Weekly Activities

For Primary students, the first thing that happens on Mondays is a “Keybu” (small circle with their key facilitator), where we go through the schedule for the upcoming week, and identify projects that will take multiple days to accomplish, plan field trips and share information about activities on offer.

On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, at 9:00 we hold a short circle (15-20') in order to set intentions for the day.

Time is allocated every day for mentoring sessions with students needing specific support.

Focused activities (mats and literacy in English and Spanish) take place every day from 10.30 to 11.30.

Workshops and projects take place at 11:00 after a short break.

Projects are based on the children’s interests, and workshops can follow a facilitator’s passions or a child’s.

Free Flow offers students a choice of different learning landscapes prepared by facilitators in order to promote self-directed learning in various areas, such as art, music, social studies, or technology.

We also allow time after these workshops for children to tidy up as part of their responsibilities at the school.

Planning an Emergent Curriculum

An emergent curriculum is not fixed, but potential. Learning is a journey, and projects are avenues that can lead to endless destinations. Projects evolve on their own organic time table, and feed on children's playful and spontaneous reactions to events, materials and interactions. Within the Reggio Emilia schools there are no planned goals or standards indicating what is to be learned as “these would push our schools towards teaching without learning”, in the words of Loris Malaguzzi.

This does not mean that an emergent curriculum requires no planning. On the contrary, facilitators need to be observing, planning and revising on a daily basis, searching for underlying structures, and adapting the environment, the schedule, and all the elements that contribute to creating a community of learners.

Facilitators come together before the start of each term to share ideas for activities, discuss cross-curricular possibilities and plan directional themes for the coming term.

‟When learners generate curriculum, their participation and engagement are ensured. When children take the lead in developing what is worth knowing, they want to come to school because school makes sense. They find their concerns and their own experiences represented there. And the teacher doesn't have to work hard at maintaining control, because she's not working against something. She is working with learner interest, a curriculum that is stronger than anything invented in any textbook.”

Elizabeth Jones

Project planning also occurs daily (“in the moment”) as facilitators take feedback from the children and provide appropriate materials, create new spaces, and trigger more questions. As a project gets underway, facilitators reflect, explore, study, research, and plan together possible ways to elaborate and extend the theme by means of materials, activities, visits, use of tools, etc. These ideas are then taken back to the children and investigated.

Facilitators communicate with the parents about the project theme and encourage them to become involved in the activities of their children through finding the necessary materials, working with facilitators on the physical environment, offering supplementary books, sharing their expertise, and so on. Throughout the project, facilitators act as the group's 'memory' and discuss with children reinterpretations of earlier moments.

In the last term of the school year, the staff discuss in depth every child in the school, reviewing their social and emotional well-being and involvement, as well as their academic progress.