Consulting: Workshops

What I Do | Workshops | SummerCamp |Arrangements & Fees

CHILDREN BRING THEIR OWN AGENDAS: Emergent Curriculum in our Classrooms

For people who work with children ages 3-12

How can we find out what interests each child and make him or her a special time or place in the classroom?  Can we afford to plan the whole day , or the year, in advance or should children help us with our decisions about what we will do?  Why does this matter?  Can we do this without exhausting ourselves?  Why bother?  What is important about curriculum anyway? 

We all went to schools where the teacher planned for us, and if we were lucky, what they planned was interesting, and if we weren't, it was boring.  Emergent curriculum, and especially emergent curriculum for atypical children, is based on a view that we waste our time and the children's if we bore them. 

What do the terms "emergent curriculum" and "negotiated curriculum" imply?  How can we figure out what interests which child?  How can we provide for different children?  Is it hard? 

In Reggio Emilia, curriculum is planned by adults, but they test their ideas before going with them, and often find themselves revising what they've designed, in response to the children's conversations.  So, a fall project on the beach was converted to a remarkable project on crowds as the result of teachers listening to tapes of children responding to questions about their summer experiences at the beach.

If you choose this workshop, please invite participants to come prepared to tell the group very specific information or stories about their curriculum flops and triumphs, so we can examine these stories for clues as to what worked and what didn't.  We can only help children when we can "read" their behavior clearly. 

This session will help participants learn how.

E-mail:  sydney@eceteacher.org, www.eceteacher.org • (C) Copyright Sydney Gurewitz Clemens, 2007