Dalton start in Ukraine

Evgen Miroshnichenko from Kiev, Ukraine is a psychologist and teacher.
He works in the Open (alternative) education and he took the initiative
to start a Dalton Kindergarten in Kiev.
He wrote to me:
We plan to open a small preschool in September 2012. We want this to be the start to open a primary Dalton school. Now there is an active building of new school and we wait for decision about what kind of methodological content will be used in it. We really want it to be a Dalton technology.
To realize this, we want to organize a detailed familiarity with the existing schools. So I would like in March or April to make some educational journeys.
In the near future the intention is to actually visit the current Dalton School and carefully review the principles and techniques of training. It is desirable to immerse ourselves in the process, to get an experience. Advise, how to do this?

Of course I was very enthousiastic about this initiative, because in one of my seminars three years ago in Warszawa I've met a group of 12 teachers from Ukraine.
This can be the follow up.

My answer to Evgen:
Good to read all your activities and initiatives.
There are many possibilities to visit Dalton schools in several countries and of course the best one is the original: ‘The Dalton School’ in New York!
In Holland we stayed very close to the original model of “The Dalton Laboratory Plan”. It’s very simply summarized by Helen Parkhurst herself when she writes “Dalton is a way of living”. In Holland we have complete Dalton Schools in primary and secondary sphere.
During our participation in implementation processes in the centre of Europe, we discovered that the courage and possibilities to change the educational characteristics depends on the loyalty of school boards and the education inspectorate. Also the local tradition in education influences the processes.
But educational reform depends most of all on the potency of educational leadership of the head teachers. Some schools are using only Dalton elements and didn’t change the pedagogical structure and teaching strategy. In some schools some traditional teachers are blocking educational experiments of advanced teaching.
Many schools in Czech Republic have implemented Dalton elements.
The Dalton development in Austria, Germany and Poland is more consequent in staying close to the origin of whole school development.

I keep you informed here in my Daltonblog about this great inititive.
Delegation from Ukraine during an OMEP conference in Warszawa 2009

Sunday feeling

Checklist for creating an assignment

This checklist only gives suggestions to balance the structure of assignments that reflect individual differences.
This checklist can be extended with elements suitable to the own situation.


0 is it possible that every pupil can make this assignments independently
0 is this assignment stimulating the co-operation
0 is this assignment connected with the level of the student
0 have you taken into account multiple intelligences
0 is it possible to practice the skills for independent learning
0 does the pupil knows the target of this assignment
0 does the student knows how the final product should look
0 does it involves an exploratory or a processing task
0 is self correction possible when the work is finished
0 does the pupil knows how the assessment is taken place
0 does the pupil has enough strategic recourses to make this assignment
0 is this assignment suitable to the work tempo of the individual pupil
0 is it clear what shall be done at least or up
0 is there any space for own creative solutions
0 are action guides available
0 is it clear what kind of answer is expected :
-only the answer
-a motivation of the answer
-is memorizing expected
0 which kind of recourses are available
0 is it clear when additional instruction will be given
0 is there variation in open ended questions and closed questions
0 is there in your planning enough time to evaluate the assignment
0 is there any time for process evaluation
0 are there regularly surprising aspects in your assignments

Special functions in your classroom

There are always questions how to involve children in the classroom organization and to make them proud to participate.
Therefore I promote the use of buttons.
This has a context in my statement that Dalton is visualizing the organization.
I got inspired by the button idea in the 'Rehoboth Dalton School'.
I have made many of these in English and in Dutch versions.
Available on request by Email.

Dalton explained by Helen Parkhurst

In my opinion the most important text about Dalton education is written by Helen Parkhurst herself.

Read it here.

Tool for classroom management