Category: Perspectives on the Project Approach
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Exploring Project Work Through the Eyes of Toddlers and Twos
Teachers often ask if, and how, the very young children in their care can do project work. They may work in a center where prekindergarten children and their teachers are doing project work. As they watch the projects of these older children unfold, they might question whether it is possible to adapt project work for…
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Focused Explorations and the Project Approach
Once teachers have identified a high-interest topic for a new project, they are often unsure how to get started.
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Universal Design for Learning and Project Work
Teachers who work with learners with diverse abilities, including children with disabilities, find that the Project Approach provides an optimal learning environment, or a universal design for learning (UDL). Today, many of our environments are more user-friendly for all of us because principles of universal design have been applied.
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Selecting Useful Topics for Projects
Selecting a viable topic is one key to getting and keeping a long-term project going.
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Doing Projects With Families From a Distance
When teachers are called on to work with children and families remotely, project work can be a welcome addition to the teacher’s toolbox for a variety of reasons.
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Coaching Others in Implementing the Project Approach
The Project Approach engages and motivates diverse groups of young children to learn and use higher order thinking skills, so it is a wonderful addition to the curriculum. But learning how to implement the Project Approach can be challenging for teachers, perhaps because it is best learned “in the action” through hands-on experience and experimentation.…
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Adjusting Pace and Location of Project Work
By adjusting the pace and location of the project work to the developmental levels and experience of the children, teachers can begin to engage them in project work soon after they join the class, even at the beginning of the school year.
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Project Work as a Context for Social Development
One of the most important goals of early education is the development and strengthening of social competence. One of the benefits of project work is that it provides many opportunities to develop and apply important social skills.
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Project Work Engages Young Children’s Intellects
Extensive experience of teaching young children has suggested it is useful to keep in mind the following set of assumptions based on research about children’s development and learning. I encourage you to share these assumptions with children’s families as well.
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Accreditation Renewal Sparks an Anti-bias Journey
Do we point out differences in the safety of our classrooms so we can discuss them in a positive manner, or do we wait for children to ask questions or make comments?
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Continuity of Contact
One of the many insights being shared with us from recent research is that different kinds of “stimulation” in the early years contribute to important brain development that has long-term implications.
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Insight as Part of Teaching Young Children
Many of a teacher’s decisions are based on routines and the normal schedule of activities that require little if any analysis or reflection.
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Making Preliminary Field Trips
Preliminary visits are important because they allow the teacher to look for potential stumbling blocks in the field trip environment and to think about work-arounds.
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The “Bottom-up” Perspective on the Quality of an Early Childhood Program
The quality of early childhood programs can be assessed in many ways. An important way to assess the quality of a program is to take what we might call a bottom-up perspective—attempting to determine how the program is experienced by the children who participate in it.
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Giving a Project a Narrative Title
When working with teachers who include project work in their early childhood classrooms, we have noticed that they often struggle with questions about what might be good project topics.
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Thoughts on Project Work with Children Who Have Special Needs
The 2013–2014 school year was my first year at John L. Hensey School, where Kim Burd and Laura DeLuca teach our early childhood special education classes. I have enjoyed observing their teaching methods and learning about the Project Approach with them. Theirs is a very hands-on, real-experience classroom where they create opportunities for all learners…
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Math and the Project Approach
Young children develop math competencies when their teachers know what math concepts and skills young children are most likely to be ready to learn and should know (Illinois State Board of Education, 2013) and when teachers know where each child’s individual level of progress and performance is in relation to mastery of those competencies.
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Talking Straight to Children
It worries me that so few teacher-child contacts are continuous interactions. Recent evidence suggests that such meaningful continuous contingent interactions from very early in life throughout the first five or six years stimulate very important neurological development that must be accomplished by roughly about the age of 6.
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Documentation: The Basics, Part 2
Documentation is a way of presenting evidence of the children’s work so the children and others can observe it and learn about what was accomplished during the project.
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A Multiage Project on “How Things Work”: An Unexpected Adventure
We viewed the topic through the lenses of technology and engineering, keeping potential subtopics open-ended so the children’s interests could emerge. The project stretched our staff and students in remarkable ways.
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Documentation: The Basics, Part 1
A major purpose of the documentation is to make it possible for others who were not involved in the work to grasp the main events, the problems that came up, and the way they were solved.
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Following the Child’s Lead
Potential topics may indeed arise from a strong interest on the part of several children that is revealed in play. However, teachers can also intentionally propose project topics, or they may emerge from a thematic unit or another project that is currently under way.
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Project Work in a Program Serving Highly Diverse Communities
ECDEC program staff has always been very committed to serving English-language learners.
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Standards of Experience
Around the country states and school districts are working hard to adopt standards of achievement and outcomes by which to evaluate their programs. Illinois is in the complex process of developing and revising early learning and development standards for its preschool programs that will address the benefits of programs to children from 3 years old…
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The Project Approach and the CLASS Observation Tool
So, perhaps when we try to identify what it is about the Project Approach that leads to beneficial outcomes for children, we can point to the types of teacher/child and child/child interactions that project work supports.
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Discussing Project Work with Children in Inclusive Classrooms
Teachers who are new to project work are often pleasantly surprised at children’s motivation to participate in discussing and planning what to do in their investigations.
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Project Topics in Neighborhoods Where Safety Is a Major Concern
Over and over again, I have been impressed by the relationship between the quality of work accomplished by young children engaging in a project and the topic on which it is focused.
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The Feed-Forward Problem
Those of us who are raising and teaching children may sometimes have to say to them something like, “I know this doesn’t seem to be useful right now. But, trust me! There will be a time when you will be glad you learned it.”
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Displaying Documentation: Providing Supports for the Viewer of the Display
There are many things to consider in creating effective documentation displays. Taking the time to thoughtfully add supports for viewers is one way to increase the value of the display.
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Supporting a Large Staff in Implementing the Project Approach
In our PFA program, teachers organize classroom experiences around a schedule of predetermined themes taken from the BLL literacy curriculum to reinforce concepts that they introduce using Big Books. They work with small and large groups through direct instruction, directed inquiry, and theme-related learning centers.
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Some Benefits of Multiage Grouping
Even though it’s not natural for young children to spend large proportions of time in same-age “litters,” we seem to insist that they be cared for as well as educated in them!
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Developing a Class Album
The creation of a class album could work well for the start of the new school year, especially if the children are new to each other and to the teacher.
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Two Approaches to Implementation of the Project Approach
In my view, there is no “right” or “wrong” way to implement projects, but I do think it is important for teachers to be thoughtful about choosing the way that is likely to be most beneficial for their particular group of students.
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Successful Long-Term Implementation of Projects
I was initially exposed to the Project Approach as a center director in the early 1990s. It made so much sense to me, and I was determined to learn more, to study further, and to create a passion for project work among teachers, families, university students, and university professors. After reflecting on my experience, I’ve…
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Helping Children Seek Knowledge and Understanding
Like most official documents about standards, benchmarks, and outcomes for early education programs, the Illinois Early Learning Standards document indicates that its main purposes are to specify what all children “should know and be able to do.” Unfortunately, such standards seldom refer to the importance of helping children develop their “understanding” of the important knowledge…
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Merging the Project Approach with Other Curricula
As directors, we often feel the pressure to choose one curriculum for our classrooms, yet, as early childhood professionals, we know that every child learns in his or her own unique way.
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Organize High-Quality Professional Development on the Project Approach in Your Own Backyard
On a recent Saturday morning, a group of teachers, administrators, students, and faculty members met to form the Quad Cities Project Group.
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Responding to Children’s Interest in a Topic
Extensive experience of working with teachers of young children who include project work in their curriculum confirms my assumption that the quality of the learning that a project yields is strongly related to the topic under investigation.
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Props, Teachers, and Projects: Engaging Learners in Representational Play
Some teachers find that projects fizzle out following field trips. However, three strategies can support children’s continued interest in the project.
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Beginning a Center-Wide Commitment to Project Work
This year, the board and staff of Zearing Child Enrichment Center in Princeton, Illinois made the decision to move to multi-age grouping in our prekindergarten classes. We made this decision based on the many benefits that multi-age grouping provides young children ages 3 to 5.
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Thoughts on Leadership
These experiences reminded me of some of the fundamental aspects of effective leadership practices in such complex environments.
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Moving from Thematic Units to Projects
As you observe the children in your class, you may notice that many of them are drawn to a particular activity that is part of your thematic unit.
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The Question Table
One important feature of the first phase of a project is the development of the questions that the investigation will try to answer.
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Flexibility and the Project Approach
What a joy it is to have students working with the Project Approach within our building. As the excitement builds for the students and the teachers, it is amazing to see the level of understanding that these small children have.
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Journey into the Project Approach
Sometimes administrators’ days fill up with one thing after another, and the importance of time escapes us. Remember that the power of learning through collaboration, support, and recognition goes a long way.
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Projects that Strengthen Children’s Sense of their Communities
Extensive work with teachers implementing the Project Approach indicates clearly that the quality of the children’s experiences and the quality of what is accomplished are strongly related to the topic under investigation.
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Materials for Representation in Project Work
As children acquire new knowledge and understanding through project work, they typically represent their understanding in their work/play in the art, writing, dramatic play, and block areas.
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A Project on Trees: Suggestions for Teachers
Here are some of our suggestions for ways to get young children started on what could become a lifelong interest in things that grow around them.
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Tips for Supporting Teachers’ Implementation of Project Work
Each project is unique, depending on the teacher, the particular or unique group of children involved, and the children’s backgrounds, interests, and experiences.
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How Many Projects per Year?
Some teachers have project work continuing throughout the school year. Others plan their curriculum so that it will include two or maybe three during the year.