Week Seven: Investigations /Inquiries of Active Learning Processes

Reflection

This week I gave my presentation on the Project Approach in a discussion about how the natural environment provides both benefits and limitations to conducting lessons that provide unique and interactive learning experiences for children. I wanted to facilitate a discussion about how best to implement a project approach style of learning and apply it to the ELYF (as this is a Canadian website). In doing so, I wanted peers to evaluate how it was conducive to learning from the perspective of both the teacher and the child. 

We discussed the Project Approach website as a valuable teaching tool, an active learning process for student engagement and a useful online resource that encourages a community of teachers to contribute their own ideas and reflections. It was established that interactive learning experiences such as those presented, build on a child's natural curiosity enabling children to interact, question, connect, problem solve, communicate and reflect on their learning. 

While this approach is highly innovative, the class established time restrictions (for planning and executing the lesson/unit), potential class management issues and maintaining students' task focus in order to communicate the lesson objective. It was however argued that from a child's perspective the sensory and interactive elements of the project approach promote an exploration of learning that harness the natural curiosity and intrinsic motivations of the child. Children were considered more likely to connect their learning to the world around them and  more likely to remember lesson content and outcomes of the learning experience through engagement. 

I conducted the following activity to establish the prior knowledge of my peers using the stimulus below. This was to encourage the same of my peers when utilising the project approach; to establish what the children know and build upon their current experiences to make the learning relevant and provide students with ownership over their learning. 

These questions were used to prompt the answers listed below:

• What is it?
• Why is it important?
• What do you know about the object/image?
• Is it a living thing?
• What does it need to survive?
• Where would you find this object/image? 

Peer Responses

Tree:

• Changes colour in different seasons 
• Loses it leaves
• Produces fruit and nuts
• Turns carbon dioxide into oxygen
• Fire wood
• A home for animals 
• Features include roots and a trunk, leaves and bark
• Water 
• Fun play space - climbing 
• Provides Shade

Butterfly:

• Wings
• Antenna 
• Different to moths
• Short lifespan
• Thousands of different species 
• Lives in the rainforest 
• Butterfly life cycle - Egg, larvae, cocoon, butterfly

Flower:

• Food and home for a variety of insects
• Photosynthesis
• Chlorophyl
• Features include a stem, petals and pollen
• A flower is a living thing
• Found in the garden
• Colours vary
• Can be either male or female 

Bibliography:

1. The Project Approach. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.projectapproach.org/