The Reggio-style of teaching has truly captivated my heart. Over the past year I have tried to implement many “Reggio” methods into my teaching style while teaching in a “traditional school setting.” It has been of great benefit to me as a teacher as well as my students. Since many of y’all expressed interest in hearing how I found the time to implement these activities and how I did it, I would love to share a little bit more on what has worked for me.
A Little Background
The Reggio Emilia approach to education originated in Reggio Emilia, Italy. It places emphasis on child led, project based learning projects. One of the motivating principles of the approach is that children are full of creativity and wonder. They are not simply “banks waiting to be filled with facts, figures, and dates.” {Source: http://www.chevychasereggio.com/reggio%20emilia%20approach.htm} In this approach, teachers help children discover answers to their questions through hands-on exploration, artistic avenues, in which students creatively represent the knowledge they are learning.
Instead of the teacher ‘imparting’ knowledge to the children, children play a key role in researching and making discoveries.
Reggio-inspired Units/Exploration Centers
This past year, through observation, conversation, and student questions, a few “units” emerged in my classroom. Through listening to my students it became very clear that they were very interested in animals and animal habitats. How did I determine this? I listened. One key aspect of the Reggio- model is that students can freely engage with materials in their classroom environment. I have seen some classrooms call this time, “thinking and learning time” and others call it “exploration centers.” I love both of these terms and I am sure there are many other labels for this open ended time. In my classroom, we have exploration centers at the end of each day. It is in essence “free play.” However, I feel like that term gets a bad rap and people question what children are learning. Yet, play, as Maria Montessori said, “is the work of the child.” It is where children practice their social skills. It is where children master what they are learning. It is where they build language skills, math skills, and science skills. It is essential!
So during these exploration centers, I set up activities called “provocations.” A provocation is designed to provoke! It is an open ended way for children to engage with materials and an opportunity for me to observe, document, and listen to what my student’s interests and questions are. You will notice that some of the provocations were ways to encourage our language and math concepts being taught and others were used to go along with units of study. As I do teach in a “traditional school setting” there were units/concepts that I had to cover. Therefore, some of the units were “teacher-directed” but I still used the Reggio “style” to bring the units to life.
Here are a few pictures to show you a few of our provocations this year:
Language Provocations:
Math Provocations
Art Provocations
Can you paint the Statue Of Liberty?
Can you paint the Earth with your hands?
Can you paint “Starry Night”?
Science Provocations
Can you create a frog habitat?
Social Studies Provocations
During “exploration centers” along with provocations, students also can choose to use any of our “exploration baskets,” blocks, the sensory table, the light table, and art supplies.
The baskets make it super simple to clean up and store the materials. Four baskets fit perfectly underneath our sensory table. I change out the materials when students seem to not gravitate towards them anymore.
At the light table, I stored the materials on the shelf that is below the light fixture. I changed out these materials about once a month.
Students also had the opportunity to engage in “dramatic play.”
Through setting up a variety of provocations, play based centers, and books, throughout the year, I noticed a few specific interests emerging.
The pictures above are from that first child-led unit. Through listening to my students, this unit evolved into a study on the forest which then turned into learning about forest animals. During exploration centers, my students loved building with the tree logs and adding the animals to their habitats. They also loved creating art from real life objects and also creating an artist model of a deciduous forest. You can read more about the process of creating the forest here.
Other units that were 100% child led/inspired were our units on weather, rocks and geodes, dinosaurs, endangered animals, light and sound, and castles. These inquires came out of student questions, play, and discussions. What was a truly significant “ah ha! moment” for me was during our dinosaur inquiry. My students’ language and math skills skyrocketed during this unit because they were so engrossed in learning as much as they could about the dinosaurs. Their vocabulary grew to using words like the Jurassic period, the Cretaceous period, prehistoric, herbivores, carnivores, extinct, layers, sedimentary, igneous, eruption, camouflage, and so many more! They discussed, researched, and recorded observations in ways far beyond the skill level of many kindergarten students. Their DRA levels jumped because they were reading multisyllabic words and words with difficult prefixes and suffixes. Their writing improved because they loved the concept. It was a truly wonderful time in our classroom.
I would very strongly recommend reading more about this pedagogy over the summer. Due to using this style of teaching, my students took ownership of their learning. They grew not only as students but as life-long learners.
A few tips on getting started…
I’ll be honest, when I first discovered this method of teaching, I loved it but I was a bit overwhelmed. I got lost in “Reggio-inspired” blogs and read tons of books but I was trying to grasp how to use this “free flowing” “child led” method in a traditional setting with specific goals and outcomes required by the end of the year.
What I did to make the two worlds mesh was to look at my day and determine where I could fit in a time to allow student choice. Our school day is from 7:55-3:00. At our school we do not have any pull outs. We have all of our students all day except for specials. We eat lunch with them and take them to recess each day. Therefore, my daily schedule (generally) followed this routine:
8:00 Morning Meeting
8:30 Phonics/Language/Handwriting Lesson
8:45 Guided Reading (Language Centers)
10:00 Specials
11:00 Recess
11:30 Writer’s Workshop
12:00 Lunch
12:30 BUILD (Math block)
1:30 Quiet Time
1:45 Exploration Centers/Writing Reflection
2:40 Bible (I teach at a Christian school)
3:00 Pack Up
I begin exploration centers typically with a non-fiction book that goes along with what my students have been asking about or our unit. I also typically have 1-2 special table activities each day. (For example, when we were studying rocks, a table activity that week was creating volcanoes out of modeling clay and paint to represent what they were learning.) We also might start exploration centers with a science experiment. (During our arctic unit, after reading a book on blubber, we completed the “blubber experiment.”) As students complete the experiment, they can choose other exploration centers.
To end our exploration time, my students journal about what they learned or did that day. This helped my students take ownership of their learning. It also helped me see what was “sticking” with my students and what they enjoyed doing.
I also incorporated our units into other aspects of our day. For example, during Morning Meeting, when studying castles, our activity was labeling the parts of a castle.
During guided reading, our warm up was reading “castle” words and clapping out the syllables in the words.
During a phonics lesson, our king helped us mark the vowels to help us read words with two vowels in them.
Also, when completing our BIG projects, our schedule occasionally looked different. When we created our castle, we researched, planned, and constructed it together. During guided reading, I met with the different groups (masons, ditch diggers, etc.) and taught them how to research and plan. We looked at books, read sentences, used our classroom technology, drew and labeled diagrams, and then implemented our plans.
This helped us learn how to use books as resources.
It encouraged my students to use great observational skills.
And it also helped my students learn how to work together!
It also taught my students that not everything can be accomplished in one day. This was a great lesson on perseverance and not giving up!
I can’t speak highly enough about the Reggio-method and I hope that you will try it in your classroom! Remember, if you have ANY questions, I am happy to answer them. Comment on the blog or on my Facebook page! I’d love to talk with y’all more about this topic!
(Disclosure: I am in NO WAY an expert in the “Reggio Way.” This is simply a reflection on what worked for me in my classroom and how I interpreted it in our school setting.)