The Project Approach in Early Years Provision: A practical guide to promoting children's creativity and critical thinking through project work

By Marianne Sargent

The Project Approach in Early Years Provision is designed to help early years students, practitioners and managers understand and manage project work with young children. The project approach is designed to enable early educators to ensure young children are learning in the best possible way by providing motivating learning opportunities. Put the project approach into practice, using the included resources with adaptable and printable planning and observation forms. Link the approach to the requirements of all four British early years curricula. Develop children's personal and social skills by encouraging collaboration with others. Provide a meaningful context for children to practice their literacy and numeracy skills. Promote sustained shared thinking by facilitating projects that involve children in active investigation, discussion and debate. Give each child the freedom to learn according to their individual needs, interests, aptitudes, and abilities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Allen Group
• Release date: Jan 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781907241741

Book preview

Title page

The Project Approach in Early Years Provision

A practical guide to promoting children’s creativity and critical thinking through project work

by Marianne Sargent

Publisher information

2014 digital version by Andrews UK Limited

www.andrewsuk.com

Published by Practical Pre-School Books, A Division of MA Education Ltd, St Jude’s Church, Dulwich Road, Herne Hill, London, SE24 0PB.

Tel: [phone]

www.practicalpreschoolbooks.com

© MA Education Ltd 2011

All photos © MA Education Ltd. Photos taken by Ben Suri and Marianne Sargent.

Front cover photo: © iStockphoto.com/Sergey Galushko.

Photo on the last page of the Learning Story in the Resources section © iStockphoto.com/Danielle Davey

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopied or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

About this book

This book is intended for early years leaders, trainers, practitioners and students. It aims to provide a guide to the project approach that links theory and research to practice and explains the approach using case study examples to bring it to life.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part entitled ‘Supporting Early Learning’ begins with an explanation of what the project approach is. It provides a rationale for using the approach by demonstrating how it fosters particular aspects of educational practice that support early learning. In doing so, it refers to learning theory and research and includes a number of case studies in order to illustrate how project work is beneficial to early educational practice. It also considers the general aims and principles of British early years curricula and how the project approach relates to these and helps to meet requirements. Additionally, it looks at issues and concerns surrounding using such an approach within early years settings.

The second part, called ‘The Project Approach in Action’ explains how project work is planned and carried out and provides examples of planning, observation and assessment documents. It explains how a full-scale project can be planned to lead on from a provocation, and provides a detailed description and photographs of a project carried out in a maintained inner-city community school nursery. Throughout, there are links to a number of adaptable and printable planning and observation documents, which are contained in the Resources section at the end of the book.

At the end of the book there is a guide for early years leaders as well as trainers and further education providers. It contains advice on how to communicate the approach to others and ideas for training exercises. This guide is supported with resources in the Resources section, including presentations for use as training aids.

The term practitioner is used throughout this book to refer to any professional working with young children in the early years sector.

The book provides case study examples throughout

This book explains how to plan, document and assess project work

An introduction to the project approach

Current thinking supports practice that involves promoting independence in young children and giving them the tools to become proficient learners as they continue through their education (DCELLS, 2008a; DCSF, 2008; Featherstone and Featherstone, 2008; Glazzard et al, 2010). In recent years policy makers and researchers have placed emphasis on the importance of enabling children to take control of their learning. The integration of Assessment for Learning methods into the Primary Strategies, as well as the focus upon critical thinking skills and the promotion of sustained shared thinking in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) guidance for England are other examples of this shift.

The project approach is a child-centred teaching strategy that enables children to follow their interests and fascinations, while developing the independence, knowledge and thinking skills they will need to become life-long learners.

During a farm visit some nursery children were particularly interested in chicken eggs, which triggered a project all about eggs

What the project approach involves

Early years practitioners will be familiar with the use of themes and topics when planning curriculum delivery. It is common practice to choose a new topic each half term and plan subject related activities around it. For example, practitioners might use a topic about growing as inspiration for planning activities across all six areas of learning. For example, mathematical activities might include measuring the heights of children or bean stalks; literacy skills might be practised in a role-play gardening centre as children take on different roles; physical activities may involve playing jumping bean games; children may develop knowledge and understanding by growing their own bean plants; they might create collages with paper petals; and they could share pictures of themselves as babies and find out about the needs of young children. Such activities serve their purpose and teach a range of knowledge and skills. However, although the overarching theme helps to create some commonality between areas of learning, teaching in this way can be disjointed and children often only scratch the surface in terms of learning any in-depth knowledge about the focus topic.

The project approach entails taking an area of interest – which may stem from a topic – and using this as a basis for in-depth enquiry or research. Areas of learning are not simply linked by a topic or theme; they are integrated as a result of the investigative process. Knowledge and skills are not taught in isolation, but rather acquired and practised within a meaningful context that makes sense to children. All projects stem from the interests of the children and are planned or developed in collaboration with children. This is in contrast to topics that might have initially been suggested by the children, but are ultimately adult-controlled (Nutbrown, 2006, p.33).

Projects give children practical opportunities to develop their knowledge and understanding of how the world works

Lilian Katz and Sylvia Chard

The project approach in a contemporary context

In Engaging Children’s Minds Katz and Chard (2000) describe a project as follows:

We use the term project to refer to an in-depth study of a particular topic… a project is a piece of research about a topic – one that may be related to a larger theme – in which children’s ideas, questions, theories, predictions, and interests are major determinants of the experiences provided and the work accomplished.

(Katz and Chard, 2000, pp.2 and 5).

According to their model a project is divided into three phases:

the first phase is the planning stage whereby the practitioner finds out what the children already know about the subject and what they would like to find out;

the second phase is the actual investigation, involving research and field work;

the final phase entails drawing the project to a close with an event or display of the children’s work.

Reggio Emilia, Northern Italy

The project approach in an international context

At the beginning of the school year practitioners in Reggio Emilia consult with children and together they decide upon possible long-term projects. A project is often introduced by showing the children something that triggers curiosity and discussion. This is known as a provocation and might be a piece of artwork, an object, a photograph or the documentation from a previous project, which acts as a stimulus or thought provoker that invites wonder, curiosity and investigation (Thornton and Brunton, 2007, p.69). The children are given time to digest the provocation, think about it and formulate questions and ideas. They then develop these thoughts into an idea for investigation and think of a title for the project.

A small-scale project might span just a couple of weeks and involve a class, group or individual. However, larger-scale projects can last as long as a couple of years and may involve a whole year group, school or the wider community. Throughout the life of a project, practitioners observe and compile a written and photographic record of the children’s investigations. This is referred to as documentation and is considered an important teaching resource that is used to help the children reflect upon their learning.

Project work involves taking an interest and using it as a basis for in-depth enquiry or research

Carrying out a project

An idea for a project will usually come from practitioners’ observations of the children in their care. Such observations might highlight a particular interest that has the potential to be developed into a large-scale investigation or project.

A project is started with an initial provocation, such as an event, question, picture or object that triggers conversation and debate. After the children have had some time to explore the provocation, they are gathered together to share their experiences and think about what they would like to find out or do next. The children’s questions, ideas and suggestions are recorded and practitioners meet together to discuss and use these as the basis for planning the project. Practitioners then set up various resources around the setting that will help facilitate the children’s explorations. The children might investigate individually, in groups or as a class and practitioners work alongside them to help develop and extend ideas. This means observing the children while they are working and perceptively helping them to share and sustain thinking with carefully considered open questioning.

Observation is a fundamentally important part of project work and practitioners plan to ensure that children’s investigations are thoroughly documented using written and photographic observations, as well as digital recordings. Any work the children produce is also kept or photographed. These observations are used formatively to help plan the direction of the ongoing project. At the conclusion of the project, the documentation is used as a tool for reflection and shared with the children. This might be in the form of a learning story, where the children look back at what they did and hear their conversations and comments read back to them.

The project approach to teaching and learning is not new. Froebel recognised that all areas of knowledge were interrelated and that children should be taught to know the inner relations of things to one another (1887, quoted in Bruce, 2005, p.17). Isaacs’ substantial records of her observations at the Malting House School describe a range of investigations from children weighing each other using a see-saw, to digging up a dead rabbit to find out if it’s gone up to the sky (1930, p.41). Isaacs’ observations led her to realise that if children are provided with opportunities to investigate their fascinations they will develop skills in applying knowledge to inform reasoning. In addition, the Plowden Report advocated an integrated curriculum because rigid division of the curriculum into subjects tends to interrupt children’s trains of thought and interest and to hinder them from realising the common elements in problem solving (CACE, 1967, p.197).