HighScope Preschool Key Developmental Indicators

High/Scope's "key developmental indicators" (KDIs) are early childhood milestones that guide teachers as they plan and assess learning experiences and interact with children to support learning. The term "key developmental indicators" replaces the term "key experiences." The 58 KDIs match the 58 preschool key experiences, but they have been reorganized under the following five curriculum content areas: approaches to learning; language, literacy, and communication; social and emotional development; physical development, health, and well-being; and arts and sciences. Arts and sciences are further divided into these subjects: mathematics, science and technology, social studies, and the arts. These content areas, based on the school readiness dimensions of the National Educational Goals Panel, align readily with national and state early learning standards.

To learn more about the reorganization of High/Scope's preschool content areas, you can link to a chart that shows the alignment of the High/Scope key developmental indicators and key experiences.

Approaches to Learning

• Making and expressing choices, plans, and decisions
• Solving problems encountered in play

Language, Literacy, and Communication

• Talking with others about personally meaningful experiences
• Describing objects, events, and relations
• Having fun with language: listening to stories and poems, making up stories and rhymes
• Writing in various ways: drawing, scribbling,letterlike forms, invented spelling, conventional forms
• Reading in various ways: reading storybooks,signs and symbols, one's own writing
• Dictating stories

Social and Emotional Development

• Taking care of one's own needs
• Expressing feelings in words
• Building relationships with children and adults
• Creating and experiencing collaborative play
• Dealing with social conflict

Physical Development, Health, and Well-Being

• Moving in nonlocomotor ways (anchored movement: bending, twisting, rocking, swinging one's arms
• Moving in locomotor ways (nonanchored movement: running, jumping, hopping, skipping, marching, climbing)
• Moving with objects
• Expressing creativity in movement
• Describing movement
• Acting upon movement directions
• Feeling and expressing steady beat
• Moving in sequences to a common beat

Arts and Sciences

Mathematics

Seriation

• Comparing attributes (longer/shorter, bigger/smaller)
• Arranging several things one after anotherin a series or pattern and describing the relationships(big/bigger/biggest, red/blue/red/blue)
• Fitting one ordered set of objects to another through trial and error (small cup—small saucer/medium cup—medium saucer/big cup—big saucer)

Number

• Comparing the numbers of things in two sets to determine "more," "fewer," "same number"
• Arranging two sets of objects in one-to-one correspondence
• Counting objects 

Space

• Filling and emptying
• Fitting things together and taking them apart
• Changing the shape and arrangement of objects (wrapping, twisting, stretching, stacking, enclosing)
• Observing people, places, and things from different spatial viewpoints
• Experiencing and describing positions,directions, and distances in the play space, building, and neighborhood
• Interpreting spatial relations in drawings,pictures, and photographs

Science and Technology

Classification

• Recognizing objects by sight, sound,touch, taste, and smell
• Exploring and describing similarities,differences, and the attributes of things
• Distinguishing and describing shapes
• Sorting and matching
• Using and describing something in several ways
• Holding more than one attribute in mind at a time
• Distinguishing between "some"and "all"
• Describing characteristics something does not possess or what class it does not belong to 

Time

• Starting and stopping an action on signal
• Experiencing and describing rates of movement
• Experiencing and comparing time intervals
• Anticipating, remembering, and describing sequences of events

Social Studies

• Participating in group routines
• Being sensitive to the feelings, interests,and needs of others

Visual Arts

• Relating models, pictures, and photographs to real places and things
• Making models out of clay, blocks, and other materials
• Drawing and painting

Dramatic Art

• Imitating actions and sounds
• Pretending and role playing

Music

• Moving to music
• Exploring and identifying sounds
• Exploring the singing voice
• Developing melody
• Singing songs
• Playing simple musical instruments