GRADUATIONEDUCATION
Westward Bound with Reggio Emilia A
lthough the Reggio Emilia approach traditionally involved early childhood education, teachers successfully use the precepts in the elementary grades
too. Third grade teacher Erin Baker works with her students’ interests to make the curriculum engaging. “It’s like tossing a ball
back and forth,” she said. “They come up with an idea, and I toss it back to them in a way that challenges them to go deeper and ask more questions. Or sometimes I come up with the idea and see if anybody tosses it back to me.” In the third grade,
the curriculum involves the history of westward expansion in America, but in the beginning of the year, students were working in the garden and became very interested in seeds. Erin read them a book called The Little Pea about a seed that was different from the others. One student asked, “What’s inside a seed that makes it grow?” The students talked about that, and then Erin asked, “What is inside of us that helps us to grow and thrive?” The children became very excited about the idea of seeds being like people and decided to create a village of
seed-people on the window sill and to provide everything the people need to grow. Erin can use the village as a reference point for talking about what might inspire people to leave their community and move west, and what they should take with them to start a new community when they arrive at the end of the Oregon Trail. She might use Seed Town as an example of a Native American community, and when new seeds arrive the children can get an idea of what it was like for the Native Americans when new people began entering their communities. Through their seed
village, the children learn lessons about democracy by giving
speeches about issues in the village and holding an election to choose the leaders of the village. They studied math by doing story problems about purchases in the hat store in Seed Town. Erin says her students come to school every day excited to
learn because learning is engaging and enjoyable. “To support kids in their sophisticated thinking, you have to give them a chance to play with ideas first,” she said.
WWW.OES.EDU
WINTER 2013 OES MAGAZINE
9 9
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36