ACTIVE LEARNING
Our project aims to respond to what children should do and learn to benefit their development and success in a long-term perspective.
At NAU we will continue to rely on the essence of the High Scope pedagogical approach, complementing this structure with a set of resources and strategies associated with the Flipped classroom pedagogical approach.
The High/Scope pedagogical approach, studied, monitored, and validated over 40 years, has two main fundamentals. The first is that the child must be actively involved in learning and build knowledge from interaction with the world around him: with people, materials, and ideas. The second is that the role of the adults, who teach or guide, is to support children in building their own understanding of the world.
This model provides a stimulating physical environment to work and play, a consistent daily routine that includes the plan-do-review process, positive interactions between adult and child and a daily assessment based on child teamwork.
The flipped classroom approach or flipped classes require a redefinition and enormous preparation of the classes themselves and the processes involved, since it is in the classes that students are involved autonomously, in pairs or small groups and using manipulative materials or technological resources in solving and posing problems, building knowledge with the support of teachers.
As we consider the processes to be carried out to be of greater importance, even before starting the activities in the new school, the Institution hired a team with the aim of creating and developing a curriculum of processes that detail the possibilities of appropriation of content by the children. We believe that the process curriculum built facilitates the practices and common language of professionals.
Our pedagogical project aims to activate children's individual responsibility in solving problems, the construction of a better world, by practicing. We will base our practices on the promotion of a positive environment, of respect and bonding underpinning:
Active learning as a central element of learning
There are 5 ingredients to active and participatory learning occurs:
- Materials that are interesting enough, abundant, diverse, appealing and have different purposes, that is, that can be used in different ways and that help children to broaden their experiences and stimulate their thinking..
- Manipulation, children manipulate, analyze, combine, and transform materials and ideas. Concepts are constructed in the face with the direct intervention of their hands and thoughts.
- Choice, children choose materials and partners, change, and build their play and ideas, planning activities according to their interests and needs.
- Children's language and thoughts, children describe what they do and what they think. They communicate verbally and non-verbally what they think about their actions and modify their thinking, considering their own learning.
- The adult provides scaffolding (extensions of knowledge), the adults encourage the children's efforts and help them to extend their work. They talk to children about what they do, join in their play, and support them in a judicious way in solving problems, offering them "knowledge extensions" that allow them to naturally transition to a higher level of development.
Emphasis on the quality of learning processes
(High Scope, flipped classroom, etc.)
It has been proven that predispositions to learning, i.e., habits of mind, namely the tendency to react to certain situations by asking questions or showing persistence in the face of a difficult task, insidiously weaken when teaching processes are poor, even if in the short term they show positive results.
The Quality processes consider:
- The dynamics of children's motivation and commitment.
- The potential prior knowledge of each child, and their stage of development, indispensable for the relationship between previous knowledge and new knowledge.
- The selection of relevant information, organizing it in such a way that it can be managed by children in terms of learning.
- The diversity of activities. The more diverse the approaches to a topic, the greater the motivation, the concentration and better the learning.
- Planning and organization are essential for successful learning. We believe in a step-by-step work, duly supported by "scaffolding" and well-prepared adults who evaluate the results and make the processes more efficient.
- Cooperation, cooperative learning involving interaction and mutual help, allow complex problems to be solved in a more effective and elaborate way.
Other differentiating factors such as bilingualism; integrated music teaching and mindfulness
