LEARNING AT PEREGRINE
An overview of Peregrine Pedagogy and the research behind it

The child is the active agent in their own learning.
This statement may seem obvious, and few teachers would make a toddler sit still and listen. But as children get older, most schools emphasize the body of knowledge to be transmitted rather than the student’s process of discovery. At Peregrine School, young children propel their own learning through play. As they get older, project based learning enables students to explore curricula in the disciplines in active and personal ways.
Group work with expert teachers
Project Zero, the largest research project on creativity ever sustained (it has been going on for thirty years led by Howard Gardner and his team at Harvard), spent five years studying the schools of Reggio Emilia. In Making Learning Visible, his team concluded that the best way to inspire creative thinking is through a responsive, expert teacher working with a small group of students to explore challenges which the students find meaningful. Peregrine School has been inspired by this model, which is our central teaching method at all levels.


Small teacher to student ratios
At all ages, students benefit from close teacher contact throughout the learning process. Young children rely on their teachers for emotional support; as they grow, these teachers become important mentors in their quest to find their personal interests and passions. Peregrine School is committed to small groups of students working with a teacher. Larger classrooms have teams of teachers, who separate children into temporary learning groups which ensure attention for each child.


“Play” as an aspect of learning at all levels
All Peregrine preschool programs are play-based, meaning that students are able to choose their activities during a major part of the day, and that teachers take children’s fantasy play seriously, often recording it and building curricula from it. In elementary school, students are still given choices as often as possible—sometimes of topic, of research project, of group or individual work, or of learning pace and style. As students mature, child-centered “play” evolves into sustained, child-driven projects.

