Tel: 0 2428 4572-5
fax: 0 2427 1979
Email: sombunwit@hotmail.com
Monday – Friday: 07.30 am – 17.30 pm
Saturday: 08.30 am – 15.00 pm
Holiday : Sunday, Saturday, Public Holiday
Timetable: 08.30 – 14.30 น.
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Sombunwit Trilingual School
571 Rama 2 rd. Bangmod
Jomthong Bangkok 10150
Project Approach
Although Sombunwit School teaches Montessori Approach, the school also applies and integrates Project Approach to our Curriculum. Pupils will learn academic subjects, such as Thai, English, Chinese, Numbers and Life Experience through integrated activities.
Pupils and Teachers in each classroom will purpose and vote for the most popular project. After that they will learn it for 4-5 weeks. The last week will be the Exhibition & Workshop period.
Project Approach Theory:
Project Definition:
A project is defined here as an in-depth investigation of a real world topic worthy of children’s attention and effort. The study may be carried out by a class or by small groups of children. Projects can be undertaken with children of any age. They do not usually constitute the whole educational program. Younger children will play and explore as well as engage in projects. Older children’s project work will complement the systematic instruction in their program.
The Project Approach refers to a set of teaching strategies which enable teachers to guide children through in-depth studies of real world topics. The Project Approach is not unstructured. There is a complex but flexible framework with features that characterize the teaching-learning interaction. When teachers implement the Project Approach successfully, children can be highly motivated, feel actively involved in their own learning, and produce work of a high quality.
Learning
Classrooms increasingly contain groups of children with a wide range of individual differences. These differences include various physical, perceptual and mental disabilities, as well as giftedness in children who need academic challenges of various kinds. All these children require provision which is responsive to their special individual needs within the regular classroom. Many schools are now seeking alternatives to the practice of grade retention. These alternatives are challenging some of the instructional methods which were particularly effective when children in the regular classroom were expected to learn and achieve in similar ways.
It is also being increasingly recognized that children have a much wider range of capabilities than they have usually been permitted to show in the regular classroom. In order to show these capabilities, however, they need learning environments which are responsive to the many individual differences which influence learning. Some children, for example, have a special interest in, and early mastery of, symbol systems. Others understand best through much and varied hands-on manipulative experience. Children learn in different ways, have different styles, and build on very different backgrounds of experience. Children also achieve at a higher level in school if they are interested in what they are doing and interests can vary considerably within an average class group.
Both research and developments in education have recently led to instructional innovations designed to make the classroom into a learning environment which is more responsive to the varying learning needs and interests of individual children. For example, there is increasing curriculum integration: continuity between the children’s learning in the different subjects. There is more opportunity to relate home and school learning. There is concern for memorable learning as well as memorized learning. Children are expected to work cooperatively on complex and open-ended tasks as well as follow instructions in step by step learning. The project approach provides one way to introduce a wider range of learning opportunities into the classroom.
Three Phases
Projects, like good stories, have a beginning, a middle, and an end. This temporal structure helps the teacher to organize the progression of activities according to the development of the children’s interests and personal involvement with the topic of study.
During the preliminary planning stage, the teacher selects the topic of study (based on the children’s interests, the curriculum, the availability of local resources, etc.). The teacher also brainstorms her own experience, knowledge, and ideas and represents them in a topic web. This web will be added to throughout the project and used for recording the progress of the project.
Phase 1: Beginning the Project
The teacher discusses the topic with the children to find out the experiences they have had and what they already know about it. The children represent their experiences and show their understanding of the concepts involved in explaining them. The teacher helps the children develop questions their investigation will answer. A letter about the study is sent home to parents. The teacher encourages the parents to talk with their children about the topic and to share any relevant special expertise.
Phase 2: Developing the Project
Opportunities for the children to do field work and speak to experts are arranged. The teacher provides resources to help the children with their investigations; real objects, books, and other research materials are gathered. The teacher suggests ways for children to carry out a variety of investigations. Each child is involved in representing what he or she is learning, and each child can work at his or her own level in terms of basic skills, constructions, drawing, music, and dramatic play. The teacher enables the children to be aware of all the different work being done through class or group discussion and display. The topic web designed earlier provides a shorthand means of documenting the progress of the project.
Phase 3: Concluding the Project
The teacher arranges a culminating event through which the children share with others what they have learned. The children can be helped to tell the story of their project to others by featuring its highlights for other classes, the principal, and the parents. The teacher helps the children to select material to share and, in so doing, involves them purposefully in reviewing and evaluating the whole project. The teacher also offers the children imaginative ways of personalizing their new knowledge through art, stories, and drama. Finally, the teacher uses children’s ideas and interests to make a meaningful transition between the project being concluded and the topic of study in the next project.
Project Based Learning
With Project Based Learning, children learn to plan and research, ask questions, make choices within alternatives, and apply knowledge gained within their regular classes.
A project is an in-depth investigation of a real world topic worthy of children’s attention and effort. Projects can be undertaken with children of any age and they do not constitute the whole educational program. Younger children will play and explore as well as engage in projects. Older children’s project work will complement the systematic instruction in their program.
The key feature of a project is that it is a research effort deliberately focused on finding answers to questions about a topic posed either by the children, the teacher, or the teacher working with the children. The goal of a project is to learn more about the topic rather than to seek right answers to questions posed by the teacher.
The Project Approach refers to a set of teaching strategies which enable teachers to guide children through in-depth studies of real world topics. It is not unstructured. There is a complex but flexible framework with features that characterize the teaching-learning interaction. When teachers implement the Project Approach, children are more highly motivated, feel actively involved in their own learning, and produce work of a high quality.
Projects enrich young children’s dramatic play, construction, painting and drawing by relating these activities to life outside school. Project work offers older children opportunities to do first hand research in science and social studies and to represent their findings in a variety of ways. Children also have many occasions in the course of their project work to apply basic math and language skills and knowledge.
Both research and developments in education have recently led to instructional innovations designed to make the classroom into a learning environment which is more responsive to the varying learning needs and interests of individual children. For example, there is increasing curriculum integration: continuity between the children’s learning in the different subjects.
There is more opportunity to relate home and school learning. There is concern for memorable learning as well as memorized learning. Children are expected to work cooperatively on complex and open-ended tasks as well as follow instructions in step by step learning. The project approach provides a way to introduce a such wide range of learning opportunities into the classroom.
Project work in the early childhood curriculum provides children with contexts for applying the skills they learn in the more formal parts of the curriculum, and for group cooperation. It also supports children’s natural impulse to investigate things around them.
Projects are especially valuable for young children because it is during the first years that their intellects are rapidly developing and significant long-term results can be achieved. Research has shown that being able to have an impact on their own work has many advantages during later years.
It is consistently observed that children who have attended preschools where activities are child rather than teacher-directed, are more successful in every area, and especially in basic reading, language and math skills.