Powerful Children: Understanding How to Teach and Learn Using the Reggio Approach

In Possible Schools, Ann Lewin-Benham showed us that we can create schools that engage the minds of children and involve parents. In this book, she describes projects in a school that successfully adapted the Reggio Approach with Head Start–eligible children. She explains how to use the Reggio Approach to address current major concerns in early education, including helping children become self-disciplined, making sure children are ready for 1st grade, assessing children’s progress, and laying a foundation for literacy. Presenting a multitude of examples of excellent preschool practice, this dynamic book:

• Introduces the concept of “significant work” that draws deeply on young children’s innate intelligences.
• Provides teachers with an opportunity to reflect on what they know and understand about young children.
• Illustrates how teachers can make changes in their classrooms to expand and improve learning.
• Describes robust activities from an urban preschool, including how each project relates to a particular teaching principle.
• Suggests more clearly defined standards and lays out policy implications for each.

Ann Lewin-Benham founded and for 20 years directed the Capital Children’s Museum in Washington, DC, where she also founded and directed the Model Early Learning Center, the only U.S. preschool accredited by Reggio educators. Her books include Possible Schools; Powerful Children; Infants and Toddlers at Work; Twelve Best Practices for Early Education; and What Learning Looks Like (with Reuven Feuerstein). For information about Ann’s teacher workshops visit her website: AnnLewin-Benham.com.