How Parents Should Use Project Guides | Special Education

A Project Guide gives directions and possibilities to a child on how to pursue their project. At the same time, it weaves a variety of learning objectives into the project activities. These learning objectives enhance and enrich the project, making it more memorable to the child.

When I was a middle school child, I made several attempts at building a go-cart. None of those attempts was successful. I paid a welder to do some welding; my plan did not work and my money was lost. My most successful contraption pitched me onto the asphalt, leaving me bloody, because I had not considered ?play? in the wheels and breaking requirements. Yet I remember what I did learn from those attempts far more vividly than anything in ?school.?

What if I had been presented with a guide, back then in the ?60s, and told that my creative desire to construct a go-cart out of anything I could get my hands on was my schooling and that there were some physics and measurement realities I needed to consider in order to end up with a successful go-cart. What if I had also been given some reading about making go-carts and had been asked to write a report and share with others my go-cart project. And that I could do all that instead of sitting in a boring desk all day? In fact, what if there were educational money I could access to make the whole thing work?

There is no question that I would have reached much further than I actually did, and learned far more, most of which would be remembered today.

Parents should treat the guides as guides, not as controls. A child may take the project in directions not found in the guide. Great! Maybe parts of the guide are a bit much for a particular child. Feel free to scale them back; but to ensure a breadth of learning, don?t eliminate those parts.

As you work with the guides, you will discover that they are very flexible. The guides can easily be adapted from one child to the next or from one part of the country to the next. A simple bit of Internet research can replace those things that are not useful to your family with things that are. Because you have the guide already, you know exactly what to look for when you make changes.

Doing the project is what catches the enthusiasm of the child, but sharing the project with others is both what makes it valuable, and what seals learning in a child?s mind. Food from the garden should be cooked and served to the family in at least one special festival meal. A short story should be polished and read aloud for the enjoyment of others. Even better, it should be posted on the Internet for strangers to read and enjoy.

The child should join any sort of membership club or association related to the project, both to be part of something bigger than themselves, and to gain access to experience mentors. Any kind of show or contest is a great incentive and place to share the project with others.

Projects will always begin with great excitement, but the parents must help impart encouragement to their children to persevere until the project is finished and sent in for evaluation.

But at the same time, the project should remain a joy to the child, especially during the middle school years. Too much academic work required can easily make the whole thing too much like school. Remember, we learn little of what is ?scholastic,? we learn far more of what is real and needful to us.

Source: http://www.iraq-mowr.org/how-parents-should-use-project-guides.html

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