Reggio Children

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Reggio Children the Reggio Emilia Approach
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About Reggio Emilia

• The Reggio Emilia school has an infant-toddler
  center for children 4-9 month-olds to 36 months.
  The preprimary school has classrooms for 3-5 year
  olds.
• Children teachers remain together for 3 year
  cycles.
• Key players teachers, staff, cook, families
  community advisory board

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Goal of the Reggio Emilia program

• To promote childrens education through the
  development of all their languages expressive,
  communicative, symbolic, cognitive, ethical,
  metaphorical, logical, imaginative, and
  relational (Municipality of Reggio Emilia,
  1996a, p. 19)

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100 Languages of Children
They tell the childto think without handsto
do without headto listen and not to speakto
understand without joyto love and to marvelonly
at Easter and Christmas.They tell the childto
discover the world already thereand of the
hundred they steal ninety-nive.They tell the
childthat work and playreality and fantasy
science and imaginationsky and earthreason and
dreamare thingsthat do not belong together. And
thus they tell the childthat the hundred is not
there.The child saysNo way. The hundred is
there. Loris Malaguzzi(translated by Lella
Gandini)

• The childis made of one hundred.The child
  hasa hundred languagesa hundred handsa hundred
  thoughtsa hundred ways of thinkingof playing,
  of speakingA hundred always a hundredways of
  listeningof marveling of lovinga hundred
  joysfor singing and understandinga hundred
  worldsto discovera hundred worldsto inventa
  hundred worldsto dream.The child has a hundred
  languages(and a hundred hundred hundred
  more)but they steal ninety-nine.The school and
  the cultureseparate the head from the body.

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• Learning and teaching should not stand on
  opposite banks and just watch the river flow by
  instead, they should embark together on a journey
  down the water. Through an active, reciprocal
  exchange, teaching can strengthen learning how to
  learn.
• Loris Malaguzzi

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Teachers
Atelierista a teacher with special training in
visual arts

• Pedagogista
• Supervises 3-4 schools and follows the
  progression on student projects, supports the
  continuing professional development of teachers,
  and serves as a liaison among teachers, families,
  and the municipal system

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• Creativity seems to emerge from multiple
  experiences, coupled with a well-supported
  development of personal resources, including a
  sense of freedom to venture beyond the known.

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• The city of Reggio Emilia believes that by
  recognizing the rights of children the conditions
  for citizenship and an atmosphere of civil
  cohabitation are established. In other words, by
  investing in the children and families during
  childhood, theses children will grow up to be the
  kinds of citizens that allow for a peaceful and
  productive society

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• They children are autonomously capable of
  making meaning from their daily life experiences
  through mental acts involving planning,
  coordination of ideas, and abstractionThe
  central acts of adults, therefore, is to
  activate, especially indirectly, the
  meaning-making competencies of children as a
  basis of all learning. They must try to capture
  the right moments, and then find the right
  approaches, for bringing together, into a
  fruitful dialogue, their meanings and
  interpretations with those children.
• Loris Malaguzzi

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• The wider range of possibilities we offer
  children, the more intense will be their
  motivations and richer their experiences. We
  must widen the range of topics and goals, the
  types of situations we offer and their degree of
  structure, the kinds and combinations of
  resources and materials, and the possible
  interactions with things, peers, and adults.
• Loris Malaguzzi

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Project Work

• - Projects come from the interests of students
• - Child-centered
• Together teachers and children construct these
  projects

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Importance of Documentation

• A way for teachers to understand children.
• Helps teachers evaluate their own teaching
  practice.
• Allows teachers to communicate to other adults
  the complexity and depth of projects.
• Allows children to see their ideas are valued.

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• No one in Reggio wants to teach others how to
  do school. What we want to do rather is to
  try and deepen our understanding, together with
  others, of why it was possible in Reggio Emilia
  for an (educational) experiences founded after
  the war, to grow and consolidate with timeWhat
  we want to do is look together for the values we
  might have in common, in order to build a better
  tomorrow.
• Amelia Gambetti
• (from Rechild no. 2 April, 1998)

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Resources

• Hundred languages of Children Exhibit
• Rechild Reggio Children Newsletter
• Innovations Newsletter

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Books

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More Books