The following is the first part of a series of posts illustrating the ways our teachers took on the different principles of project work last year. You can see the second post here.
Aim to generate rather than answer questions.
When considering possible provocations
for their respective projects, Sarah (investigating water) and Amy (investigating simple machines) always sought to challenge
children’s thinking. Whether offering a new perspective on the materials (such
as envisioning a stream of water falling continuously from the ceiling) or
providing opportunities to explore an interest with greater focus (by
constructing new wheel and latch boards for the classroom), these teachers were
always creating opportunities for children, families, and the teachers
themselves to develop new questions. In attempting project work with infants,
they found that just as much can be learned through the asking of questions as
in the answering of them.
Seek to increase the complexity of the study.
When
the button project first began, Erin looked at how children worked with
buttons. One aspect of their interest was social; they liked to have control of
a button that someone else wanted. She looked deeper at buttons, and how they
help children's attention and had a hunch that they were seeking to influence
invisible, and interconnected systems. Thinking with one and two year old
children about something this complex can be difficult. Anyone might struggle
to get at this idea, which is physically obscured by the casings and exteriors
of the buttons themselves. But Erin was undaunted. Over the course of their
project, the pushing of buttons has given way to the creation of machines –
from levers and catapults to wheels and axles. Together, this group is learning
some of the mechanics at work behind the light switch they so love to flip,
gaining a peek into the hidden systems that make our world run each day.
Create opportunities to represent and
re-represent ideas
in multiple "languages."
Kara’s great love of and experience with yoga, as well as the
investment that many children in her classroom have shown in its practice, made
this a natural choice for her project this year. The question was, how could
she help them to take their understanding of the poses they practiced to a new
level? One way was through the use of multiple languages to represent the way
their bodies looked while holding different positions. Children were already
gaining much experience with movement when practicing yoga, so now she asked
them to slow down, look at each others’ bodies, and recreate them using pencils
and sharpies, clay and wire, and paint. These experiences gave the children an
acute awareness of their bodies and how to represent the important parts of
each pose, while offering Kara insight into the children’s understanding of the poses and
how the parts of their bodies work together to compose them. When Kara invited the children
to create their own poses and yoga flow, she had prepared them to use these
skills for a new purpose – drawing their own yoga cards and teaching their flow
to others!
Find ways to keep families abreast of your work, and to invite them into the process
of planning.
Having chosen a
single, class-wide project focusing on birds and children’s observation of
them, the Toddler One South team of Aline, Carmel, and Danielle worked hard to
apprise the families of the children in their care about the nature of their
investigation. Through written documentation and weekly emails, the team
recounted their provocations and observations around this project in the
classroom, inviting families to contribute. As parents and grandparents began
to share photos and stories of encounters with the birds around them, the
teachers integrated them into the classroom environment – photos were added to
the display board in the back of the room, while the stories were added to the
book corner. Soon, parents were not only paying more attention to birds
alongside their child, but also offering ideas for provocations they would like
to bring to the classroom to support the project. Thanks to the teachers’
effort in keeping families abreast of their project work, as well as parents’
commitment to replying with their own reflections and ideas, the project grew
far richer and more meaningful for all involved.
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