Empowering Pre-K Students Through Project-Based Learning

As an early childhood educator, I have often come across people who believe that early learners aren’t capable of making decisions or guiding their own learning. But that is a misconception—young children not only are capable of having opinions and making decisions, but when given the opportunity for voice and choice in their learning, can demonstrate thoughtful engagement with a joy for exploring new content.

How do voice and choice show up in early childhood learning experiences?

“Voice” and “choice” are often said together; they are two related but distinct ideas:

• Voice: What do children think, feel, wonder, and express?
• Choice: What decisions do children get to make about how and what they learn?

Teachers sometimes hesitate to implement project-based learning (PBL) with young children, fearing it will be too chaotic or that children are too young to make decisions. However, in a learner-centered environment, even our youngest learners are capable decision makers; in fact, they need opportunities to develop these skills—children learn how to make decisions by making decisions. PBL is one of the most effective ways for teachers to inspire voice and choice in their lessons, as it offers an ideal environment for children to practice making decisions, building both independence and collaboration skills.

Using Student Voice to Guide PBL Plans

When deciding what kind of project to do, it is helpful for teachers to begin by listening to students: What questions are they asking about the world around them and what are they interested in? From these topics, teachers can determine a project that aligns student interests with meaningful learning. 

In my own classroom, student voice has informed a number of projects:

• A butterfly garden project sparked after a child found a dead butterfly at recess.
• A bakery project that emerged after I watched my students engage in dramatic play about stores.
• A library project developed at a co-located school without its own library.
• A poetry project that came from students expressing curiosity about making a book to explore their identities. 

Project Planning: Where Can I Leave Space for Student Choice?

Once you’ve determined the direction of your project, you can continually invite students to make choices about how they will engage with the project. In our poetry book project, I wanted students to explore the driving question: How can we make a book of poetry that celebrates who we are?

For this project, students created a book of poems and paired each one with a self-portrait. Students were encouraged to make their own decisions about what aspects of their identities to highlight, the structure of the poem they wrote, how to illustrate their self-portraits—using paint, chalk, pencil, etc.— and how to share their work with others.

Projects in early childhood don’t need to be fully student-driven to honor voice and choice. In fact, I often tell teachers that most projects aren’t—the goal is to thoughtfully create structures that honor children’s ideas and agency within the learning process.

Voice and Choice Across the Phases of PBL

Teachers can intentionally weave voice and choice throughout all phases of any PBL unit. For example, during the launch of a project, teachers can give students an opportunity to come up with questions they have about the topic. During our library project, students asked questions like these: Where will our library be? How many books will we have? Where will we get the books? How will they be organized? How will we keep track of them? How many will people be able to take out at a time?

By not only encouraging these questions, but documenting as part of the project launch, I was able to nurture the students’ curiosity and agency as they shared what they hoped to learn in the project.

As students get started with a project, teachers can give them the opportunity to make choices about how and where they learn. For example, in a PBL unit where children were running a bakery, our dramatic play area housed bakery tools, uniforms, and a cash register. Other centers included a water table with measuring tools, a math center with different types of coins, and another with Play-Doh.

During project work time, children were able to move freely among these centers to build their knowledge of what it means to run a bakery. Although there may be a limit on the number of students at each center, students have the opportunity to select where they would like to go for as long as the centers are open.

As students continue to develop and critique their projects, simple feedback protocols give them voice in sharing their learning while also encouraging them to make decisions about how to revise their work.

Finally, when planning how students will present their work, teachers can empower them to make this decision and use their voices to demonstrate their learning in a way that feels exciting to them. For example, during our “Poetry Slam,” some students chose to recite their poems out loud, others prerecorded an audio or video version of their poem, and another child asked a fourth-grade buddy to read hers during the presentation.

Young children are fully capable of engaging in meaningful decision-making and expressing their ideas out loud when they have structured, supportive learning opportunities. Voice and choice are important components of authentic learning experiences that foster ownership and joy.