The Power of Projects

This timely volume will help teachers on the front line to tackle the key challenges they face in today’s classrooms with children ages 3–8. The authors show how good project work can provide solutions to problems that seem overwhelming to many teachers of young children.

In The Power of Projects, a group of educators including Lilian Katz:

• Identify 5 key challenges in schools and centers today:

1. Overcoming the ill effects of poverty

2. Moving young children towards literacy

3. Responding to children’s special needs

4. Helping children learn a second language

5. Meeting standards effectively.

• Provide guidelines for curriculum that help teachers meet these key challenges.
• Demonstrate how the project approach follows these guidelines, providing a structure for classrooms which focuses teachers on children’s learning.
• Introduce practical strategies with examples to maximize the benefits of project work in classrooms where teachers face these challenges.
• Share documentation of highly effective projects that helped teachers to meet each of the challenges, including examples of children’s work.
• Answer frequently asked questions and share practical advice.

Judy Harris Helm heads her own educational consulting and training company, Best Practices, Inc., in Brimfield, Illinois. Her books include Becoming Young Thinkers: Deep Project Work in the Classroom; The Power of Projects: Meeting Contemporary Challenges in Early Childhood Classrooms—Strategies and Solutions; and Windows on Learning: Documenting Young Children's Work, Second Edition. Sallee Beneke is an instructor at Illinois Valley Community College in Oglesby, Illinois where she is also the Director of their Early Childhood Center.

“Teachers can respond to challenges and at the same time help to set the foundations for the children’s future by incorporating good project work into the early childhood curriculum.”;
—Excerpt from chapter by Lilian G. Katz

"Those committed to excellence in the teaching of young children will find the specific methods needed in this work. The teacher practices that increase achievement are all here."
—Martin Haberman, author of Star Teachers of Children in Poverty

Table of Contents

Preface to the Third Edition

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Basic Practices
   Learning Through Constraints
   Educating Ourselves
   Learning from Close Textual Analysis
   Practicing Transparency
   What the Research Says

Chapter 2. Facilitating
   Significance of the Facilitator's Core Tasks
   The Facilitator's Moves
   Brief Protocols
   Postcards
   All-Purpose Go-Round
   Clearing
   Pair-Share
   Reflection on a Word
   Longer Openers
   Fears and Hopes
   Protocol for Setting Norms
   Provocative Prompts
   Marvin's Model

Chapter 3. Working on Practice
   Tuning Protocol
   Consultancy
   Descriptive Consultancy
   Issaquah Coaching Protocol
   Peeling the Onion
   Success Analysis Protocol
   Stuff and Vision Protocol
   Peer Review Protocol (Online)

Chapter 4. Working for Change
   What Comes Up
   Standards in Practice
   Minnesota Slice
   Shadow Protocol
   Do What You Mean to Do
   New Design Protocol
   School Visit Protocol
   What Do We Know? What Do We Suspect? What Do We Need to Find Out?

Chapter 5. Working with Texts
   Collaborative Assessment Conference
   Final Word
   Jigsaw Protocol
   Panel Protocol
   Mars/Venus Protocol
   Text Rendering Protocol (Video Version)
   Art Feedback Protocols
   Rich Text Protocol

Chapter 6. Working Toward Equity
   Diversity Rounds
   Constructivist Listening Dyad
   Cosmopolitan Protocol
   The Paseo or Circles of Identity
   Looking at Data Protocol
   Equity Protocol
   Looking at Student Work (with Equity in Mind)

Conclusion: Jumping In
   Ways to Get Started
   Things That Make It Easier

References

Index

About the Authors