The Wonder Seed: Wondering, Learning, and Growing Through Projects

At Slate School, the heart of every day is our work on projects. Beginning in October, each child selects his or her first unique topic of the year. The process, spanning selection to presentation, takes place 4-6 times in a school year. It is through their interest in these topics that most, if not all, skills are developed. 

Selection is a critical part of the process and cannot take place until all of the children and adults in the community are fully invested in the creation and maintenance of a safe and risk-friendly environment. This is achieved at Slate School through team building and collaboration beginning on the first day of school, and it generally takes between 4 and 6 weeks to be fully in place.

When all stakeholders agree that the time has come for the student selection of a project topic, the first step is an exciting and interactive brainstorming session where the children share with their entire cohort any and all ideas about which they are curious. The result is an enormous and ever-expanding list of people, animals, ideas, historical events, places and any other curiosity that you can imagine. The creation of this list never fails to raise goose bumps on my arms, and I can even feel their familiar prickling as I write this description. Once the list is made, we take a few days to amend, or edit the list, which gives the children time to contemplate their choices and even do a little preliminary research to see if a topic is likely to provide adequate interest for an entire cycle. When the children are ready, we draw sticks and choose our topics. There is much celebration and great joy as they speak their choices before their entire cohort, and almost immediately, children begin sharing ideas and sources of information with each other. Project topics among the youngest elementary school students at Slate School have ranged from Leonardo daVinvi and Italy to vegetables and fireflies. From the moment that a topic is chosen, each child is considered the expert on their topic. It is both empowering and also a great responsibility that the children take very seriously

Countless books and resources are then acquired, and connections to experts, both local and long distance, begin to be unearthed and secured. While they wait for their resources to arrive, the children write down and revise a set of questions that will guide the early part of their investigations. We work side by side with the children to craft open ended questions that can not only answer, but also open our eyes to new and wider wonderings. These questions are shared with the families, although we are careful to ask them not to share answers, but rather to wallow in the complexity of their child’s unknowing and “maybes.” 

On the day when the books begin to arrive in the classroom, the children are exuberant. They pore over their books with great hunger for learning. We stay in this stage, which we call immersion, for at least a week. Children read books and articles at their own reading level, listen as more complex texts are read to them, talk with experts, and dream about our projects. We teach the children to take very basic notes during this time, and they learn how to mark books for subsequent study in greater depth. They ingest and sort massive amounts of information. The process is almost like that of a lawyer in discovery, where they are reading, filing, and organizing information for later reconstituting in order to satisfy their curiosity and to tell the story of the project. 

As we enter the next phase of the projects, children are often working hard to build skills around reading more complex texts. They have exhausted the resources at their reading level and are now spending most of their time in project beside a more seasoned reader. They read along, following the text and asking questions for clarification. They also engage in conversation about the information they are hearing. They listen and prioritize information to summarize, or quote. They fill notebooks with impressions, drawings, facts, and more questions. This is the point when the growth is at its most obvious. The learner is actively solving and collecting a text-specific vocabulary, making mathematical connections that can be reflected in text features, and beginning to make connections to other student’s topics. 

Collaboration emerges as students share crossover information with each other and build theories to address questions. Project topics will sometimes be refined during this stage, as learners follow the trail of their curiosity that narrows the focus within the current study. We continue to impress upon the children that this stage of learning is for them. There will be time to share all they have learned, but not until they have satisfied their curiosity. All along the way, discoveries are shared with their cohort at morning meeting, and one-to-one, or in small groups in conferences. These meetings are student inspired and teacher facilitated. Guidance is offered to help students to reflect and track their progress along their personal learning journey, as well as the journey of their project. Teacher and child operate as co-learners, sharing strategies and building skills to support inquiry. Daily conferences include targeted reading instruction, statistics within a wider mathematical context, historical timelines, current relevance and application of new findings, as well as connections with local experts and peer partners.

The transition to sharing knowledge begins with the child. Teachers begin to see a change in the conversation at meetings. Children typically begin to zoom out for a wider lens view of their topic. They may also seek to share the same discovery more than once. These are the signals of the finished feeling that we are seeking. Work immediately shifts to expression, and conferences shift to discussions of potential languages for sharing. The child contemplates the big ideas that non-experts need to know about their topic, and then they discern the best possible means to share them. Guidance from teachers turns to the process of draft, revision, and publishing. This process is applicable to all forms of communication. Using notes and artifacts that the child has collected over the course of the study, researchers sort, classify, and prioritize information using strategies taught through direct instruction and modified on a student-by-student basis. Once the ideas are clear, drafting begins. This may take several days, during which time, teachers build lessons around the solid structure of compelling presentations, using mentor texts, and live and video examples of expert presentations. Mentoring during this period may consist of lessons around music composition, foreign language writing, playwrighting, dance, oral reporting, as well as the written word, including informative form, creative non-fiction, and poetry. When first drafts are complete, students share within their cohort and with mentors. Conversation around revision and editing leads to final drafts and then to the final step of preparation for presentation.

Presentation dates are set somewhere during the above stage. Some students will want to remain in the last stage forever, still in love with their topics, while others move through this phase quite quickly. These students often have time to add additional artifacts to their presentations. These artifacts often focus on one section of the study that was of great delight to the child, but in the end seemed less important to the presentation. This time gives the child the opportunity to return somewhat to a stage of learning or reflecting that is for them.

When we think of project presentations, we often think of the gift or "present" they become. They are certainly a gift of knowledge and well-considered research to the observer. They are also a gift to the presenter. In fact, we often observe that in the preparation to share understanding, the learner discovers previously un-mined connections and greater depth. Presenters also become keenly aware of where they are in the learning journey. In this moment, they understand yet another kind of "present" in presentation. They are sharing where they are right now in this study, and they will clearly say that they do not know everything, yet. Each of these "presents" are important to the development of the learner, but none more than the last. If a learner can see the potential for deeper understanding, while wildly wondering and connecting to what is already known, new thinking can emerge. Children are created with the ideal equipment for this, by the way. They are uniquely suited for this magical thinking, as they see all ideas as good until they are proven not to be. So, I am clearly showing my bias here. There is yet one more "present." There is great value in "being present." In this state, humans access memory, knowledge, and understanding, while also remaining open to consider and synthesize new ideas. In this state, the inner critic is silenced, and we are more positive and flexible, and therefore more compelling. We feel good about what we've done, where we are, and what lies ahead.

At the conclusion of the project cycle, we ask the students a series of questions to better understand the effects of project work on their progress. These interviews are compared only to the student’s other interviews, and we seek to see where the growth is most evident in each cycle.

This project process is altogether joyful, even when it requires perseverance. It is fruitful, even when we stumble, and it is rich even when we exhaust every resource without finding the whole answer to our question. At Slate School, we say that we want our children to innovate, and following their passion for learning is the direct path to innovation. Project teaches all of us to be ready when the new idea emerges, or when the need for innovation arises. What better preparation for life is there?