Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards
Guiding Principles for the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards
• All children are capable of learning, achieving, and making developmental progress.
The Early Learning Developmental Standards (ELDS) are intended for all children regardless of economic, linguistic, and cultural differences and/or physical, learning, or emotional challenges.
• Children develop at different rates and each child is unique in his or her own development, growth, and acquisition of skills.
Individualized, appropriate, and reasonable supports and accommodations must be provided to close the achievement gap and promote school readiness for all children.
• Early experiences have both cumulative and delayed effects on each individual child’s development; optimal periods exist for certain types of development and learning.
• Four-year-old children are active, eager learners.
A primary approach to learning is through purposeful, inquiry-based play. Optimal learning environments invite children’s participation through hands-on, experiential exploration using all five senses. Four-year-olds are concrete learners who learn best through interactions with people and educational materials in multiple, varied contexts.
• Development advances when children have opportunities to practice newly acquired skills and when they experience a challenge just beyond the level of their present mastery, known as the zone of proximal development.
• Multi-dimensional development is essential for optimal brain growth.
Children’s learning is integrated and occurs simultaneously across all developmental domains, which are interrelated and interactive with one another. Children’s brain growth and cognitive development is accelerated when early education is focused and balanced among all eight areas of development included in the revised TN ELDS.
• Children learn in the context of interactions and relationships with family members, caregivers, teachers, other children, and adults in their immediate environment and greater community.
• The family is the most significant contributor to a child’s lifelong learning and development. Engaging families in the early education of their children is essential to continuing a child’s success in the elementary classroom and later learning.
Common Terms and Intended Meanings
The following lists of terms are found in the standards for four-year-olds. Understanding the meanings of these words will better support understanding of the standards.
List of Terms & Intended Meanings Four-Year-Old Standards Only
• Associate: to connect with something else in one’s mind
• Aware or awareness of: knowing or cognizant of
• Begin to: The first step in the process; the child may not demonstrate complete mastery of the skill but demonstrates an awareness of the concept and evidence of learning
• Categorize: to arrange by categories; to describe or understand by assigning to a category
• Classify: to group or order in classes
• Compare: to note or describe the similarities or difference of; to bring together for the purpose of discovering similarities and differences
• Contrast: to compare in order to make differences clear; to show or reveal differences when compared
• Count: to list or name one by one in order
• Create: to bring into being; to cause, produce
• Define: to explain or state the meaning of; to describe the nature of
• Demonstrate: to show evidence; to reveal; to show
• Describe: to tell or write about; create a picture of in words
• Develop: to bring out the potential of; advance to a more complete or more effective condition; to gain strength
• Display: to cause to be seen; show; to make known; disclose
• Expand: to make larger or wider; to become larger or wider
• Explore: to begin to understand by carefully examining
• Express: to show or make known; to tell the thoughts or feelings
• Familiar: those letters, words and ideas with which students come in contact on a regular basis (i.e., own name, billboards, signs, books read regularly, items in the environment)
• Identify: to figure out or show who someone is or what something is; to connect or associate
• Initiate: to cause to begin; start; originate
• Observe: to notice or see; to watch closely; make a careful observation
• Participate: to take part; share (usually followed by “in”)
• Progress: forward movement toward an end; forward movement in time or space
• React: to act, or feel a certain way, in response to something
• Recall: to bring a past event into the mind; remember
• Recognize: to identify from an earlier experience; to understand
• Relate: to tell the story of; to see or find connections between; link
• Reproduce: to make a copy of; to make or produce again
• Respond: to answer or give a reply, in words or through other means
• Retell: to tell again, e.g., a story or account
• Select: to choose; pick
• Sustain: to keep (something) going or existing
• Understand: to get the meaning, nature, or importance of
• Use: to bring into service
TN ELDS and Instruction
• The TN ELDS and Kindergarten Standards tell what students need to know and learn.
• The instructional strategies based in developmental science tell how students will learn and grow toward the standards.
• The instructional structures (i.e., centers, whole group, etc.) tell where the learning will occur.
Unpacking the Standards
Steps toward Effective Implementation
In order to plan for effective daily instruction that aligns with the expectations of the standards, it is important to begin with a clear understanding of what standards are asking students to learn and be able to do. To do so, teachers should “unpack” the standards in the following way:
1. Write the learning standard;
2. Identify what children need to know—knowledge/concepts; i.e., describe measurable attributes of a single object, such as length, width, height.
3. Identify what the children need to do; i.e., describe attributes of a shape.
4. Connect each verb with Bloom’s taxonomy;
a. Low: Remember and Understand
b. Middle: Apply and Analyze
c. High: Evaluate and Create
5. Consider;
a. The sequencing of learning goals—what comes before or right after this skill?
b. Are there any vocabulary words which need to be identified or clarified?
c. What prior knowledge and skills are needed to master this learning goal?
Note on Coding
The standards are coded with the grade level, title of the strand, the category within the
strand, and the number within the strand. In a few cases, a letter might also be used to delineate subsections.
Example: PK.FL.PC.1
Pre-K (PK) is the grade level.
Foundational Literacy (FL) is the strand.
Print Concepts (PC) is the category.
1 is the number of the standard within the strand.
Linking Standards
The standards in this document are meant to be taught through an integrated approach. By helping students make connections to text and/or real life experiences, learning is meaningful and more easily transferred. Linking standards signal that planning for instruction needs to begin with a high quality text and that planning decisions with the standards center on the selection(s). Speaking and Listening standards are aligned with other English language arts standards to provide teachers with guidance regarding where these standards might be embedded within instruction. Oral language development is essential to later reading skills. Speaking and Listening standards should be taught with the same intentionality as all other standards.
Due to the length of the Standards, we have added links of each category for ease: (Just Click below the link)
Approaches to Learning (PK.AL)
Social and Personal Competencies (PK.SPC)