- Do you have any tips for teachers who want to start working this way (child-based or play-based)? What should they do and what not?
For a teacher to work in such a school, the most important aspects (apart from loving children of course!) is personality and having an open mind. Each teacher is asked every day to re-invent the world and be able to adjust in children's changing needs.
You must be vey good in observing kids and understanding what they really want to learn. Then, you have to put your ego behind and let kids be the stars of the class, not the teacher. Teacher is just setting the open ended questions that will help children discover the world around them with excitement and joy.
What every teacher should definitely not do, is try to teach what he/she believes is important. Usually, kids do not care about what does not comes out from themselves and life in class gets boring, for all.
- How do you choose a theme or a subject the children want to learn about? Do you vote or talk about it. How is this process of choosing a new subject?
It begins by asking children what they are really interested in. This can be done in the beginning of each semester, but also can be done on a monthly or even weekly basis - depending on the way school operates.
The whole thing can be done during the morning circle hour, where teacher sets open ended questions triggering kids to express ideas and feelings. At a certain point in time, when a good number of ideas is gathered, teacher may write them on the wall and ask children to vote which one they want to set as period project.
Important: kids may vote today for something but tomorrow discover something new, more exciting. At any moment they should be given the right to change their mind! We have encountered projects that change direction every week due to kids’ new ideas and observations. This is the exciting part of the process, but also the hard thing for the teacher! Nothing has to be forced or obliged - otherwise childrens’ right to free will, is not met!
- When there is a subject chosen to learn about, how do you implement it? How do you choose what to do with the children and what happens if the children have no ideas or 1000 ideas?
The implementation process goes through various stages. Children at first collect information on the field they are interested. They may go outdoor visits, search the web, play games, watch related theatre or cinema, compose their own related song, construct sth in school, do role playing, whatever. Usually, they go through all stages but not on the same order. If teacher is carefully observing the way kids play on every phase, it is easy to discover what the next step could be.
Children usually do have 1000 ideas! An assistance provided by the teacher is to help class group the ideas in bigger forms. For example, a kid may propose to do fishes and another one to do ships. Teacher then may say “oh, you are both interested to learn about sea life!”. Its always better to try to select broad areas of interest (i.e sea and not fishes) because such an area gives teacher much more room to move.
- And what happens with the children that are for example not interested in ‘gardening’, subject children are going to learn about these next weeks/months?
In a play based school, the main idea is to help children discover the world through playing. And play cannot be forced or directed. So, despite the certain project class is working on, there must always be available different play activities for kids who want to take some time away from the team. Nothing should be imposed on them otherwise children will feel obliged.
What we do is having always prepared a number of independent play stations (i.e. painting staff or building material), so kids to have the options all the time to leave the project. In the long run however, and since the selected project area is broad enough as said, all kids find activities of interest inside the project, especially if these include collaboration. Don’t forget that all activities within a project should be based on free play and not on boring teaching….
- How do you provide in a diverse learning environment? For example, what happens if children are only very much interested in building and drawing and have no interests in letters and nature?
Εvery class, depending on kids' age, requires a certain number of skills to work on. In our school we find very helpful to have classes formed with children born on the very same year. This makes all kids being at a similar dvelopment stage - and this assists very much the work of the teacher.
On the other hand, each project gives the chance to go through a large number of activities, which allow kids to exercise all skills required. To answer on your example: every project includes as well outdoor visits and many chances for written and oral expression. If i.e. the project is about castles, kids will draw castles, build castles in school, build castles in the forest (by using natural elements like wood and stones), read stories with castles, or even write their own song or story about a castle (the elder ones).
So, through this process, children go though all stages and activities. The key is for teacher to be able to keep children’ interest high on any given moment. If for example children are driven excited to express their own story about castles, then they will definitive manage to read and write about it with the minimum effort. So, reading and writing skills are developed naturally with no force at all!
- How do you and the kids come up with activities to do within a subject?
As stated previously, a large project can be split into many small ones, or even change more than once - depending on children's will. In our school, kids discuss every Friday or Monday in order to decide next weeks’ activities. During this process they may change even big parts of the initially designed project, depending on their new ideas and findings.
- Do you have anything else that might be worth telling like examples ideas, anything is welcome?
What I want is to emphasize the fact that kids should at any moment be encouraged to decide for their own and start making their own decisions. That means teachers should never try to impose on kids their own ideas and beliefs, on anything.
The value of this play-based approach relies on the fact that kids, through free play, are asked at any moment to chose for their own. And this choosing is being respected and treated in most serious way by adults.
Therefore, children start develop a strong and independent personality, self confidence and ability to judge and make decisions. Teacher should only ask open questions, observe and coordinate activities. Never to decide on behalf of the kids!
