Top tips: Adapting teaching to children’s individual preferences

Every child arrives in your nursery with their own way of making sense of the world — their own pace, sensory needs, communication style and play preferences.

As a manager, an impactful aspect of your role is shaping an environment and team culture that genuinely responds to those differences, rather than expecting children to adapt to a different approach. The tips below focus on two areas where individual responsiveness makes a particularly significant difference: the learning environment and inclusive practice.

Top tips for adapting teaching to children’s individual preferences:

1. Observe before you arrange — watch how children move through and use the space before making changes. Let their patterns of play inform your provocations rather than making assumptions about what will engage them

2. Offer the same concept multiple ways — a child who doesn’t engage with a table-top provocation may come alive when the same idea is offered on the floor, on a light panel, or outdoors. Vary the medium, not just the material to get a full picture of children’s interests

3. Provocations work best as invitations. A child who bypasses your carefully set-up tuff tray is telling you something useful. Observe and find out what does engage them and offer the provocation in different ways

4. Build in sensory variation — ensure your environment offers both stimulating and calm, low-input spaces

5. Adapt access, not ambition — the goal stays the same but the pathway to it changes. A child with motor difficulties can explore mark-making through large-scale or sensory media just as meaningfully as through a small paintbrush

6. Rotate with intention — resist changing the environment too frequently. Many children, particularly those with additional needs, benefit from predictability and time to deepen their engagement with resources 

7. Treat preference as communication — a child who consistently moves to the same area, resource, or peer is showing you their strengths. Start your planning there, building on what they can already do 

8. Work with families as experts — parents and carers know what works at home. Brief, regular conversations about preferences and dislikes are likely to impact positively on your environment

9. Brief your whole team, not just the key person/worker— individual preferences should be known by everyone in the room, so continuity of approach doesn’t depend on specific practitioners 

10. Review regularly and be willing to be surprised — preferences shift as children develop.

NDNA products to support you with this tip

• Effective Team Leadership training 
• Autism awareness training
• Quality teaching in the early years.

Disclaimer: Activities with children must always be risk assessed, including for allergies or choking. Children must always have adequate supervision. Resources and materials