Project Approach Reflection
Project Approach Reflection
For any teacher the Project Approach is a practical book that is full of ideas for teachers who are developing investigative projects with young children. I view this book as a powerful resource that combines educational theories with many ways to support and document learning. Initially I was confused with all of the aspects of the project approach, and how exactly to incorporate into curriculum. This book took me on a journey and helped me to discover answers to my questions about the project approach. At first I was very skeptical of the project approach implementation but this book offers a how-to-guide for projects, addresses standards, evaluation, assessment, and how to incorporate this into curriculum. There is no excuse to not incorporate projects into curriculum with the step-by-step guide for teachers to use in guiding and documenting projects.
To me the Project Approach is an exploratory and child-initiated investigation that incorporates all aspects of Early Childhood curriculum into the project. It also presents student-initiated learning as a starting point for dynamic and responsive teaching. This teaching method allows the children to play an important role in their education because they are choosing what they want to learn about and by doing so they are actively involved and participating in learning. When the children are interested in a topic they will be doing in depth and extensive investigation often at a higher level than many adults would expect for this. Then they teachers role is to integrate content knowledge like math, reading, and science into the project.
Projects are an extensive and challenging. Children are using a variety of resources to find answers to their questions. Within a project children are investigating, interviewing, observing, predicting, recording, comparing, using life skills, enriching math concepts ( comparing, ordering, graphing, measuring),...