Thursday, August 30, 2007

Interesting quote - The Hundred Languages of Children


For any elementary ed. teachers that have read or are reading the book, The Hundred Languages of Children, this quote can be found on page 67:

"What children learn does not follow as an automatic result from what is taught. Rather, it is in large part due to the children's own doing as a consequence of their activities and our resources."

It's interesting that children don't just learn by observation. Like all of us (view ourselves), we are comfortable most when the learning is done by discovery. Lecturing and testing is not long-term learning and results in creating little for our brains to use as connectors.

This book mentions a lot of John Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky to name a few. The Reggio Emilia approach (by the way... does anyone else want to visit with me?!?) is certainly interesting so far. I wonder if Stager has been there? I also wonder if the entire instruction is spoken in Italian?

Interesting book... although the interview with Malaguzzi does seem to drag on. I enjoyed reading about the supermarket "project" and I absolutely love the idea of using projects with young children to build on their understanding and giving them the ability to use all of their "languages" to communicate their thoughts.

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