Emergent Curriculum
&
Project Approach
Michelle Taylor MS. Ed.
 Question:
 “What do you think of when you hear the phrase Emergent
Curriculum/Project Approach?” (Students: How do we learn at school?)
 Students:
 We have teachers and we help people out and learn new kinds of things.
 We explore.
 We have a classroom and we decide what to do.
 We look at stuff.
 It’s called investigation. We do projects.
 Dig.
 Searching plants. (She meant researching which we then talked about
for a long time – what re-searching means. Searching, bringing it back
and searching again).
 We investigate.
 I can move to a different place if it’s too tired and crowded.
Emergent ideas. Brainstorming. Fluidity. Deep. Rich.
Plentiful. Juicy. Child exploration. Child interest.
Child led. Not forced. Flowing and emerging from the
child’s interests. Not scheduled, it just happens.
Evolving from an idea like when you put watercolor on
paper towels and it spider webs. Organic. Unplanned
but not quite unplanned. Open. Spontaneous. Options
and experiences. It’s like plants growing. They come
up from the ground like a project grows.
 Deep studies about a topic the kids brought up.
 What kids are into.
 Think of the kids and they have a choice about
what they want to learn.
 Other ideas???
Emergent curriculum is a way of
planning curriculum based on the
student’s and teacher’s interest and
passions. To plan an emergent
curriculum requires time,
observation, documentation,
creativity, brainstorming, flexibility
and patience.
 Once teachers see an interest “emerging” they brainstorm ways to
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study the topic in depth.
Webbing is often used because of its fun and flexible nature. A
web doesn’t show everything that will be learned but what could
be learned. It is an important process that allows to open the
teachers and the students to possibilities.
Teachers and students brainstorm many possibilities for study
sparked from a particular interest, not as a plan but more as a
‘road map’.
To get a plan, we choose an idea and brainstorm ways to approach
it – what hands-on activities could we provide, how can we bring
this to real-world learning.
Putting all the activities on a web gives you a road map full of
possible journeys and a path to look back upon.
Teaching the Class About Webbing
Thinking about our learning
Alex’s Webs
A project, by definition, is an indepth investigation of a real-world
topic worthy of a student’s attention
and effort. The core idea of projectbased learning is that real-world
problems capture students' interest
and provoke serious thinking
 The Project Approach:
 is organized around an open-ended Driving Question or Challenge. These
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focus students’ work and deepen their learning by centering on
significant issues, debates, questions and/or problems.
It provides complex tasks based on challenging questions or problems
that involve the students' problem solving, decision making, investigative
skills, and reflection that include teacher facilitation, but not necessarily
direction.
It focuses on questions that drive students to encounter central concepts
and principles of a subject hands-on.
Students learn from these experiences and take them into account and
apply them to their lives in the real world.
It is a teaching technique that promotes and practices new learning
habits. The students have to think in original ways to come up with the
solutions to these real world problems. It helps with their creative
thinking skills by showing that there are many ways to solve a problem
and that they are capable of coming up with solutions together without
answers from the ‘teacher’.
To embrace the idea of the environment as the third teacher in our classrooms, we
expand our thinking beyond the idea of room arrangements and rating scales.
We ask ourselves what values we want to communicate through our environments
and how we want children to experience their time in our classrooms. We spend
much of our time on creating intentional environments that specifically tie into our
current projects and the student’s interests.
Our environments shape the culture of a classroom by showing what is important in
learning. It also catches children’s interests. If I lay a group of books out on the
table about trees and let the kids come in and I say nothing. They will grab for them,
sit and look. If I add paper, they will begin to draw and write. So although I directly
gave them the materials that are already included in our current project, I didn’t
assign a specific task and thus the learning is open-ended without conclusion . It
keeps the mystery alive and their interests peaked.
This way of shaping the environment shows how we learn , how we approach
learning and how we care for our space and materials. Children who have been in
our classrooms for a while know how to use the materials to further discover and
uncover their interests and driving need for knowledge. It shapes our identities, how
we view learning, how we see the world and it empowers us to make decisions for
ourselves, direct our own learning and to see the classroom and the world as
limitless.
 Allows for everyone to learn together. The teacher’s don’t
know the answers and if we do, we often don’t share the
information. Most often the kids will bring the knowledge
in with them or the class will figure it out together.
 If we gave them the answer, the learning would end right
there and the opportunity of discovery would be lost.
 It’s the most amazing feeling in the world to be in a room
full of kids, mesmerized by the mystery of a topic. The
possibilities are endless. The room is electric.
 Instead we research and discover together through books,
hands-on exploration, detective work, walking out into the
world and asking questions.
 Watching the evolution in the classroom happen offers the
chance to see a child have many of an epiphany and can be
a bit mind blowing.
 The capabilities our kids have are boundless. When we put
restraints on our kids such as “you need to have these two
pages done by the end of the day” you are limiting their
capacity to exceed both of your and their expectations and
really get the breadth and depth out of a problem or a
subject or a new found passion. *(Narrative is linear, but
action has breadth and depth as well as height and is
solid.)
 Intentionally not limiting their discoveries and
explorations, gives them the mystery required to keep
going, keep learning and keep loving to learn.
 In March, the day after the earthquake and tsunami
hit Japan, the kids came into morning meeting talking
about it, wanting to know information, giving
information.
 One of our teacher’s from the year before had returned
home to Japan. She taught my class origami and
Japanese.
 The kids wanted to help and decided to have a
fundraiser by making and selling origami strands.
 The kids also wanted to know wanted to know the
details of what earthquakes and tsunami’s do and how
and why they happen. And they were passionate.
March 11 –
Earthquake
and Tsunami in
Japan
The plates and
layers of the
earth
Volcanoes
List of Natural
Phenomena
Mayuko
Fundraisers
Mercy Corps Fundraiser for Japan
The Earth’s Plates & The Layers of the
Earth
Volcanoes
List of natural
phenomena
Tornadoes
Danger Hunter
Natural Earth
Series 1-5
Hurricanes
Clouds
Water Cycle
Independent
Projects
Independent
Book Projects
Independent &
Group
Experiments
Tornadoes
Clouds
The Water Cycle
Hurricanes
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Adah – The Sun
Charlie – The Universe
Lucas –The Moon
Chase – The Moon
Alex – Why is the Sky Blue?
Archer – Bird Migration
Izzy – Rocks & Crystals
Tim – Landforms
Holden – How were the Planets Made?
Jake – Tsunami
Maya – Earthquakes
Maddox – Monsoons
Norah – The Origin of the Seed
Ended the school year
with Norah’s Project and
performance about seeds
and a nature alphabet
New School
Year
Begin to harvest
seeds from our
garden
Seeds
Seed& Pod
Investigation
Exploring the
neighborhood
seeds, pods, trees
Pine Cones &
Pine Trees
Deciduous &
Coniferous
Investigating,
observing,
identifying
What kind of tree
would you be if
you were a tree?
(personalization)
Detectives
Royal – Cactus
Jake – Pine
Chase – Douglas Fir
Izzy – Cottonwood
Carter - Boojum
Hannah – Redwood
Lily – Sequoia
Atti – Mahogany
Owen – Dragon
Tim – Ginkgo
Lucas – Palm
Bryn – Tree Fern
Nora – Cherry Blossom
Catalina – Umbrella Thorn
Ellis – Bunya Bunya
Adah – Monkey Puzzle
Salvador – Japanese Maple
Holden – Cannonball
Our Trees in Process
Types of
trees
Parts of a
tree
Origin
World
Exploration
Trunk
Our bodies
as trees
Leaves
Trees
Madrona
Why trees
live where
they live
Tree
Extinction
Animal
Habitats
What can
we do?
Animal
Extinction
Alder
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Telling stories from his classrooms, Ron Berger describes how teachers, students and parents can change the
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PBL Starter Kit: To-the-Point Advice, Tools and Tip for Your First Project. John Larmer with David Ross and
John Mergendoller (2009) Buck Institute for Education.
A How-To guide from the Buck Institute for Education for planning and managing projects. Contains
planning forms, rubrics, handouts, examples of projects and practical advice.
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Teachers. Thom Markham with John Larmer and Jason Ravitz (2003) Buck Institute for Education.
The PBL Handbook provides an overview of the what, why, and how of PBL to guide teachers through all
phases of a successful project.
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Brief essays on EL's design principles, with examples of how they are integrated into school culture and
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An anthology of Expeditionary Learning's roots in the educational philosophy of Kurt Hahn, the founder of
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Award-winning teacher Steven Levy inspires and explains in step-by-step detail how PBL resulted in
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Visit us: www.thelivingclassroom.wordpress.com
 The Project Approach ~Lilian Katz & Sylvia Chard
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www.projectapproach.org
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