Looking back at last year's success of our We Can See global inquiry project (you can find those posts under the "We Can See Project" tab), it goes without question that this type of learning opportunity brought an authentic learning lens for our class to inquire and learn about the world around them. The beauty of this project was that it involved connecting our class with other classes around the world and focused on building an understanding about each school environment whereby students would make comparisons, ask questions, draw conclusions, and gain a deeper understanding of where they live. 

Over the summer, a group of educators that are part of my Professional Learning Network (PLN) on Twitter began to dialogue around what our next global inquiry project could be and what it could look like for this school year. In particular, Heather McKay (@HeatherMMcKay), a talented and inspiring Kindergarten teacher from Calgary, Alberta, ignited the idea of using Frank Serafini's series entitled "Looking Closely." 

Image from: www.frankserafini.com

Through this lens and with his series of books, this project explores how to "look closely" at the world around us, nature's natural wonderments, and our students' curiousities in a way that allows us to gain a deeper understanding of our world and digitally connect with other classrooms while doing it. As part of starting this global inquiry project, a collaborative blog space was created whereby classes, educators, and their families could go on and post their discoveries, inquiries, and wonderments and interact as digital citizens through the blogsphere. You can find the link to the collaborative "Looking Closely" blog here: http://kidblog.org/LookingClosely/. 

For our class, it has been a slow start in sparking the interests of our students with this concept, so we have taken the idea in strides and in connection with the interests of our students. For instance, throughout our Snail Inquiry, our students took interest in "looking closely" at snails through their scientific observations, fiction and non-fiction texts, and more and similarly with our Leaf Inquiry. Students were able to dig deeper in their thinking with the framework of "what do you see?," "what do you think?," "what do you wonder?," which helped guide and facilitate the learning. Many opportunities to compare, discuss and make their thinking visible emerged and we couldn't have been more delighted!

This one image of a Monarch Butterfly inspired another
SK, G.B., to paint it after looking closely at the image.

After creating her sketch (plan), she ended up inspiring
3 other girls to create their own interpretation of a
butterfly based on the image in the book.

Such attention to detail!

Sharing our interest in "looking closely" with our reading buddies!

After using the "Looking Closely" texts as read alouds and throughout peer and self-directed reading opportunities within our classroom, Heidi and I finally feel that the spark has been lit as of this week and it didn't even come from us! Throughout this week, one of our SK students decided she wanted to make her own "Looking Closely" book and have our class try and guess what we think the images are. Over the course of the week, E.S. has been reading through the various books from this series, getting ideas and making connections to the format and set-up of these texts. Here is the "Looking Closely" book she created:

We hope that E.S.'s story will inspire her peers or even other classes to create their own and share them with our class through the collaborative blog or by commenting on this post. E.S. would be thrilled to know what you thought of her "Looking Closely" debut as an author so we welcome any comments below. 

How does "looking closely" at something 

inspire wonder? We would love to know 

what you think...

"We Can See...All Around the World" - ECOO Presentation 2013

Last Thursday, I had the wonderful opportunity and privilege to present at this year's 34th Annual ECOO (Educational Computing Organization of Ontario) Conference in Niagara Falls! 

The conference entitled, "Bring IT Together", is "Ontario's premier educational technology conference. Hundreds of educators from all over the province get together annually to learn and share best practice for the use of computing technology in the classroom."

Co-Chair Doug Peterson

It was truly an honour to present alongside such an inspiring and passionate educator, my colleague and friend Angie Harrison (@TechieAng / http://techieang.edublogs.org). After being involved in the "We Can See" Global Inquiry Project last year with our kindergarten class (please see the "We Can See Project" label on my blog for previous posts), we wasted no time preparing our proposal for sharing our learning and collaborative journey with other educators at this year's conference!

The purpose of our presentation was to take other educators on a journey around what it means to begin your own Global Inquiry and what things you'll need to consider when creating or participating in one. With the concept of Digital Citizenship at the forefront, we wanted to give our audience an understanding of how a simple concept like what you can see out of your classroom window, can be expanded upon in so many different ways and look different across the grades. 

We did not want our focus to strictly be on the Full Day Kindergarten lens, even though that was where our journey took place, but rather shifting that lens to any grade and for educators to see the beauty of collaborative, digital learning and how it can elicit such authentic and meaningful connections for our students and their learning of the world around them.

As take-aways, we created "Bookmarks" that highlight those important points to consider when beginning or taking part in a Global Inquiry project:

To top it off...the feedback from our presentation couldn't have been more positive! 

We not only assisted three of our audience members as they joined the Twitterverse, but we had one audience member in particular, Magdalena Front (@TechMagFront) create her very own "We Can See" video from her experience in Niagara Falls while attending the conference! Thank you for letting me share this on my blog and I can't wait to share it with my class! 

Here is the link to her blog: http://upfrontandcentre.wordpress.com/2013/10/27/we-can-see-at-ecoo13/
I truly can't wait to see where this new learning takes you and your school and I look forward to checking back often to read about your own We Can See journey! Here is the video she created:

Thank you again to everyone who attended our session and to our supporters near and far for all of your encouragement and positive energy! I truly can't wait to see where this year takes us! 

Skyping about Snails!

With the start of our Snail Inquiry, we have been very busy sharing our daily discoveries and new learning not only on this blog, but also through other forms of social media like Twitter. New to our classroom this year is our very own class Twitter account (@rm_126)! This has been one way we continue to share our learning with our school community, parents and other classrooms. It is truly amazing how this one form of social media has allowed us to already connect with other classrooms from within our school district, province and world and converse around our daily wonderings and discoveries! 

To our wonderful surprise, Mrs. Lowe's Kindergarten class from Winnipeg, Manitoba has also been inquiring about snails in their classroom! After connecting with Mrs. Lowe (@joyofrunning) on Twitter, we couldn't wait to connect our classes and share our knowledge and questions about this fascinating living thing! In preparation for our Skype session, our SK's had no trouble remembering back to last year and our participation in the "We Can See" Project whereby we skyped several times with Kindergarten classes from around the world (e.g. Monterrey, Mexico, New York City, Keswick, Ontario)! To utilize their prior knowledge, we collectively made an anchor chart around what Skyping with friends looks like, sounds like, and feels like to help set the tone for this wonderful learning opportunity! Similarly, we met with small groups of students throughout the week leading up to our session to discuss some questions we would like to ask Mrs. Lowe's class to gain more knowledge and insight to support our learning about snails. 

On Thursday, September 26th, excitement filled our classroom as students knew that it was the day to Skype with Mrs. Lowe's Kindergarteners! Here are the questions we came up with for Mrs. Lowe's class along with her students' responses:

1. What do snails need in their habitat?
"They need their shells."
"They need food like flowers, plants and they need vegetables."

2. Why do snails have slime and not legs?
"They need slime so they can move."

3. How do snails hide in their shells?
"They attach themselves to their shells. They use their body as a door when they go inside."

4. What does your snail live in?
"Our snail lives in water in an aquarium!"

Picture from Mrs. Lowe's class blog of their Snail's habitat.

Here are the questions Mrs. Lowe's class had for us along with our students' responses (you'll notice we had very similar questions which was interesting since both classes were able to compare answers):

1. When do snails go in their shells?
"They need their shells to protect themselves from predators." - E.S.

2. What do snails eat?
"Snails eat lots of lettuce." - C.S.
"They eat leaves!" - M.P.

3. Why do snails have slime?
We wondered about this too and both classes think that it helps them move.

To conclude our Skype session, both of our classes came up with compliments for the other class:
Mrs. Lowe's class: "Thank you for telling us about snails."
Our class: "Thank you for teaching us lots about snails and stuff."

We also have one common question we look forward to researching in our classrooms: 

How do snails stretch their eyes? 

Stay tuned!

We are thankful to Mrs. Lowe and her Kindergarten class for sharing their learning about snails so far this school year! We truly look forward to connecting our classes again in the near future as we continue to 

learn more about snails! 

If you'd like to read up on their class blog click here:

 http://www.room8-adventuresinkindergarten.blogspot.ca

The Start of Our Snail Inquiry

Igniting our students natural curiousity is something we strive to achieve every day, week, month and throughout the school year with hopes that each student begins to see themselves as a lifelong learner inside and outside the walls of our classroom! Setting up the learning environment to support their wonderments and guide their learning is a very exciting process since it can be one that leads in many different directions based on their interests, knowledge, strengths and needs! As a teaching team, my wonderful DECE, Heidi Theis, and myself look to this process as one with endless possibilities and we always enjoy planning purposeful provocations and setting up the environment as a third teacher for our students.

This post documents the beginning of our Snail Inquiry as we start to create new chapters in our journey as a class this year! To begin, our provocation was something quite simple. Ms. Theis found some lovely visitors (snails) in her garden at home and after much discussion around how we could use them as a hook for an inquiry, we brought them into our classroom. I think it's safe to say that when any living thing becomes part of the classroom family and environment it immediately gets positive reactions and excitement from students!

Here is how we set up our Snail Space as a invitation for learning:
1. Snails are kept in an exposed habitat of a clear glass bowl (with aerated lid) placed on top of a mirror for added depth and reflection.
2. Non-fiction and fiction books displayed around the learning space to promote literacy learning, research, investigations, wonderments.
3. Basket is filled with sticky notes along with a mason jar of pencils to invite students to record their thinking and ideas.
4. Clipboards with "I see...I think...I wonder..." template to support their thinking and to invite responses.
5. Magnifying glasses in tin for deeper exploration and discoveries.
6. Chart Paper with "I see...I think...I wonder..." template enlarged for students to place their sticky note ideas.

Once this Snail Space was discovered by our students, we didn't waste anytime documenting our students' initial theories and wonderments:

I see...

"I see 3 snails. Look 1, 2, 3." - R.K.

"I saw a baby snail I think." - J.S.

"I see the snails digging." - V.D.

"I see the snails lying down in the dirt." - E.Sk.

"I see growing big." - Z.P.

"I see dirt, rocks and leaves in their bowl." - L.M.

"I see their shells and they have swirls on it." - M.P.

"I see some big ones and little ones." - D.K.

I think...

"Snails don't have eyes." - R.V.

"I think those are his eyes because I see little black dots but I don't know." - M.P.

"Snails need slime so they can walk." - Z.P.

"They need the things (tentacles) so they can breath maybe." - G.B. 

"The shell is for them sleeping in and it needs to be dark." - R.V.

"Snails need slime so they can move you know." - C.S.

"The inside of the shell it must be slimy all over and then it (the shell) gets all around and that's why the snail is slimy." - D.K.

"Snails need lots and lots and lots of slime so they can move." - T.B.

"Snails come from eggs." - T.D.

"They play in their house and they are toys in their house and they like that." - R.T.

"I think snails eat lots of leaves." - E.Sk.

I wonder...

"I wonder is snails eat lettuce to eat if they are hungry." - S.R.

"I wonder if snails can turn into a slug?" - E.Sk.

"I looked in a book and I found that snails have eyes on their tentacles. They eat lots of plants." - S.R.

"I wonder how snails get their shells?" - G.B.

After listening, documenting and learning alongside our students based on the following question prompts, Ms. Theis and I knew that our next steps would be to extend their learning and interests about snails into other areas of our program. But I'm going to stop and pause right here because Ms. Theis and I have had many insightful conversations with other educators around how to do take a provocation/inquiry to the next level. In other words, igniting a provocation and gaining student interest is one thing, but how do you take it further and dig deeper in the learning? As a teaching team, we are still learning ourselves and can attest to the feeling of just "scratching the surface" with an inquiry. I hope that the next bit of information about our Snail Inquiry illustrates just how we have integrated this topic into other content areas and catered to the strengths/needs of our students through differentiated opportunities!

If you can believe it...two snails escaped at different times from their habitat.
One was discovered in a book when two students wanted to do more
research and the other was found on the mirror while a student was
writing down their observations!

Here is where our Snail Inquiry has led us so far...

1. Small interest groups of students have used the books and other text forms to research about snails and independently record their ideas on our collaborative thinking space (chart paper) - (Curriculum links: Personal/Social/Emotional Development, Oral Communication, Reading, Media Literacy).

2. With small groups, Ms. Theis and I have led mini lessons based upon their initial theories (e.g. parts of a snail, how they move, what they look like, feel like, etc) and had the snails out of the bowl for open exploration - (Curriculum links: Personal/Social/Emotional Development, Oral Communication, Writing, Science & Technology).

3. Students have begun to independently draw pictures of snails using various mediums (paper and markers, water colour paints, observational drawing/painting, diagrams, labels) - (Curriculum links: Personal/Social/Emotional Development, Reading, Writing, Oral Communication, Visual Arts).

4. Students have created words for our class Word Wall based on their newly acquired knowledge around the names for the parts of a snail (e.g. tentacles, eyes, shell, mouth, foot, slime, snail) and have been seen using those words throughout daily writing opportunities - (Curriculum links: Reading, Writing).

5. In small focus groups based on each student's interests around snails and background/newly acquired knowledge, students worked with an educator to record their new observations, ideas, and wonderments on sentence strips for our documentation wall display - (Curriculum links: Personal/Social/Emotional Development, Writing, Oral Communication).

6. We have shared our learning, daily discoveries, and wonderments on Twitter and have connected with other Kindergarten educators whose classes are also inquiring about snails! 

7. We skyped with Mrs. Lowe's Kindergarten class from Winnipeg, Manitoba to interview, inquire and learn more about their snails, their habitat, etc (**Blog post to come soon!)

8. In small groups, students have begun to create models of snails using wire and beads to contribute to a wall display in our classroom!
9. Small interest groups of students have begun to create their own Snail Books based on their learning and knowledge of snails. 
10. Some students have begun to create 3D models of snails using open-ended materials (e.g. playdough, collage materials - tissue paper, wire, glue, paper, wikki sticks, on the light table with various transparent items, etc). 

*The above are only a few examples of all of the incredible learning going on within the walls of our classroom!

"Good morning Mrs. Lowe's class!"

A snail in progress by E.Sk. 

A snail in progress by G.B.

As outlined in brief, you can see how we have tried to weave in multiple elements of the curriculum into our inquiry which is embedded throughout our timetable each day. We have plans to continue to connect digitally with Mrs. Lowe's class to help us dig deeper into our understanding of snails and continue to share our journey! 

We truly can't wait to see where this takes us as a class! Stay tuned for more updates!

The next few paragraphs of this post are geared towards educators as you begin to create a student-led inquiry in your classrooms! We had the wonderful honour of being featured on our good friend, Joanne Babalis' blog (http://myclassroomtransformation.blogspot.ca/2013/07/on-display-jocelyn-schmidt-and-heidi.html) in connection to our Cloud Inquiry last year, and I thought it would be relevant to share some of our interview as a way of supporting how Ms. Theis and I work through the inquiry planning process:

How to integrate the learning from other subject areas:

During the proposed planning process, we try to tie in the curriculum expectations that best fit our students' theories and where the learning might go. Inquiry-based learning is wonderful for clustering expectations underneath an "umbrella" topic and we are always surprised by just how many expectations this one inquiry could cover. There were and continue to be many opportunities to extend our students' learning into other content areas. By using the "Big Ideas" in the Full Day Kindergarten curriculum, we are able to select the best holistic expectations for the inquiry and help set the tone for the learning and our goals for what we want our students to walk away knowing and being able to do.  

Suggestions for Teaching Teams about ways to begin an inquiry: 

1. Flexibility is key! Sometimes your inquiry takes you places you didn't expect but that's ok! It can end up going above and beyond what you "planned" for but that's the beauty of it! The learning then becomes incredibly meaningful since it came FROM your students and you co-learn together. For example, from our Cloud Inquiry, two other inquiries were formed throughout the year both of which we never anticipated and both were also huge highlights: Our Airplane/Airport Inquiry (e.g. provocation: when airplanes fly through the clouds) and our Ice Inquiry (e.g. provocation: after making connections to snow and how it's frozen water from the clouds). By running with your students' interests may mean that your day plans don't always pan out, but we encourage any educator teams to embrace each learning opportunity since it may lead you to an exciting, engaging, and thought-provoking outcome!

2. Assessment -- As a teaching team, we always have a mutual understanding and appreciation for each other's assessment strengths and weaknesses. With this understanding, we developed a "sharing" system whereby we will send our documentation notes, transcriptions, photos, videos, etc to each other and in the process, discuss what we observed, the learning that occurred, and areas of strength/need/next steps for our students. These files are stored on both of our computers so that when it comes time to report on our students' learning, they are easily accessible and used as a backbone for our conversations. 

3. It's ok to "let go" of control -- This is something that we have grown to appreciate together as a teaching team. As educators, we often feel the need to "know" what's planned for a particular day/time/period, etc. A "structured" environment provides comfort since we know what to expect throughout the day and from our students. However, inquiry-based learning has flipped this mentality around for us because sometimes the learning does not go according to "plan" and we have learned to adapt, react, and "roll with it." To our surprise, stamina and student engagement has improved, conversations have become more rich and robust, and the learning becomes more meaningful and student-centered. That being said, and as hard as it is to do, letting go of control does not mean letting go of routine/expectations/classroom management, etc, it just means shifting your mentality around how the learning occurs in your classroom. 

We hope this paints a clearer picture of how we have embraced Inquiry-based learning in our classroom. Please feel free to leave a message below and we would be happy to answer!