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?"
Hi Ashlyn!
ReplyDeleteI admire your insight to this weeks article. In response to your question, "how could I use the project approach with a small group or even an individual child when my class size is 25?" I recognize the struggle. Everything we conduct in our classroom are aligned with our daily schedules; small group, centers, outdoor play, and so forth. Where do we find the time to allow for unique project-approach learning? I have come to recognize, schedules were intended to be broken. Many of my experiences to project-approach learning have magically appeared before me in unique, and somewhat odd, moments.
Recently, as I shared in my post, my classroom of 20 shared a eureka moment during our discussion about farms: what do you know about farms? This discussion provoked endless amounts of questions, answers, new questions, rebuttals, problem solving, etc. and it cut into our outdoor play time. But, rather than cutting them off, I continued to encourage thoughts, and what started as a basic circle time, transpired for an hour and a half, into lunch time. Moments like these are a rare occurrence. It was completely unplanned and took on a life of its own and taught me how to 'roll with their flow.'
Hi Ashlyn.
ReplyDeleteI like the theme transportation and yes you can take in so many direction and a month is not enough to go into depth about it. As teachers we do our best so that children can grasp the concept. I agree with you when you relate learning to children life it becomes exciting for the child, parents and teachers.
In regard to project approach I have not done one on my own in the classroom, but I have observe other teacher do project approach in a small group. It looks like something I can do but in small group. But like Cassandra said in her comment maybe project approach have appeared before us in unique, odd moments.
Hi Ashlyn,
ReplyDeleteYour questions bring up some different ideas for me, one of them being that I wonder what you think of taking one idea - say, transportation, and studying it for an entire year. As you said, there's so many places you could go with this - trucks, cars, golf carts, boats, helicopters, motorcycles, monster trucks - why not study it for an extended period of time? What other aspects of learning could you also address by studying one topic for a long period of time? Could you talk about families (e.g. my family takes the bus to school/mine takes a golf cart), communities (what kinds of transportation do you see in your community?), ocean life (we take boats to go out on the ocean to see fish - there are also submarines with glass bottoms, catamarans, jet skis, etc), and you could even address bigger ideas, like how our transportation affects the environment and we need to be good stewards of the earth.
Take a look at this website: http://www.insatiable-critic.com/Article.aspx?id=1349
This was a kindergarten in NYC who studied restaurants for almost an entire year. Though this curriculum is for 5-6 year olds, I think many of the ideas could be applied in a preschool classroom. How much of a commitment did it require from the teacher? The children also had the opportunity to apply the knowledge they learned over the year by culminating their studies into a restaurant. How important is the application of new knowledge when learning? In what ways could you transfer some of the ideas from the restaurant study to the study of transportation? One of the resources I posted in the announcement was about a study of Wheels. Take a look at that and see if you can incorporate any of those ideas into your own study and see where it takes you. Thanks!