A project curriculum, dealing with the project as a means of organizing the curriculum of the elementary school

Front matter

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PRESENTED BV

Foreword

There are many interpretations of the project method. Miss Wells has made and developed one interpretation which lays emphasis upon the selection of a major project for each grade of the elementary school, large enough to provide a basis for most of the work of that grade throughout the year. Within each major project arise minor projects related to the major purpose and providing the immediate activities which make up the daily work of the respective grades.

The hope of progress in education lies in experimentation by which any means offering reasonably possible improvement may be tested and evaluated. Miss Wells has gone forward with the application of her interpretation of the project method to the extent of developing its details for the full work of the first three grades, and indicating in general outline the work for the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Children in the first three grades have been taught under this plan of organization.

The outcomes of the work as developed are checked up in terms of the subject matter as usually organized under the subjects of study. Measured by this form of checking, there seems to be quite as much of arithmetic, geography, reading, writing, and other regular subjects covered as under the usual organization. The units of these subjects are taken up in situations which naturally call for them, giving them a sense of immediate worth. In addition to this, there are many elements of subject matter and many forms of desirable activities represented which are not usually found when the respective subjects are presented in the formal way. As far as the testing of the work by this method goes to show its values, there

vii viii FOREWORD

is no loss by comparison with the outcomes of work as usually presented, and there is decided gain in the outcomes not found at all in the usual formal work of these grades.

Few who have not attempted an organization of school work on the basis of large projects followed by appropriate minor projects growing out of the larger will appreciate what a prodigious amount of time and effort is required to develop such a volume of teaching material as is here presented by Miss Wells.

From the most progressive educational literature of today, there is a careful selection of references offered to support the principles, given in Sections II and III, upon which the general plan is based. These principles lay stress upon the more significant psychological and social aspects of education, and endeavor to combine them by consistent unification in applications that are practicable.

Whether teachers adopt the suggested organization as a whole, or attempt to use but individual units of its detailed parts in the enrichment of their work, the book should prove decidedly stimulating and helpful. It suggests many ways of connecting the life interests and environing activities of children with the subject matter of the school studies as usually organized. Even in a school in which the teachers must follow rather mechanically organized courses of study, there is room for the introduction of much vitalizing activity to awaken greater interest and contribute larger social meaning for the work required. The detailed projects here developed will offer many helpful suggestions which teachers working under such limitations may follow with interest, profit, and satisfaction.

Among elementary school teachers everywhere, this book should help to stimulate and direct interest to the needs and possibilities of humanizing and socializing the

FOREWORD ix

formal organization of the school subjects. In the measure in which her work and its presentation may lead teachers to introduce larger elements of the wholesome, purposeful, social activities of children into the schools as a vital part of their courses of study, Miss Wells has made a contribution to the improvement of the elementary school. May this measure be large!

Frederick G. Bonser.

Contents

PAGE

Foreword, by P. G. Bonser, Ph.D vii

Introduction i

Section I — The Curriculum as Worked Out in Trenton, N. J

A. The Introductory Project — Playing Fair 3

B. The Major Projects

I. INTRODUCTION l6

II, FIRST GRADE MAJOR PROJECT — Playing Families 20

III. SECOND GRADE MAJOR PROJECT — Playing Store 71

IV. THIRD GRADE MAJOR PROJECT — Playing City 98

Section III — Guiding Principles in Curriculum Making .... 202

Section IV — The Outcomes of Curriculums, in Facts Taught, IN Skills Begun, in Habits, Attitudes, Appreciations, Ideals 229

Appendix — Specimens of Children's Work 281

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Good Children Street Poster 46

Good Children Street — The Frame and Pebble-dash House and the Stone House 54

Good Children Street — The Cement, the Brick, and the Frame House 56

The Second Grade's Department Store 74

The Store Window Poster 78

Victory City — ^A Miniature Trenton 114

A Scene in the Closing Pageant 132

The School as a Sector of Life (Chart) 154

A PROJECT CURRICULUM

Introduction

The immediate problems of education are those of curriculum making and curriculum use. What shall the normal child be taught? How shall he be taught?

The conservatives still cling — some of them unconsciously — to the doctrine of formal discipline. The progressives think and practice freedom in its various conceptions and misconceptions.

But is there not a middle way, the common-sense way, which bases its method, first, on a knowledge of child nature; second, on the demands which hfe — that of the child as well as that of the adult — makes on the individual ? All educators agree that the child is one of the two essential factors in education. Most of them name the curriculum as the second ; but the writer contends that this is true only when the curriculum satisfies these demands of life.

The following study attempts the formulation of a curriculum which shall answer life's demands because it is life, and its administration permits the child to live in the school as naturally and as wholly as he lives out of it.

Proofs that this curriculum is sound in theory are given in Sections II and III. That it is practicable is evidenced by the fact that it " worked " in the first three grades of the Training School of a State Normal School, under serious handicaps. The teachers in each grade were inexperienced and, being students in training, were changed every ten weeks or of tener. The writer, as supervisor of these three grades, was responsible also for the teaching of two large classes of normal students daily for a part of the year, and for the remainder shared in the supervision of practice teaching out in the state, so that she was frequently absent from all three rooms for hours at a time, and sometimes for whole days.

That the curriculum, even under these adverse conditions, accomplished as much as the traditional elementary school — and more than this — appears in Section IV. The conditions of the experiment were such that exact scientific measurements were not possible. Indeed, for many of its most valuable results scales of measurement have not yet been devised. It is the hope of the writer that the time, the place, and the means may speedily conjoin for trying out the curriculum here formulated, under the more typical conditions of a more normal elementary school, in all the six grades, and that some one may then be inspired to apply the method of statistical inquiry, both in theory and in practice, to this repetition of the experiment.