My Teaching Style Is Inspired By Reggio Emilia

Reggio Emilia is a town in Italy that values early childhood education. People in this city have developed a revolutionary approach to schooling young children.
For more information about this approach click on this link.
http://www.brainy-child.com/article/reggioemilia.html

As a teacher I have spent years studying this wonderful program. Now that I am working with preschool children I finally have the opportunity to practice it with a small group of children.

The Reggio approach is a child lead project approach to early childhood education. Students discover the world around them because of their natural inner curiosity. The teacher is there as a resource for the children as they search for knowledge.
Here is an example of a project that might develop in our school.

Trees
*The students are out walking one day and they become extremely interested in a very large tree.
*They begin to discuss the tree with each other.
*As the teacher participates in the conversation, students use more and more words to describe the tree such as rough, tall, wide, brown, green, bumpy and so on.
*Students discuss various ways to measure the tree and begin comparing it to other trees.
*Back at the school students are given the art supplies to draw or build the tree.
*Students go back to visit the tree each day and talk about how it changes over time. *They keep a journal of the tree for pictures, measurements, and even words about the tree.
*The teacher provides many books about trees both fiction and non-fiction to read to the class and allow children to look through on their own.
*When students are finished with the project and ready to move on to something else there is a tree celebration as the parents are invited a to a picnic near the tree.
**While true participants of Reggio Emilia wouldn’t directly teach reading and writing we have different school requirements here in the U.S. so I would be teaching students to recognize the word tree, talk about other words with same beginning sound or that have the long e sound, and play other games with words and sounds. I am always very considering what American teachers expect students to know when they come to Kindergarten.

This type of education allows teacher to provide much more information than they normally would because they have captured the child's interest. Once a child is interested and involved in a project they will be able to store information in their long term memory more effectively.