, and paper together to indicate the start of a crafting activity).
• Scheduling time: Intentionally making time for specific routines, such as individual activities during the morning and group activities towards the end of the day.
  
  

Creating a Thriving Learning Environment With Proven Classroom Management Strategies

Incorporating intentional teaching into your curriculum

As an educator, breaking from traditional, rigid teaching methods opens up the door to exciting opportunities for the children in your childcare program. Intentional teaching provides creative and engaging ways to incorporate critical thinking skills and challenging experiences into children's learning goals.

Frequently asked questions about intentional teaching

Q: What is the difference between intentional teaching and free play?
A: Free play is entirely child-led with minimal adult intervention, allowing children to explore openly. Intentional teaching, while still highly play-based and observant of a child's interests, involves deliberate planning, strategic educator interaction, and specific learning objectives to guide the child's development.

Q: How do educators plan an intentional teaching activity?
A: Educators plan intentional teaching activities by first observing a child's current interests, strengths, and developmental gaps. They then define a specific learning goal, select appropriate materials, and decide on the best strategies—such as scaffolding or open-ended questioning—to help the child reach that goal.

Q: Can intentional teaching be used for all age groups in early childhood?
A: Yes, intentional teaching is highly adaptable and can be used for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. The educator simply scales the complexity of the learning objectives, materials, and interactions to match the developmental stage of the age group.