When my oldest daughter, Amy, was in second grade, she became a writer.  She was a student of Pam Socie at Yankee Ridge School, who had a truly wonderful and innovative literacy program for her students.  The program consisted of the following two elements:

 

1.Reading books chosen by the children

 2.Writing about topics chosen by the children

 

It was quite simple.  The children could choose from a variety of appealing books.  They selected their own topics for writing. They wrote about what they were reading and what was going on in the classroom or where they had gone over the weekend.  Mrs. Socie helped them plan, edit, and re-write, offering helpful suggestions while keeping the work the children’s own.  For spelling instruction, she looked through their draft books and selected a few misspelled words each week for them to practice.  This took a lot more time than giving the same list from the spelling textbook to every child, of course.  I did not say this approach was easy.  It was time-consuming and challenging and required careful attention to individual students, but it was not complicated. 

 I learned this program well because I was one of the parent volunteers who came in to give individualized spelling tests to a small group of four children one day per week.  At parent/teacher conferences, I said, “I love the literacy program here.  In fact, I would love to be a student in this classroom.”  I pictured myself setting aside my motherly duties and spending an hour and half each day quietly pouring over books that interested me and then writing my thoughts down with a personal “coach” to encourage me and make helpful suggestions.  I could learn new vocabulary words and revise my writing until I was truly satisfied with it.  “Yes”, I thought, “sign me up!”  That year, my daughter began to devour books and paint pictures with words.  As a sophmore in high school, she still loves to write, and there is no doubt in my mind that Mrs. Socie deserves a fair amount of the credit. 

 

No matter what age level we are teaching, it seems to me that a good test of our practices is to ask ourselves whether the teaching method would motivate us as adults.  As I write this, I am away from home, attending a workshop on The Project Approach for preschool teachers.  In the first day of training, we learned that a project is “an extended, firsthand, in-depth investigation of a topic undertaken by a class, a group of children, or an individual child in an early childhood classroom or at home”.

Doing a project requires the teacher to:

1.  Find a topic to explore that is interesting and relevant to the group

2.  Ask the children, “What do you want to find out about……” and write down all of their questions.

3.  Investigate the topic in order to answer the questions.  You could interview an expert, take a field trip, conduct an experiment, or look in a book.

4.  Share what you have learned with others. 

 

The Project Approach requires careful attention to what the children are really wondering about in order for it to be genuine.  It requires the teacher to think of creative ways to allow children to interact with the topics, such as planning field trips,inviting experts to come into the room, and providing hands-on activities for children to “mess around with topic”.  I am sure that it is challenging to teach this way, but it is not complicated.

Ask yourself this question: What would you like to learn more about?   Part of our training requires us to break up into groups and conduct our own projects on topics close to the conference area that we find interesting.  One group is going to Starbucks (which drinks are most popular?  Why do people say that Starbucks is a great place to work?  What is a “dry” cappuccino?).  Another group is going to study the fountains around the hotel (does the water in fountains re-circulate?  Do they get turned off when the weather is cool?  What do they do with the money that is thrown into them?).  Our group is going to the fire station (How many calls do they get per day or per week?  What is the most common reason for a call?  How do they deal with the stresses and dangers of the job?  Are they able to sleep when they are there at night?  How often do they have to be “on call”?  What training is required for the job?).  You know, I am genuinely curious!

            There is much more to say about it and much more to learn, but I can already tell that is indeed the kind of  learning that would be motivating to anyone because it allows the learners to follow their own interests, to interact with a topic at their own level, and to find the answers to questions that they actually asked.