Fours learn about their world through interactions with family members and significant adults, such as their teachers, and through their own explorations. An integrated approach to curriculum enables young children to build connections between themselves, their families and the world around them. As they interact with these multiple worlds, they learn new concepts and skills.
At Bank Street we call this integrated, experiential approach to learning the developmental interaction approach. The developmental interaction approach views curriculum not as isolated bits of knowledge or skills to be mastered in lock-step sequence. Rather curriculum grows out of the interests of the children in collaboration with their teachers, who in turn are always drawing on their understanding of child development and their observations of the children to keep this dynamic approach alive and vital. A curriculum study of interest to fours may focus on the family, transportation or workers in the community. These choices emerge out of the morning meetings, when children and their teachers sit together and talk, or conversations about new experiences shared over dramatic play, but they are always grounded in the excitement and enthusiasm of the children's observations and experiences.
The teacher uses his or her knowledge of child development to think about the concepts embedded in the study, the kinds of questions the children will bring to the study, what they might already know and the skills they might use to explore the topic further. The teacher sets up the environment in order for children to expand their knowledge. Through art, movement, building with blocks, cooking, science, reading, writing, math, dramatic play and music children will explore the study, integrating their learning as they work together in small groups.
In the rich sharing of thoughts and experiences, such as a group meeting following a visit to a store, children begin to organize their thoughts and build meaning through their play. They revisit their ideas and seek to recreate them through small group discussions, dramatic play, and construction. The teacher can draw on various resources to provide a variety of opportunities for the children to experiment and explore different materials. In the context of meaningful experiences, children's skills develop: writing numbers for the play money in the store, or writing a list of words like what "Daddy does when he goes shopping".
Through observation and evaluation, the teacher can assess the level and quality of the children's involvement with the curriculum. In addition to observing and facilitating the children's experiences, the teacher also supports each child to become a member of the classroom community. When children feel respected, when they feel supported to take risks and when they feel that their feelings are valued, then they thrive as learners. The integrated approach to curriculum--the developmental interaction approach--celebrates this complex dynamic of development and environment in order to promote socio-emotionally, physically and cognitively healthy spaces for children to grow and learn.