Reggio Emilia

Our Classroom Environment

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At the end of the year our classroom has truly evolved into something beautiful. I love these pictures of all the student work on the walls and windows. I love my “Reggio sticks” (as my Principal calls them) handing from the ceiling, the lamps, and fairy lights. I wonder what next year will bring…

LEAD goals and the Reggio Emilia

Posted by | PD, PYP, Reggio Emilia | No Comments
My first go at documenting student thinking: The Great Suitcase Mystery.

We have a new teacher system at our school called LEAD goals – as I have been focussing on the content of these goals I haven’t actually researched the acronym but it involves formal and informal teaching observations with reflection time, and also the setting of professional goals both personal and organization orientated.

For my personal professional goal I want to focus on; documenting student thinking and learning, and creating an inspiring student centered environment. Both goals are focused on the work of early childhood educators in the Reggio Emilia Italy. To show my research and implementation of this thinking/practice I set up the following;

Reading
If you click on the Library tab at the top of the page I have created a visual database of the books I have on these topic – some are on my Kindle account, some are on iBooks, and some are hardcopy. As I read these I will be making notes and posting them to the blog. I also have a collection of journal articles from JSTOR academic database that I have on my reading list.

Collecting
On Pinterest I have created three boards connected to this;

  1. Documentation: a board of examples of thinking and learning documentation from around the world.
  2. Research: articles and websites that support my understanding of Reggio inspired documentation and learning
  3. LEAD Goals: my own examples of documentation.
  4. Environment as the Third Teacher: examples of classroom and school environments that exemplify the philosophy behind the Reggio Emilia Approach.
Connecting
I need to connect with other PYP educators to see how they integrated this approach into their teaching and learning with the ultimate goal of finding a type of mentor on the subject. I have found this a little difficult but through blogs and Twitter I am slowly finding like minded people and will hopeful find a Sensei on the subject.
These goals are projected over a five year span and will hopefully culminate with a graduate research studies but at the moment I am simply focused on understanding the practical elements of documentation. I am so grateful to the admin at my school for supporting me in this.