| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
Influences & Inspirations: |
| |
At Parker River Community Preschool
our practice and curriculum is strongly influenced and
guided by research in early childhood education and related
fields. |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
The Schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy: |
| |
Reggio Emilia is a province in northern Italy. In 1991
the parent-founded preschools in Reggio Emilia became
known around the world through a Newsweek article that
hailed them as the best in the world. Supporters of these
preschools believe that children are competent individuals
and valuable members of the community. Curriculum in the
Reggio Preschools is child-directed and purposeful. |
| |
|
| |
Key Principles: |
| |
 |
The
image of the child - the cornerstone of Reggio
Emilia experiences conceptualizes an image of the
child as competent, strong, inventive, and full
of ideas with rights instead of needs |
|
Environment
as a third teacher - preparing an environment
that acts as third teacher carefully designed to
facilitate the social constructions of understanding,
and to document the life within the space |
|
Relationships
- seeing the importance of relationships
physically in a way objects are displayed in the
classroom; socially and emotionally in the interactions
of the people in the environment; and intellectually
in the approach to learning that is always seen
in context and depends on co-construction of knowledge |
|
Collaboration
- working together at every level through collaboration
among teachers, children and teachers, children
and children, children and parents, and the larger
community |
|
Documentation
- providing a verbal and visual trace of the children’s
experiences and work, and opportunities to revisit,
reflect, and interpret |
|
Progettazione
- this difficult to translate Italian word means
making flexible plans for the further investigation
of ideas, and devising the means for carrying them
out in collaboration with the children, parents,
and, at times, the larger community |
|
Provocation
- listening closely to the children and devising
a means for provoking further thought and action |
|
One hundred
languages of children - encouraging children
to make symbolic representations of their ideas
and providing them with many different kinds of
media for representing those ideas |
|
Transparency
- creating transparency through the light that infuses
every space and in the mirrors, light tables, and
glass jars that catch and reflect the light around
the classroom; and metaphorically in the openness
to ideas and theories from other parents of the
world , and in the availability of information to
parents and visitors |
|
| |
|
| |
References: |
| |
Key Principles borrowed from: Authentic
Childhood: Exploring Reggio
Emilia in the Classroom by Susan Fraser
and Carol Gestwicki |
| |
|
| |
Additional Resources: |
| |
|
Book: Working
in the Reggio Way by Julianne P. Wurn |
|
Book: Bringing Reggio
Emilia Home by Louise B. Cadwell |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
 |
| |
|
| |
 |
| |
|
| |
Theory of Multiple Intelligences: |
| |
Dr. Howard Gardner, a psychologist and professor of
neuroscience from Harvard University, developed the theory
of Multiple Intelligences (MI) in 1983. The theory challenged
traditional beliefs in the fields of education and cognitive
science. Unlike the established understanding of intelligence
-- people are born with a uniform cognitive capacity that
can be easily measured by short-answer tests -- MI reconsiders
our educational practice of the last century and provides
an alternative. |
| |
|
| |
According to Howard Gardner, human beings have nine
different kinds of intelligence that reflect different
ways of interacting with the world. Each person has a
unique combination, or profile. Although we each have
all nine intelligences, no two individuals have them in
the same exact configuration -- similar to our fingerprints.
|
| |
|
| |
For Gardner, intelligence is: |
| |
|
the ability to create
an effective product or offer a service that is
valued in a culture; |
|
a set of skills that make it possible
for a person to solve problems in life; |
|
the potential for finding or creating
solutions for problems, which involves gathering
new knowledge |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
HOWARD GARDNER'S NINE MULTIPLE
INTELLIGENCES: |
| |
1.
Linguistic Intelligence:
the capacity to use language to express what's on
your mind and to understand other people. Any kind
of writer, orator, speaker, lawyer, or other person
for whom language is an important stock in trade
has great linguistic intelligence. |
2.
Logical/Mathematical Intelligence:
the capacity to understand the underlying principles
of some kind of causal system, the way a scientist
or a logician does; or to manipulate numbers, quantities,
and operations, the way a mathematician does. |
3.
Musical Rhythmic Intelligence:
the capacity to think in music; to be able to hear
patterns, recognize them, and perhaps manipulate
them. People who have strong musical intelligence
don't just remember music easily, they can't get
it out of their minds, it's so omnipresent. |
4.
Bodily/Kinesthetic Intelligence:
the capacity to use your whole body or parts of
your body (your hands, your fingers, your arms)
to solve a problem, make something, or put on some
kind of production. The most evident examples are
people in athletics or the performing arts, particularly
dancing or acting. |
5.
Spatial Intelligence:
the ability to represent the spatial world internally
in your mind -- the way a sailor or airplane pilot
navigates the large spatial world, or the way a
chess player or sculptor represents a more circumscribed
spatial world. Spatial intelligence can be used
in the arts or in the sciences. |
6.
Naturalist Intelligence:
the ability to discriminate among living things
(plants, animals) and sensitivity to other features
of the natural world (clouds, rock configurations).
This ability was clearly of value in our evolutionary
past as hunters, gatherers, and farmers; it continues
to be central in such roles as botanist or chef. |
7.
Intrapersonal Intelligence:
having an understanding of yourself; knowing who
you are, what you can do, what you want to do, how
you react to things, which things to avoid, and
which things to gravitate toward. We are drawn to
people who have a good understanding of themselves.
They tend to know what they can and can't do, and
to know where to go if they need help. |
8.
Interpersonal Intelligence:
the ability to understand other people. It's an
ability we all need, but is especially important
for teachers, clinicians, salespersons, or politicians
-- anybody who deals with other people. |
9.
Existential Intelligence:
the ability and proclivity to pose (and ponder)
questions about life, death, and ultimate realities. |
|
| |
|
| |
References: |
| |
Information borrowed from: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/education/ed_mi_overview.html |
| |
|
| |
Additional Resources: |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
Play and Learning: |
| |
Play is simply shorthand for our capacity for curiosity,
imagination, and fantasy — our creative dispositions.
What makes play unique is that it enables us to create
new learning experiences. To illustrate, an infant who
drops a rattle from the crib, is learning about gravity.
He or she is also creating a game with the parent who
is retrieving the rattle. In addition, the infant learns
that different objects make different sounds when they
are dropped. Certainly children can learn these lessons
from watching an adult perform the same actions, but it
is much more powerful when the infant creates these experiences
through his or her own actions. Learning by doing is always
much more effective than learning by watching.
Perhaps the best example of how children learn from
their self-created experiences is babbling. No one teaches
the infant to babble, it comes entirely from the infant.
In the process of vocalizing, the infant creates all
of the sounds needed to speak any language on earth.
As the infant listens to the language being spoken around
him or her, the baby selects those vowels and consonants
that are unique to the language of the parents. As toddlers,
children often create their own grammars. So called
"pivot" grammars are a case in point. That
is the child uses a single word as the pivot of many
different shorthand sentences, "Baby up,"
"Baby drink," "Baby down," and so
on. Language is a powerful example of the importance
of children's self-initiated play activities in their
social learning. Play, however, is equally important
in children's learning of reading and math.
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
References: |
| |
Information borrowed from: Preschool Academics:
learning what comes naturally by David Elkind |
| |
|
| |
Additional Resources: |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
The Project Approach: |
| |
A project is an extended, in-depth investigation of
a topic, ideally one worthy of the children's attention
and energy. In other words, projects involve children
in conducting research on phenomena and events worth learning
about in their own environments.
In the process of these investigations children have opportunities
to pose questions, to generate theories and predictions
concerning possible answers, to seek answers to their
questions (answers from which they are likely to generate
still more questions), to interview experts and others
from whom relevant information can be obtained, and to
engage in other activities involved in collecting information.
Projects provide contexts in which children can apply
a wide variety of social and intellectual skills in, addition
to the basic academic skills being learned in the more
formal parts of the curriculum. Thus, in this exhibit
the efforts of very young children to write and to represent
in other ways the data gathered during their investigations
can be seen. In addition, projects provide contexts for
young children to argue, cooperate, collaborate, share
the responsibility of data gathering, check findings and
many other research strategies. Projects also provoke
children to in-depth probing into the nature of events
and objects around them, to learning how things work and
how they are made, to finding out who does what and what
tools are used, to discovering the sequences in which
actions are taken in the events investigated, and to observing
and describing the work done by people in their own everyday
worlds. Projects can also involve children in close examination
of the natural world around them, help them learn what
natural world objects consist of, and teach them to observe
closely how things grow and change over time.
Projects can be incorporated into the curriculum in any
part of the world. Every environment and the people in
it are potential sources of new and valuable information
for young children. The knowledge gained and the skills
applied in investigating their own experiences supports
children's in-born dispositions to learn and investigate
what is at hand. Furthermore, knowledge and skills of
all kinds are strengthened, not only with instruction,
but also through application and use of the kind of skills
seen in these examples of project work.
It is useful to keep in mind that young children may come
to their school experiences with different kinds and amounts
of exposure to books and stories and encouragement to
try to read, to counting objects and using pencils, and
so forth. However, all children come to school with lively
minds marked by a powerful disposition to make the best
sense they can of their experiences. Projects provide
rich contexts for expressing and strengthening that fundamental
disposition. |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
References: |
| |
http://ceep.crc.uiuc.edu/eecearchive/books/projapp1/initial.html#Foreword |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
Additional Resources: |
| |
|
The Project
Approach as a Way of Making Life Meaningful in the
Classroom by Eunju Yun |
|
The Project Approach
in the Early Years by Lilian Katz
|
|
Book: Young Investigators:
The Project Approach in the Early Years
by Judy Harris Helm and Lilian Katz |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
© 2009
Parker River Community Preschool, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Designed by Viscusi
Design |
|
|
