Challenging Young Learners Using the Project- Approach

1. Challenging Young Learners Using the Project- Approach Nancy B. Hertzog Marjorie M. Klein University Primary School University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Presented at the 2000 IAGC Fifth Convention Chicago, IL February 7, 2000

2. Challenge -In Whose Eyes? • Children Themselves • Other Children • Parents • Teachers

3. University Primary School • Affiliated with the Department of Special Education • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • 75 students ages 3-7 • 1 3/4 year classroom; • 2 K/1 classrooms • Head Teacher, 1 or 2 assistants • Application Process: Portfolio • Parent Questionnaires, Site Visit • 3-6 Samples of “work” (i.e., conversations, photographs, etc.) • Gifted Education - The New Paradigm • Developing strengths and talents • “Engaging children’s minds”

4. What’s Challenging in an Early Childhood Classroom? • Emotionally • Socially • Academically/Intellectually • Physically Representing a Broad View of Curriculum

5. Creating Challenge • Provide Opportunities for Thinking, Doing, and Feeling • Develop Dispositions to Inquire, Learn, and Persist • Allow Curriculum to Emerge

6. Successful Teachers. . .* • Develop engaging tasks that give students meaningful work to do • Design tasks to allow students choices and different entry points into the work. • “Two-way pedagogies” to find out what students are thinking, puzzling over, feeling, and struggling with • skillful discussions • journals & learning logs • interviews • student presentations

7. Successful Teachers. . . • Assess students to identify their strengths and learning approaches as well as their needs • Scaffold process of successive conversations, steps, and learning experiences that take students from their different starting ponts to a proficient performance • Pay attention to developing student confidence, motivation, and effort, and to making students feel connected and capable in school. *Darling-Hammond, L. (Aug./Sept. 1996). The right to learn and the advancement of teaching: Research, policy, and practice for democratic education. Educational Researcher, p 5-17.

8. Curriculum Overview • Activity Time and Project Work • Social and Emotional Growth • Numeration and Problem Solving Skills • Language Arts • Arts and Aesthetics

9. Topics Uncovered in Preschool • Preschool • Turtles (which led to Animals & Insects) • Paper • Bus • Weaving/Wool • Homes/ Habitat/Otter • Vehicles

10. Topics in K/1 Classrooms • K/1 Gerty Drive • Turtles • Weather • Shadows/Light • Corn • Snacks • Bicycles • Measusrement in the Neighborhood • Changes • K/1 Colonel Wolfe • Bread • T.V. • Foods • Chickens/Embryos/Chickscope • Inventions • Family Traditions • Neighborhood

11. Project Approach(Katz & Chard, 1994) • Phase I • Recalls past experiences • Represents memories of topic • Phase II • New first-hand experiences • Pursue data gathering • Predict, theorize, hypothesize • Formulate new questions • Phase III • Share understanding of topic • Display

12. Features of Project Work 1. Group Discussion 2.. Field Work 3. Representation 4. Investigation 5. Display

13. Gifted Education Emphasizes. . . • leadership training • creativity training • individual and small group communication skills • critical thinking skills • decision-making • affective education • problem solving • research skills • subject area skills • encourage development of products

14. The Role of Challenge “The ability to challenge children intellectually is the critical ingredient that differentiates the ordinary classroom from the distringuished one.” • (Feinburg & Mindess, 1994, p. 83)

15. Role of the Teacher “The educator’s role being to present children with challenges that are appropriately confounding, and to provide them with the opportunity to wrestle with these challenges in active, meaningful ways.” (Feinburg & Mindess, 1994, p. 89)