Over the summer, I spent a lot of time familiarizing myself with the newly revised Ontario Kindergarten Curriculum and digging deeper into my own understandings around the big ideas, conceptual understandings and how they fit into the newly designed Four Frames model: 

Self Regulation and Well-Being

Belonging and Contributing

Demonstrating Literacy and Mathematics Behaviours

Problem Solving and Innovating. 

After working closely with a few inspiring friends and colleagues since last year and over the summer who always seem to push my thinking, I didn't waste any time diving into the new document and begin reflecting around how I could develop a system that would help capture student thinking and learning in an authentic, purposeful and meaningful way for myself, my students and their families. 

Google Drive: A Innovative and Collaborative Tool in our Classroom

"Modern learning is about doing authentic work in the world that can be amplified by technology." (Will Richardson)

Technology is just one way we enhance our pedagogy and provide flexible structures for ourselves as a teaching team to capture what our students are saying, doing and representing as part of our assessment practices and daily programming. As an active explorer of different types of technology and through a lot of trial and error and much reflection over the years, I feel that this year has been pivotal for me in developing a collaborative system between myself and my teaching partner that capitalizes on the use of Google Apps for Education as an assessment tool. 

This post will highlight a few examples of how I have organized my Google platform and used it as a catalyst for collaboration when capturing our ongoing observations, conversations and products of student learning. 

In previous years, a clipboard, a digital camera and my favourite pen would be attached to my hip throughout the school day because I didn't want to miss an opportunity to capture learning in action. While this way of assessing was great at the time for us as a teaching team, it also involved a lot of paper, extra steps for digital downloading (e.g. of images, organizing them, etc), and then doubling up with the notes and photos captured by my partner. We didn't really have an effective and efficient organizational system that allowed us to correlate, collaborate and/or coordinate our paper assessments. This is where Google Apps has been incredible for my practice because it has taken all the "pros" and "cons" of my past assessment tools and combined them into one online, collaborative, and innovative space!  

"Forest Friday's": A Natural Recipe for Fun!

This past Friday marked the start of a new and exciting chapter in our program: "Forest Friday's!" After the incredible learning experience last Spring as part of the Ministry of Education's Pilot Project entitled "A Week in the Forest," (click here if you have yet to read that post), I couldn't help but get excited to launch this part of our program every Friday! 

Our students' love for the outdoors is contagious and we are so fortunate to have our magical forest within walking distance from our school. It truly has become a "magical" place for learning and one that our students have a genuine love and care for! 

As a teaching team, we want our "Forest Friday's" to be an opportunity that extends on the learning happening within the walls of our classroom while at the same time, help our students foster a loving connection with nature. From "Sit Spots" and experiments to exploration and more, our "Forest Friday's" continues to be a natural recipe for fun!