We have come a long way since the beginning of the school year with our learning as a group about Reggio-inspired education. Read about the fundamental principles of Reggio-inspired teaching and learning, and Reggio as it fits with the PYP framework.
The Reggio Emilia Approach emphasizes hands-on discovery learning that allows each child to use all their senses and all their languages to learn.
Today we will be using a visible thinking routine to reflect about our learning and questions we continue to wonder about and wish to continue to explore.
Insert Photo Thinking Routine
Questions
The Reggio Emilia philosophy is an approach to teaching, learning and advocacy for children. In its most basic form, it is a way of observing what children know, are curious about and what challenges them. Teachers record these observations to reflect on developmentally appropriate ways to help children expand their academic and social potentials. Long term projects connect core academic areas in and out of the classroom.
Image of the Child
Children are viewed as competent, curious, full of knowledge, potential, and interested in connecting to the world around them. Teachers are deeply aware of children’s potentials and construct all of their work and environment of the children’s experience to respond appropriately.
Collaboration and Interaction
Collaboration and cooperation are intentional in a school inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach to education. The entire system is designed to be connected and in relationship. Nothing is left to sit in isolation. Everything is alive and connected. Children, teachers and families join together to continually improve the system that supports our school community.
The Environment
The space within the school or the environment is considered the third teacher. Teachers intentionally organize, support and plan for various spaces for children. The daily schedules are planned to ensure that there is a balance between individual, small and large group activities, child directed and teacher initiated activity and inside as well as outside experiences.
The Three Subjects of Education: Children, Families and Teachers
For children to learn, their well-being has to be guaranteed; such well-being is connected with the well being of parents and teachers. Children, parents and teachers have rights; the right to safety, care and welfare, the right to be involved and the right to grow professionally.
The Power of Documentation
Documentation is a means to collect information, observations and learning. It can be in the form of observations, photography, video, conversation transcripts and/or visual mediums like paint, wire, clay or drawing materials. Teachers use documentation to identify strengths, ideas, and next steps to support learning.
Emergent Curriculum
Emergent Curriculum is a way of teaching and learning that requires teachers to observe and listen to the children. Teachers ask questions and listen for the children’s ideas, hypotheses and theories. After observing children in action, the teachers compare, discuss, and interpret their observations. Teachers plan activities, studies and long term projects in the classroom based on their observations. Teachers partner with children and the exchange of theories are referred to as the Cycle of Inquiry. Teachers use their interpretations, intentions and goals (social, emotional and academic) to make choices that they share with children. Learning is seen not as a linear process but as a spiraling progression.
The Hundred Languages of Children
The Studio teacher (or Atelierista) works closely with other teachers and the children through the Studio, an intentional space containing materials and tools to pursue thinking and concepts. In addition to the larger Studio, Mini-studios are found in every Discovery. What is done with the materials is not art per se, because in the view of Reggio educators the children’s use of media is not a separate part of the curriculum but an integral part of the whole cognitive symbolic expression process of learning.
The Role of the Teacher
The image of the child shapes the role of the teacher and involves four major components. Teachers are:
- Co-constructors: partners, guides, nurtures, solves problems, learns, hypothesizes
- Researchers: learns, observes, revisits
- Documenters: listens, records, displays, revisits
- Advocates for children: involved in the community, politics relating to children, speaks for children and presents work to other educators and community members.
The Role of Parents
Parents are an essential component of the school. They are an active part of their children’s learning experiences and help to ensure the welfare of all the children in the school.
The Role of Time and the Importance of Continuity
Time is influenced by the interests and activities that the children bring to life within the school. This in turn impacts schedules, groupings and routines. Teachers get to know children (strengths, needs and personality) because children stay with the same teacher and the same peer group for two years.
Projects
Projects provide the backbone of the children’s and teachers’ learning experiences. They are based on the strong convictions that learning by doing is of great importance and that to discuss in group and to revisit ideas and experiences is the premier way of learning. Project ideas come from experiences of the children and teachers, a chance event or problem posed. They can last from a few days to several months.
____________________________________
Fundamental Principles
Children are capable of constructing their own learning
Children form an understanding of themselves and their place in the world through their interactions with others
Children are communicators
Communication is a process, a way of discovering things, asking questions, using language as play. Playing with sounds and rhythm and rhyme; delighting in the process of communicating.
The environment is the third teacher
The space encourages collaboration, communication and exploration. The space respects children as capable by providing them with
authentic materials & tools. The space is cared for by the children and the adults.
The adult is a mentor and guide
Our role as adults is to observe (our) children, listen to their questions and their stories, find what interests them and then provide them with opportunities to explore these interests further.
The Reggio Emilia Approach takes a child-led project approach. The projects aren’t planned in advanced, they emerge based on the child’s interests.
An emphasis on documenting children’s thoughts
You’ll notice in Reggio and Reggio-inspired settings that there is an emphasis on carefully displaying and documenting children’s thoughts and progression of thinking;
making their thoughts visible in many different ways: photographs, transcripts of children’s thoughts and explanations, visual representations (
drawings, sculptures etc.), all designed to show the child’s learning process.
The Hundred Languages of Children
Probably the most well-known aspect of the Reggio Emilia Approach. The belief that children use
many many different ways to show their understanding and express their thoughts and creativity.
A hundred different ways of thinking, of discovering, of learning. Through
drawing and
sculpting, through dance and movement, through
painting and pretend play, through
modelling and music, and that each one of these
Hundred Languages must be valued and nurtured.
These languages, or ways of learning, are all a part of the child. Learning and play are not separated.
The Reggio Emilia Approach emphasizes hands-on discovery learning that allows the child to use all their
senses and all their
languages to learn.
_______________________________________________
PYP Early Years
Research article
In full: PYP Early Years Final Report
Staff at all four of the sites stated that they saw their programmes as aligned
with the principles of the Reggio Emilia approach. The reflective, inquiry based
approach to teaching and learning that is the basis of the PYP programme is
also in line with the Reggio Emilia approach. Researchers observed numerous
examples of such approaches in the written, taught and assessed curriculum
in the programmes of S1, A1 and A2. The extensive documentation as part of
the planning, implementation and evaluation processes of these three
programmes, and the view of the child as an active learner, with respect for
IB Early Years Project Final Report (April, 2014). Morrissey, Rouse, Doig, Chao & Moss (Deakin
University)
35
children’s thinking and ideas, could also be seen as reflective of the Reggio
Emilia approach within these three programmes.
The S1 and A1 programmes appeared particularly strongly influenced by
Reggio Emilia, especially apparent in the design and/or layout of their
builidings, and in their emphasis on expression through the arts, and a sense
of aesthetics and beauty in their programmes. Photographs of these sites
show, for example: carefully arranged displays of children’s papier mache
heads, with a quote from Malaguzzi about the 100 languages of children (S1)
(Photos 4 & 5); a Library decorated with beautiful objects (S1) (Photo 6); a
display of branches of blossom as an inspiration at an art table that mirrors the
blossom trees in a courtyard outside; (Photo 7); carefully arranged displays of
children’s artwork in a piazza area (A1) (Photo 8)
The learning environment, both indoors and outdoors, is regarded as a crucial
factor in children’s learning, both in the PYP Early Years curriculum (IBO,
2013) and in the Reggio Emilia approach (Millikan, 2003). The learning
environment refers not just to the physical space and resouces, but also less
tangible elements such as the social and emotional climate (Curtis & Carter,
2003). The learning environment can be regarded as reflecting a programme’s
philosophy, values and pedagogical approaches.
Observation of a learning envrionment can reveal for example how much
children are given choice and responsibility in the set up of a space, or the
choice of resources or equipment. It can reveal whether the outdoors and the
natural world are regarded as places where learning occurs. A learning
envrionment will reflect whether, for example, sustainability or a sense of
aesthetics and beauty, or play-based learning are valued in the programme.
