Hello everyone!

I have been on many planes since I last contributed words to this discussion group. All my travels have given me much food for thought to share with others interested in the project approach. My travels in Europe reminded me of how culture bound our teaching has to be. Our culture has ways of limiting what we can do as teachers on the one hand and selectively facilitating things for us on the other. In some schools I have found classes of twelve children and in others forty or fifty. In some cultures there is a heavily prescribed curriculum and program and in others there is much more flexibility to allow teachers to try new ideas. In some cultures the curriculum and the program are separate. The curriculum may be heavily prescribed but there may be a good deal of freedom to plan the program innovatively. In other cultures the program itself is specified for the teacher.

I am seeing more and more differerent ways teachers have developed projects in there own classrooms. Some projects last for only a week or two while others continue for 8 or 9 weeks, some projects look much more like thematic units and others look very different from units.

Here is a project undertaken in a kindergarten class in Pusan, Korea. The children studied the squid, an important food in that part of the world.

First the children talked about their experiences of squid and drew labeled drawings illustrating what they knew about squid from those experiences. Then they did field work in the port where the fishing boats bring the squid ashore and in the market where the squid are kept fresh in plastic bowls full of water or piled up in their dried form. The children talked to the people selling the squid and bought one to take back to the classroom. They also compare the squid with the octopus in the market.

Back in the classroom the children studied the squid more closely doing detailed drawings of what they saw and disecting a squid to see what it was like inside. At the same time they looked at books to learn the names of the different parts of the squid and to learn about its habitat and life cycle as well as how it moves, eats, reproduces and ejects ink to hide from its enemies. The children talked, wrote, drew and painted (sometimes with squid ink) what they were learning. At the end of the project the children shared their new knowledge with other children and their parents.

I realise how far short of telling the whole story such a brief description is. When I put this story on the Projects Home Page, however, you will be able to see pictures of the children at work, what they observed in the field and in the classroom and a few products of the children's work.

I realize how quiet things have been on the discussion group since my last review of the discussion in April. Many teachers are now enjoying well earned vacations and the Summer period will slow the discussion down inevitably. However, I hope now to be able to contribute regularly again myself so perhaps some of us will meet here and exchange experiences during these next few weeks away from the rigors of fulltime teaching.

I am currently in Tucson, Arizona, where I hope to have the usual stimulating discussions with colleagues in the ('year round') schools doing projects.

Enjoy your vacations!

Cheers,

(June 22 '96)