Paradigm Project Fifth Annual Conference

In an emergent curriculum process teachers are continually listening to and observing children’s expressions of their interests, feelings and ideas and building on them to create and support learning opportunities for children. The presentation draws on twelve years of researching the Chicago Common’s Reggio-Based preschool network (years 1992-2003) to focus on two profoundly related applications of the emergent curriculum process: Long term projects lasting for weeks or months and moment-to-moment interactions with children during the course of a single day. The presentation analyzes several long term  projects to show how they incorporate and integrate nine major Reggio principles and to examine the factors that make long term  projects successful. The second part of the session focuses on the participants’ questions and thoughts about the episodes and ideas presented and how it all connects to their own experience.