The SEEDS of Learning framework is designed to be developmentally appropriate and deeply integrated with play-based learning. The framework recognizes that learning for children (and adults) is a process. It is grounded in the science of reading and early childhood development, ensuring that every strategy supports children holistically, encompassing early literacy, social skills, and self-regulation.
Here’s how SEEDS strategies were intentionally designed to be developmentally appropriate:
Grounded in Play and Hands-On Exploration
- Development Through Doing: This core SEEDS Quality emphasizes that children learn best by actively engaging their senses—through their eyes, hands, ears, mouth, and nose—with the world around them. Activities that end in “-ing” (like clapping, singing, reading, thinking, writing, listening, jumping, counting, helping, repeating) are encouraged as children learn and develop skills through doing.
- Joyful Learning: The SEEDS Framework emphasizes making learning joyful and playful. Many strategies are designed as game-like activities to ensure high levels of engagement.
- Integrated Play Centers: The Framework actively promotes the use of play centers (e.g., dramatic play, reading, math, science/sensory, writing, or art) to extend and enrich learning that connects to classroom themes and literacy concepts. These centers allow children to explore, play independently and with peers, and use their creativity and initiative.
A Balanced Approach: Embedded and Explicit Instruction
- The SEEDS Framework integrates learning opportunities throughout the day, recognizing that children learn in different ways.
- Embedded Learning: This occurs naturally during play and informal interactions. For example, using running commentary to describe what a child is doing or what is happening around them exposes children to specific vocabulary and language in context.
- Explicit Instruction: This involves planned, educator-directed activities for specific skills. For instance, Targeted Vocabulary Instruction explicitly teaches new words using pictures or objects, often in a game-like format. The Match-Point-Say sequence for letter names and sounds also provides a structured, scaffolded approach to explicit teaching.
Scaffolding and Individualized Support
- Learning Stages: The SEEDS Framework recognizes that children develop at their own pace. The framework uses emergent, developing, and fluent learning stages to describe a child’s progression in a skill.
- Planning Tools: These are central to differentiation. Educators use observation data to identify a child’s learning stage and then consult Planning Tools, which offer recommended teaching practices and scaffolding techniques tailored to help the child move towards fluency.
- Gradual Release of Responsibility: This model (“I do, you watch; I do, you help; You do, I help; You do, I watch”) guides how adults transfer learning and skill development to children, gradually removing supports as children gain independence.
- Focus on Exposure and Engagement: Especially for younger children (e.g., 3-year-olds learning letters), the emphasis is on exposure and engagement rather than pushing for early mastery, celebrating small steps of progress.
Holistic Development: Social, Emotional, and Literacy Skills are Interwoven
- The SEEDS Framework focuses on social skill development, self-regulation, and early literacy skills simultaneously.
- SEEDS Qualities: The Framework's “how to teach” component, the SEEDS Qualities (Sensitivity, Encouragement, Education, Development Through Doing, and Self-Image Support) are foundational to creating safe, inclusive, positive, and respectful learning environments. For example, Sensitivity refers to being attuned to children’s feelings and needs, fostering trust and a sense of being seen.
- Predictable Routines: Routines like the SEEDS Transition Songs provide a predictable structure that helps children feel safe, calm, and in control, supporting their social development and self-regulation. These songs also embed early literacy skills like letter identification and rhyming.
Early Literacy Predictors as a Roadmap, Not Just Academics
- The Framework is built on the Big 5 Early Literacy Predictors (Oral Language and Vocabulary, Book and Print Awareness, Alphabet Knowledge, Phonological Awareness, and Writing). These are not seen as isolated academic subjects but as foundational skills that develop simultaneously and interact with each other.
- Activities like repeated read-alouds, strive for 5 conversations, and the daily Sign-In routine are designed to build these skills in integrated, meaningful ways.
- Even academic tasks like letter recognition (Match-Point-Say) are approached with a game-like and playful mindset.
SEEDS of Learning is deeply rooted in developmentally appropriate practices, leveraging play-based learning and individualized scaffolding to build foundational literacy and social skills. It balances embedded, natural learning opportunities with explicit, intentional instruction, all within a nurturing and predictable environment that prioritizes children’s well-being and engagement.