Early Childhood

Kids Are the Experts! Making Learning Visible in Boston Public Schools

During the 2011-12 school year, 30 Boston Public School early childhood teachers and eight Head Start teachers took a course called Making Learning Visible: Kids are the Experts! The teachers explored how to help children recognize and communicate to others their areas of expertise through words, images, and demonstrations. This short film follows the process of making how-to books and other products in two classrooms at the Gardner Pilot Academy.

Documentation: Transforming our Perspectives

This 16-minute film by Melissa Rivard and Stephanie Cox Suarez for the Documentation Studio at Wheelock College features conversations with leaders from Reggio about the practice of documentation and its role in teaching and learning.

Changing our Skin: Creating Collective Knowledge in American Classrooms

Abstract: In this essay, the author explores the notion that the focus of learning in classrooms and schools extends beyond the learning of individuals to create a collective body of knowledge that is larger than what any one person knows. This idea was examined in a collaboration between Project Zero researchers and educators from the municipal preschools in Reggio Emilia, Italy, around understanding, supporting, and documenting individual and group learning. The author draws on the experiences of classroom teachers in Massachusetts to suggest at least four key components in creating collective knowledge: (a) rethinking the nature of the learning task; (b) fostering a pedagogy of relationships; (c) addressing four kinds of learning; and (d) documenting student and teacher learning.

Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence...

From the back cover:

How can classrooms become places of intellectual stimulation where learning is viewed not in test scores but in the development of individuals who can think, plan, create, question, and engage independently as learners? Making Thinking Visible offers educators research-based solutions for creating just such cultures of thinking. This innovative book unravels the mysteries of thinking and its connection to understanding and engagement. It then takes readers inside diverse learning environments to show how thinking can be made visible at any grade level and across all subject areas through the use of effective questioning, listening, documentation, and facilitative structures called "Thinking routines". These routines, designed by researchers at Project Zero at Harvard, scaffold and support one's thinking. By applying these processes, thinking becomes visible as learners' ideas are expressed, discussed, and reflected upon. Making Thinking Visible includes a DVD of instructive video clips featuring Visible Thinking strategies being applied in a variety of classrooms. ISBN: 978-0470915516

Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Hailed by educators throughout the world, Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences has been applied in hundreds of classrooms and school districts since Frames of Mind was first published in 1983. Gardner challenges the widely held notion that intelligence is a single general capacity possessed by every individual to a greater or lesser extent. Amassing a wealth of evidence, Gardner posits the existence of a number of intelligences that ultimately yield a unique cognitive profile for each person. This tenth anniversary edition, published in conjunction with a reader on multiple intelligences, features a new introduction that explores the theory's development over the last decade. ISBN-13: 978-0465024339