In my experience of teaching so far, I have learned that it is important to parents to find out what their child is going to learn and how they are going to learn in my classroom. I sometimes feel intimated by this question, because I know that my explanation can potentially make or break the families decision to enroll their child into our program. However, I am very careful to explain that we have standards and learning objectives for our activities and we use different themes/units to capture the children's interest and learning. I liked how this reading explained that "project work" is a growing trend toward integrating the curriculum. When you think of early education, you may not necessarily think "projects" since most times doing projects means a lengthy process.
In my classroom, I use themes/units as a way to integrate the children's interest and knowledge to expand their learning. For example, in the month of January the theme was Transportation. Since there are so many types of transportation and one month isn't enough time to go in-depth about each one, I asked the children to name types of transportation they were interested in. During circle time we did a charting activity that listed each child's response of what type of transportation they wanted to learn about. We looked at pictures of the different types of transportation and in two days of having a large group discussion, they children decided on 5 different types of transportation, airplane, jet, school bus, car, and boat. The activities that were planned for the month were focused on these transportations, but if a child did ask about a motorcycle, monster truck, or helicopter we would address their interest. To make this theme relevant for each child, I asked each family to bring in a picture of the transportation they use to get to school. Some brought pictures of cars, the city bus, walking, and even golf carts. I truly believe that when you can relate learning to the child's life, it becomes real and exciting.
To be honest, I have never done the project approach in my classroom. I believe that you can still pose questions, generate theories, and make predictions while using a theme/unit approach. I think these things can happen during conversations and while working in large/small groups. Doing a project approach is something I would like to try especially after reading this article. When doing a project approach, it will take time. It would be important to observe the children in your class and really get to know what is important/ interesting to them. Informing the parents about the project would be essential since it is always a goal to have the learning carry to the home also. I ask myself "If I had to create a project right now for my class, what would it be?" And I also wonder, "how could I use the project approach with a small group or even an individual child when my class size is 25?"
