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We Make the Path by Walking. Emergent Curriculum & Project Approach Michelle Taylor MS. Ed. “ Not all who wander are lost.” ~J.R.R. Tolkien. Student Ideas. Question:
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We Make the Path by Walking Emergent Curriculum & Project Approach Michelle Taylor MS. Ed.
Student Ideas • Question: • “What do you think of when you hear the phrase Emergent Curriculum/Project Approach?” (Students: How do we learn at school?) • Students: • We have teachers and we help people out and learn new kinds of things. • We explore. • We have a classroom and we decide what to do. • We look at stuff. • It’s called investigation. We do projects. • Dig. • Searching plants. (She meant researching which we then talked about for a long time – what re-searching means. Searching, bringing it back and searching again). • We investigate. • I can move to a different place if it’s too tired and crowded.
Teacher Ideas Emergent ideas. Brainstorming. Fluidity. Deep. Rich. Plentiful. Juicy. Child exploration. Child interest. Child led. Not forced. Flowing and emerging from the child’s interests. Not scheduled, it just happens. Evolving from an idea like when you put watercolor on paper towels and it spider webs. Organic. Unplanned but not quite unplanned. Open. Spontaneous. Options and experiences. It’s like plants growing. They come up from the ground like a project grows.
Parent Ideas • Deep studies about a topic the kids brought up. • What kids are into. • Think of the kids and they have a choice about what they want to learn. • Other ideas???
Emergent Curriculum Emergent curriculum is a way of planning curriculum based on the student’s and teacher’s interest and passions. To plan an emergent curriculum requires time, observation, documentation, creativity, brainstorming, flexibility and patience.
Emergent Curriculum • Once teachers see an interest “emerging” they brainstorm ways to study the topic in depth. • Webbing is often used because of its fun and flexible nature. A web doesn’t show everything that will be learned but what could be learned. It is an important process that allows to open the teachers and the students to possibilities. • Teachers and students brainstorm many possibilities for study sparked from a particular interest, not as a plan but more as a ‘road map’. • To get a plan, we choose an idea and brainstorm ways to approach it – what hands-on activities could we provide, how can we bring this to real-world learning. • Putting all the activities on a web gives you a road map full of possible journeys and a path to look back upon.
Teaching the Class About Webbing Thinking about our learning
Project Approach A project, by definition, is an in-depth investigation of a real-world topic worthy of a student’s attention and effort. The core idea of project-based learning is that real-world problems capture students' interest and provoke serious thinking
Project Approach • The Project Approach: • is organized around an open-ended Driving Question or Challenge. These focus students’ work and deepen their learning by centering on significant issues, debates, questions and/or problems. • It provides complex tasks based on challenging questions or problems that involve the students' problem solving, decision making, investigative skills, and reflection that include teacher facilitation, but not necessarily direction. • It focuses on questions that drive students to encounter central concepts and principles of a subject hands-on. • Students learn from these experiences and take them into account and apply them to their lives in the real world. • It is a teaching technique that promotes and practices new learning habits. The students have to think in original ways to come up with the solutions to these real world problems. It helps with their creative thinking skills by showing that there are many ways to solve a problem and that they are capable of coming up with solutions together without answers from the ‘teacher’.
The Environment as the 3rd Teacher To embrace the idea of the environment as the third teacher in our classrooms, we expand our thinking beyond the idea of room arrangements and rating scales. We ask ourselves what values we want to communicate through our environments and how we want children to experience their time in our classrooms. We spend much of our time on creating intentional environments that specifically tie into our current projects and the student’s interests. Our environments shape the culture of a classroom by showing what is important in learning. It also catches children’s interests. If I lay a group of books out on the table about trees and let the kids come in and I say nothing. They will grab for them, sit and look. If I add paper, they will begin to draw and write. So although I directly gave them the materials that are already included in our current project, I didn’t assign a specific task and thus the learning is open-ended without conclusion . It keeps the mystery alive and their interests peaked. This way of shaping the environment shows how we learn , how we approach learning and how we care for our space and materials. Children who have been in our classrooms for a while know how to use the materials to further discover and uncover their interests and driving need for knowledge. It shapes our identities, how we view learning, how we see the world and it empowers us to make decisions for ourselves, direct our own learning and to see the classroom and the world as limitless.
Emergent Curriculum & Project Approach: • Allows for everyone to learn together. The teacher’s don’t know the answers and if we do, we often don’t share the information. Most often the kids will bring the knowledge in with them or the class will figure it out together. • If we gave them the answer, the learning would end right there and the opportunity of discovery would be lost. • It’s the most amazing feeling in the world to be in a room full of kids, mesmerized by the mystery of a topic. The possibilities are endless. The room is electric. • Instead we research and discover together through books, hands-on exploration, detective work, walking out into the world and asking questions.
The Evolution of the Classroom • Watching the evolution in the classroom happen offers the chance to see a child have many of an epiphany and can be a bit mind blowing. • The capabilities our kids have are boundless. When we put restraints on our kids such as “you need to have these two pages done by the end of the day” you are limiting their capacity to exceed both of your and their expectations and really get the breadth and depth out of a problem or a subject or a new found passion. *(Narrative is linear, but action has breadth and depth as well as height and is solid.) • Intentionally not limiting their discoveries and explorations, gives them the mystery required to keep going, keep learning and keep loving to learn.
Our Project: (March 11, - Present)Natural History and Phenomena • In March, the day after the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, the kids came into morning meeting talking about it, wanting to know information, giving information. • One of our teacher’s from the year before had returned home to Japan. She taught my class origami and Japanese. • The kids wanted to help and decided to have a fundraiser by making and selling origami strands. • The kids also wanted to know wanted to know the details of what earthquakes and tsunami’s do and how and why they happen. And they were passionate.
Independent Projects • Adah – The Sun • Charlie – The Universe • Lucas –The Moon • Chase – The Moon • Alex – Why is the Sky Blue? • Archer – Bird Migration • Izzy – Rocks & Crystals • Tim – Landforms • Holden – How were the Planets Made? • Jake – Tsunami • Maya – Earthquakes • Maddox – Monsoons • Norah – The Origin of the Seed
What kind of tree would you be? Royal – Cactus Tim – Ginkgo Jake – Pine Lucas – Palm Chase – Douglas Fir Bryn – Tree Fern Izzy – Cottonwood Nora – Cherry Blossom Carter - Boojum Catalina – Umbrella Thorn Hannah – Redwood Ellis – Bunya Bunya Lily – Sequoia Adah – Monkey Puzzle Atti – Mahogany Salvador – Japanese Maple Owen – Dragon Holden – Cannonball
Trees Madrona
Project Approach Reading List • A Culture of Quality: A Reflection on Practice. Ron Berger (1996) Annenberg Institute for School Reform.A meditation by veteran teacher Ron Berger (now Director of Instruction for Expeditionary Learning Schools), on the features of an educational community that has conscientiously developed a culture of quality. • An Ethic of Excellence: Building a Culture of Craftsmanship in Schools. Ron Berger (2003) Heinemann. Telling stories from his classrooms, Ron Berger describes how teachers, students and parents can change the culture of schools to a commitment to excellence. • Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. John Palfrey and Urs Gasser (2008) Basic Books. Described as "a smart, practical guide to a brave new world and its complex inhabitants," Born Digital provides a sociological portrait of the generation raised in the digital world. • Expeditionary Learning: Core Practice Benchmarks. This is a free pdf download. Expeditionary Learning in practice: what teachers, students, school leaders, families, and other partners do in fully implemented Expeditionary Learning schools. • Kurt Hahn's Schools & Legacy: To Discover You Can be More and Do More Than You Believed. Martin Flavin (1996) Cardinal Publishers Group (Middle Atlantic Press). A narrative describing the forces in Kurt Hahn's life -- including his arrest and exile by Nazi storm troopers -- that shaped his values and philosophy and led to the founding of Outward Bound. • Leadership Lessons from Comprehensive School Reforms. Joseph Murphy and Amanda Datnow, eds. (2002) Corwin. A volume of articles discussing the importance of leadership in comprehensive school reform. • Outward Bound USA: Crew not Passengers. Joshua L. Miner, et. al. (2002) The Mountaineers Books. Describes the roots and philosophy of Outward Bound and its expansion into education.
Project Approach Reading List • PBL Starter Kit: To-the-Point Advice, Tools and Tip for Your First Project. John Larmer with David Ross and John Mergendoller (2009) Buck Institute for Education. A How-To guide from the Buck Institute for Education for planning and managing projects. Contains planning forms, rubrics, handouts, examples of projects and practical advice. • Project Based Learning: A Guide to Standards-Focused Project Based Learning for Middle and High School Teachers. Thom Markham with John Larmer and Jason Ravitz (2003) Buck Institute for Education. The PBL Handbook provides an overview of the what, why, and how of PBL to guide teachers through all phases of a successful project. • Reflections on Design Principles. (1998) Kendall Hunt. Brief essays on EL's design principles, with examples of how they are integrated into school culture and teaching practices. • Roots: From Outward Bound to Expeditionary Learning (2000) Kendall Hunt. An anthology of Expeditionary Learning's roots in the educational philosophy of Kurt Hahn, the founder of Outward Bound. • Starting From Scratch: One Classroom Builds its own Curriculum. Steven Levy (1996) Heinemann. Award-winning teacher Steven Levy inspires and explains in step-by-step detail how PBL resulted in powerful learning for his fourth grade students. • "The Having of Wonderful Ideas" and other Essays on Teaching and Learning. Eleanor Duckworth (1996, 2006 Third Edition) Teachers College Press. Eleanor Duckworth's classic essays on how the work of her former teacher and colleague Jean Piaget can be applied to student learning and teaching using her expeditionary learning design principle. • Thinking About Our Kids: An Agenda for American Education, by Harold Howe (1993) The Free Press. Harold Howe, former U.S. Education Commissioner during Lyndon Johnson's presidency, challenges the leading government-sponsored studies of school reform and recommends a program to improve coordination among all government agencies that deal with children, families, and schools.
“Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another. ” ~John Dewey Visit us: www.thelivingclassroom.wordpress.com
Sources • The Project Approach ~Lilian Katz & Sylvia Chard www.projectapproach.org • Virginia Tech Digital Library & Archives Journal of Industrial Teacher Education The Project Method: Its Vocational Education Origin and International Development Michael Knoll University of Bayreuth http://scholar.lib.vt.edu • Jones, Elizabeth. & Nimmo, John. Emergent Curriculum. Washington DC: NAEYC 1994 • CSWS Students, Teachers, Parents, Seattle, WA www.thelivingclassroom.wordpress.com • Sarah Lawrence College Art of Teaching & Early Childhood Education Lab School, Broxville, NY www.slc.edu • Duckworth, Elizabeth. The Having of Wonderful Ideas. Teacher’s College. NYC. 1996 • Project Learning : A Reading List by Kathy Baron http://www.edutopia.org • Making Your Environment “The Third Teacher by Margie Carter • https://secure.ccie.com
