Systematic Instruction and Project Work

There are some parts of the curriculum in which children are necessarily dependent on the teacher and others in which children can work more independently. Particularly it can be seen that there are three aspects of the early childhood and elementary curriculum which provide for children's learning needs:

1. spontaneous play to explore materials, ideas and social relationships (younger children)
2. systematic instruction for the acquisition of skills (older children)
3. project work for the application of skills acquired earlier

For the younger children project work can be thought of as the more formal part of the program involving more teacher guidance than might be found when the children are at play. However, for the older children project work is more likely to constitute the more informal part of the program, the part where they have greater autonomy in the development of their work than when involved in teacher directed instruction.

Project work and systematic instruction can be seen as providing complementary learning opportunities. Children not only need to know how to use a skill but also when to use it. They need to learn to recognize for themselves the contexts in which the skill might be useful and the purposes which it can most appropriately serve. In systematic instruction the children acquire the skills and in project work they apply those skills in meaningful contexts. The project work can be seen as the part of the curriculum which is planned in negotiation with the children and which supports and extends the more formal and teacher directed instructional elements.

When a teacher is instructing a child in a new level of skill the learning tasks have to be carefully matched to the child's current abilities. When a child is applying skills in which she already has some fluency she can work independently, with more confidence, make decisions, formulate and solve problems as they arise, and be creative in applying the skills appropriately.

The types of activity or task the teacher plans will be different according to which kind of learning is intended. The teacher's role is different in relation to the child at work. Where the child is acquiring skills the teacher is more of a director whereas when children are applying skills they already have, the teacher is more of a guide. The child can also feel quite different about the activity according to which kind of learning is involved.

Dealing With Diversity 
by  Peter Kindfield (August 27, 99)

In traditional schools, students learn isolated skills and content knowledge by completing fragmented, decontextualized, simple tasks such as repetitions of similar multiplication problems. These types of tasks are presented in a single sense modality, using a single representation of the underlying concept, have a single approved method of arriving at a single solution, which also must be performed in a single modality using a single specified from of representation. 

When tasks are this specific they must be carefully matched with a child's specific abilities or the child will have no hope of making any form of contact with the task. The most typical predictor of a match between specific tasks of this kind and children's' abilities is age. Thus children are grouped in age-matched clusters and become defined as gifted if they excel on these tasks and as having special needs when they have trouble tasks of this type.  

This type of education does violence not only to children who may actually have specific developmental delays but also to ESL children, female children, children of color, children with unusual learning styles, and just about any other type of child that doesn't quite fit within the narrowly defined bands of specific ability expected in traditional classrooms. 

The alternative is a form of education where students learn skills and content knowledge in a context where those skills and that content knowledge are useful. This context usually entails a complex problem or project with many levels of embedded problems and solutions. For example, planting and maintaining a garden. These types of tasks are rich in terms of being available to multiple sense modalities, using multiple forms of representation of the underlying concept, having multiple methods of arriving at any number of viable solutions, which also may be performed in multiple modalities using a multiple forms of representation. 

When tasks are rich in terms of entry points, children across all kinds of ability dimensions can make contact with the tasks and learn in a way that fit their personal learning profile. For example, a deaf pre-school child can count beans and seeds, a 2nd grade ESL and a 2nd grade native English speaker can trade vocabulary for plants that they will plant in the spring, and an 8th grade gifted mathematician can work on predicting yield of the garden under different conditions using a spread sheet. This kind of task offers situations in which children whatever their first language, gender, color, learning style, or specific abilities, can come to know parts of their world in new ways.

John Morefield offers another useful perspective on this subject in his article: Recreating Schools for All Children