Workshops are highly structured, predictable, purposeful and well planned; they allow for students to take initiative, create work, and learn in a way that is meaningful. The Project School has chosen to employ the Workshop approach because its constructivist philosophy most naturally aligns with our core beliefs about teaching and learning. The Workshop Model is consistent with the authentic experiences, complex learning, negotiated curriculum and metacognitive experiences students have throughout their day. The environment engages them in the real work and problem-solving of readers and writers on a daily basis. This approach is founded upon the belief that students must be actively involved in and reflect upon their learning.

Within every workshop, there are three consistent and predictable structures —

Mini-lesson —

Connection. The mini-lesson is connected to the needs of the students and their work.

Teaching. A skill or strategy is directly taught to the students.

Active Engagement. Students try out the new strategy they’ve learned, often referred to as “have-a-go.” The purpose is to build confidence with the newly learned information.

Linking. The teacher links the new strategy to the work the students are about to begin.

Independent or Small Group Work Time —

Student Immersion. Students are engrossed in the work of their groups.

Teacher and Student Conferences. While the students are working, the teacher is facilitating conferences with individuals or small groups. This component allows teachers to truly individualize the curriculum. Conferences are responsive to the immediate needs of the student at hand. This is a time to assess the students’ abilities. This information is used to then inform future instruction for the individual student, as well as to shape whole class mini-lessons (see Conferencing below).

Student Reflection —

A follow-up on the day’s mini-lesson allows students to discuss their work as readers and writers. It is also a time to make connections among the varied experiences and abilities of the students within the class. Sample share questions include:

What did you try today? How did it go?

What did you struggle with?

What did you learn about yourself as a reader/writer today?

What will you do differently as a result of your work today?

Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop occur daily and are the heart of the reading and writing curriculum. Although students will read and write throughout every component of the curriculum, this is where students are explicitly taught the strategies and habits of effective reading and writing.

In Writer’s Workshops, students learn to examine their lives as well as the world around them. They learn the art of collecting, drafting, revising, and publishing a wide variety of texts. There is a great focus on learning from mentor authors who are professionally published, as well as learning from other authors in our school community. In Reader’s Workshops, students learn effective reading strategies. They learn to talk, think, and write well about their reading. The ultimate purpose of Reader’s Workshop is for students to cultivate richly literate lives.

While the Workshop Model is highly predictable and structured, it is also accommodating to the individual needs and strengths of students across a wide range of levels. The Workshop Model also provides the best fit for our P3 curriculum (see below), which is at the heart of our educational approach. The ability to choose topics, genres, authors, and text formats that connect to our Compelling and Generative Topic (also see below) allows our work to provide a continuous sense of interrelatedness. It also allows us to present content through multiple representations and perspectives.

Guided Reading & Book Clubs: The very nature of the Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop is to teach the habits and skills that good readers and writers need. To further support this work, there are other structures utilized by The Project School teachers, which are designed to support literacy needs in a small group setting. Depending on the need of individual students, they will be engaged in literacy stations, guided reading, and/or book clubs.

• Our Guided Reading program is grounded in the work of Irene C. Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell. During guided reading, individual students work toward developing fluency and comprehension skills of increasingly challenging texts. Students are placed in small groups (2-6 students) based upon reading development and/or specific need. These groups are temporary and dynamic. The teacher is part of each Guided Reading group and chooses a text and reading strategy for specific purposes. A Guided Reading lesson is an opportunity to learn about decoding and comprehension strategies. It also provides time to concentrate on word work, fluency, writing, and text structures. Informal and formal assessments are used to determine placement and mobility of students.

• Book Clubs are a time for students to choose books to read and discuss with their peers. The focus is on literary response and analysis. A group of students come together based on a common interest in topic, author, genre, etc. Each student completes a reading reflection in order to be prepared to co-construct new and deeper meaning around a common text. Book Clubs are designed for readers who are more independent and who do not require the daily instruction of a teacher; students do, however, need support in deepening their comprehension and ability to respond to a text in multiple ways.

We believe that all students need to understand the essential concepts of numbers and computation, geometry, data analysis, probability, problem-solving, measurement, and algebra. To do this well, the teaching of mathematics has its own workshop time, as well as an intentional focus in the P3 curriculum.

The Project School uses a math curriculum called Bridges, from The Math Learning Center, as the foundation for our K-5 math program. It was developed with initial support from the National Science Foundation. The Math Workshop includes a combination of whole-group, small-group, and independent activities. Lessons incorporate increasingly complex visual models - seeing, touching, working with manipulatives, and sketching ideas - to create pictures in the mind's eye that help learners invent, understand, and remember mathematical ideas. By encouraging students to explore, test, and justify their reasoning, the curriculum facilitates the development of mathematical thinking for students of all learning styles

For grades 6-8, The Project School utilizes the College Preparatory Mathematics (CPM) program called Core Connections. On a daily basis, students using CPM Core Connections employ problem solving strategies, question, investigate, analyze critically, gather and construct evidence, and communicate rigorous arguments to justify their thinking. With the CPM instructional materials, students can tackle mathematical ideas set in everyday contexts to help them make sense of otherwise abstract principles. Students are taught how to gather and organize information about problems, break problems into smaller parts, and look for patterns that lead to solutions. Students often learn in collaboration with others, sharing information, expertise, and ideas.

Compelling & Generative Topic or Question: During an annual Curricular Summit at the conclusion of each academic year, our community gathers together to discuss the topics and questions that are currently most compelling to them. Through the use of brainstorming protocols, participants in the Curricular Summit compile a substantive resource that is then used by the faculty to design the Compelling Generative Topic/Question and Through Lines for the coming academic year.

P3 work is focused on real-life application of academic learning. This curriculum design was built upon years of work from nationally known curriculum researchers. Our founders embedded the conceptual frameworks of project-based, problem-based, and place-based learning to create a curricular model that leads to a highly rigorous and relevant curriculum for children, one that is directly connected to issues in their local and global communities. Students learn about local, national, and international problems, while designing real projects to improve their community. This community may be close by or far away depending on the nature of the problem. Examples of P3 curriculum in action have included —

P3 Projects

Responsive Classroom: At The Project School we utilize Responsive Classroom, an evidence-based approach to education that focuses on the strong relationship between academic success and social-emotional learning. The Responsive Classroom approach empowers educators to create safe, joyful, and engaging learning communities where all students have a sense of belonging and feel significant. The four key domains of Responsive Classroom include —

Engaging Academics. Adults create learning tasks that are active, interactive, appropriately challenging, purposeful, and connected to students' interests.

Positive Community. Adults nurture a sense of belonging, significance, and emotional safety, so that students feel comfortable taking risks and working with a variety of peers.

Effective Classroom Management. Adults create a calm, orderly environment that promotes autonomy and allows students to focus on learning.

Developing Responsive Teaching. Adults use knowledge of child development, along with observations of students, to create a developmentally appropriate learning environment.