A weekly project is a short, focused investigation in which a small group of children pursues one real question over several days: they say what they already think, find out more by observing, handling, asking and building, and finish by showing what they learned. It works best with children aged about three to six, a question that genuinely belongs to them, a teacher who facilitates rather than directs, and a clear ending so the week does not drift.
Weekly projects are one of the core structures named in the Global Nexus curriculum. They draw on the project approach described by Lilian Katz and Sylvia Chard in Engaging Children's Minds: The Project Approach, first published in 1989, and on the long-term projects of the Reggio Emilia schools. This article adapts those ideas to the practical constraints of a busy bilingual preschool, where a full-scale project lasting a term is rarely possible, but a well-shaped week of inquiry almost always is.
Why a project and not just a theme
A theme names a territory: food, water, homes. A project asks a question inside that territory and tries to answer it. "Food" is a theme. "How does the bakery near school make bread rise?" is a project. The difference matters because a question gives children a reason to persist. When a structure falls over, or a prediction turns out wrong, the question pulls them back to try again.
Katz and Chard argued that project work complements, rather than replaces, systematic instruction. Children still need adults to teach them skills such as cutting, counting and holding a pencil, but projects give them a chance to apply those skills to something they care about. In their account, the project approach develops dispositions as much as knowledge: the habit of asking, of checking, of working with others and of finishing what you started.
In a curriculum that also follows Vietnam's national preschool programme, projects are a way of meeting several developmental goals at once. A project on building a shelter for the class rabbit touches measuring, language, cooperation, fine-motor skills and care for animals. The planning grid simply needs to show where those goals are met.
Finding a question that belongs to the children
The best projects start from something children noticed. Listen for the questions that come up repeatedly in free play, at lunch or on walks. Why does the fan make the paper move? Where does the rubbish truck take our rubbish? How do snails climb walls? Questions like these are concrete, can be investigated on site or nearby, and have answers that young children can partly discover for themselves.
Some questions look good but are hard to investigate. "How do aeroplanes fly?" excites children, but almost nothing about it can be tested in a classroom, and the project risks becoming a series of adult explanations. A teacher can steer towards a related question that children can actually work on: "Which paper plane flies furthest, and why?" That keeps the curiosity while giving children something to do with their hands.
A practical test is to ask: what will the children physically do on day two and day three? If the answer is mostly "look at pictures" or "listen to the teacher", the question needs reshaping. If the answer involves observing something real, collecting things, building, measuring, interviewing someone or visiting somewhere, the project has legs. Write the question on the planning sheet in the children's own words, in the language they used when they asked it.
The three phases, compressed into one week
Katz and Chard describe three phases: beginning, developing and concluding. In a long project each phase may take weeks. In a weekly project they can be compressed into five days without losing their purpose:
- Monday, beginning. The group talks about what they already know or believe. Children draw or build their current ideas, and the teacher records their theories and questions. This is the baseline, and it often reveals surprising beliefs worth testing.
- Tuesday, planning the investigation. Together the group decides how to find out more: what to look at, whom to ask, what to try. Even four-year-olds can choose between two ways of testing an idea.
- Wednesday and Thursday, developing. This is fieldwork: observing, handling, building, a short walk, a visiting parent with relevant expertise, or a small experiment repeated several times. Children record what they find in drawings, photographs, counts or models.
- Thursday afternoon, revisiting. Children compare what they found with their Monday ideas. What changed? What surprised them? This is the reflective step that turns activity into learning.
- Friday, concluding. The group shares what they learned with someone else, perhaps another class or their families, through a display, a model, a short retelling or a demonstration.
The days are a guide, not a rule. Some projects need two developing days, others need only one. What matters is that each phase happens and that the beginning ideas are revisited at the end, so children can see their own thinking change.
An example week: where does the rubbish go?
Imagine a group of five-year-olds who keep running to the gate when the rubbish truck passes in the morning. On Monday the teacher gathers six of them and asks what they think happens to the rubbish. The answers are wonderfully varied: it goes to the river, it goes to a big hole, the truck eats it, it goes back to the shops. The teacher writes each idea down and children draw their theory.
On Tuesday the group plans how to find out. They decide to watch what happens to the classroom rubbish, to ask the school caretaker, and to sort a bag of clean classroom waste to see what it is made of. On Wednesday they interview the caretaker, who shows them where the bins are collected and explains that some things are sorted for recycling. On Thursday they sort paper, plastic and food scraps into trays, count how much of each there is, and compare the result with their Monday drawings. Several children change their minds; one insists the truck still eats some of it.
On Friday the group shows the younger class how to put paper and food scraps into different bins, using signs the children drew themselves with pictures rather than writing. The project closes, but the sorting bins stay in the room, and the question of where the truck goes next becomes a possible field trip for the following month.
The teacher's role: facilitate, record, hold back
In project work the teacher's hardest job is to avoid answering too soon. When a child asks why the bread rises, the honest response is often "What do you think? How could we find out?" This is not withholding. It gives the child the chance to construct an explanation, which is the point of the exercise. The teacher can always add information later, once the children have something to attach it to.
The teacher also keeps the project manageable. A small group of four to eight children is usually right for a weekly project; the rest of the class carries on with other activities, and children can rotate in over the term. The teacher prepares materials, arranges any visit or visitor, and makes sure every child in the group has a role, including the quieter ones who might otherwise watch from the edge.
Recording runs throughout. Photographs of key moments, short notes of what children said, children's own drawings dated and kept together: these become the evidence of learning, the material for the concluding day and the basis for the observation records families receive. A project with no record is soon forgotten by everyone, including the children.
Running a project in two languages
Projects generate a great deal of talk, which makes them valuable for language growth in a bilingual room. Children argue about why things happen, describe what they see, ask questions and explain their findings to others. All of this happens naturally if the teacher creates space for it.
Many teams let the beginning and revisiting conversations happen mainly in Vietnamese, because children explain their reasoning more fully in the language they know best. The English-speaking teacher joins the fieldwork, narrating what children are doing and introducing the key words of the project in English, and returns to them during the concluding day. Over the week, children often begin mixing the two languages to explain their findings, which is a normal and healthy part of bilingual development.
For the concluding day, children can choose which language to present in, or present together, with one child explaining in Vietnamese and a friend adding the English words they learned. This keeps the focus on the ideas, while giving both languages a real job to do.
When a project goes wrong, and how to recover
Not every project works. Sometimes the question turns out to be less interesting than it seemed, and children drift away by Tuesday. Sometimes the investigation fails: the seeds do not sprout, the visitor cancels, the rain makes the outdoor work impossible. These are normal events, and how the teacher responds matters more than the event itself.
If interest fades, check whether the children are actually doing anything with their hands. Projects stall when they become too verbal. Adding a building task or a real object to investigate often revives them. If that does not work, it is better to close the project honestly on Wednesday, with a short sharing of what the group found so far, than to drag it to Friday.
If the investigation fails, treat the failure as data. Seeds that do not sprout raise a new question: why not? Too much water, too little light, old seeds? That question may be more productive than the original one. Children learn a great deal from seeing adults treat a failed experiment calmly and curiously rather than as a disaster.
Afterwards, note what happened in the planning folder. Over a year, these notes will tell your team which kinds of questions sustain a week with your children and which do not, and that knowledge is worth more than any project list bought from a catalogue.
Making projects part of the school's rhythm
Weekly projects work best when they are a regular, predictable part of the timetable rather than a special event. A common pattern is for each class to run one small-group project at a time, rotating groups so that every child takes part in several projects over a term. The projects sit inside the monthly theme most of the time, but the team should feel free to follow a strong question across theme boundaries.
It also helps to agree, as a team, on a light standard for what every project should leave behind: the children's opening ideas, three or four photographs of the investigation, a sample of what children made and a short note on what they concluded. A shared standard makes projects comparable across classes and makes it far easier to explain the work to families and visitors.
Curriculum leads can support teachers by keeping a shared archive of past projects with photographs, children's questions and notes on what worked, and by reserving fifteen minutes of the weekly team meeting for project planning. Newer teachers benefit from co-running a project with an experienced colleague before leading one alone. Schools that want structured training for owners and teachers in this way of working can find details at globalnexus.edu.vn; families interested in the programme at Global Star School can arrange a visit through globalstarschool.com.
Câu hỏi thường gặp
How many children should be in a weekly project group?
Four to eight children is a workable size for most weekly projects. Smaller groups let every child contribute and make fieldwork easier to manage, while larger groups make it hard for quieter children to be heard. The rest of the class continues with other activities, and groups rotate over the term.
Can three-year-olds do project work?
Yes, with simpler questions and shorter sessions. Three-year-olds respond well to projects about things they can see and touch every day, such as the classroom plants, a pet or a puddle. Adults do more of the recording and planning, and the concluding day might be as simple as showing photographs to families at pickup.
What if the children choose a question the teacher knows nothing about?
That can be an advantage. The teacher models how to find out, by asking an expert, visiting a place or looking at a reference book together, rather than performing as the source of all answers. Teachers should still check facts before sharing them, and avoid passing on half-remembered information as if it were certain.
How is a weekly project different from a science experiment demonstration?
In a demonstration the adult performs the experiment and children watch. In a project, children form their own ideas, help decide how to test them, carry out the investigation with their hands and discuss what they found. A demonstration can be a useful part of a project, but it is not the project itself.
How do we assess what children learned from a project?
Compare the ideas children expressed at the beginning with what they say, draw or build at the end, and note the skills they used along the way. This is recorded through observation notes, photographs and samples of their work rather than tests or scores, and becomes part of each child's development record.
Should every project end with a display for parents?
Not necessarily. Sharing with an audience helps children consolidate what they learned, but the audience can be another class, the school cook or a single visiting parent. Elaborate displays prepared mostly by adults defeat the purpose, so keep the focus on the children telling their own story.