The purpose of this blog is to make visible my professional inspirations, discoveries, and inquiries as well as our students as we work together along our learning journey. I hope that each post leaves you feeling inspired and intrigued by the capabilities of our youngest learners.
Throughout this school year, Heidi and I have had the fortunate opportunity to be
"Learning@School" teachers within our school board. By working with the York Region District School Board's Early Years Team, Learning@School teachers open up the doors to their classrooms and host scheduled visits whereby school administrators and teachers can have the opportunity to observe, review elements of classroom practice, discuss "flow of the day," witness various forms of technology in action, and make note of the classroom environment and how it's set up for learning.
Within these learning opportunities and through dialoguing with various teaching teams, Heidi and I came to the realization that a "take-away package" would be the best way for teachers to feel like we answered most/all of their questions. Considering most teachers are visual learners, we use this "take-away package" as a way to self-select the photographs we feel comfortable sharing of our classroom (since the walls of our class are often full of student photographs, names, etc) and provide our visitors with something they can refer back to upon planning, reflecting and sharing their journey with colleagues once they are back at their own schools.
Here are a few of the pages included in our "take-away package" and our hopes are that they can act as inspirational starting points for other teaching teams:
The following list of "Must-Have" items has been created based on our own personal preferences as a teaching team and by no means reflects any mandated Full Day Kindergarten requirements from the York Region District School Board.
To conclude this post, I just have to share a truly humbling email that I received this week from a teacher from Bayview Fairways P.S. who most recently visited our classroom with her teaching team. It is opportunities like this whereby we, as educators, can build capacity across our board, instil inspiration amongst us as professionals and continue to learn and collaborate!
Hi Jocelyn & Heidi,
Thank you for making that remarkable day happen, I have personally waited 2 years to see and experience this beautiful partnership in real life. Giving us ideas where we can start the process of putting decision and plan as a team into effect is the beginning of our team future learning journey. Thank you for answering our questions through your spectacular demo FDK class, I have learned so much from you guys as a real team. I look forward to learning more. Thank you again for sharing with us such a wonderful arranged marriage in real FDK environment. I am very grateful to get to know both of you.
Last Friday, we had the wonderful experience of visiting Toronto's new Ripley's Aquarium. As a teaching team, we thought this was the perfect opportunity to use a field trip experience to support and enhance our current inquiry into oceans since students would see firsthand, all of the ocean life they've been inquiring about over the past month and a half.
When planning for a field trip, Heidi and I truly believe that it has to either support, enhance and/or celebrate the learning going on in the classroom. In this sense, we do not plan field trips unless they are relevant to the learning going on.
What do you see?
With this mentality, we feel like the experiences thus far that have supported our class inquiries both this year and in previous years, (e.g. visiting Buttonville Airport to support our Airplane/Airport inquiry, visiting McMichael Art Gallery's Tree Exhibit to support our Tree Inquiry) have truly made for meaningful learning opportunities before, during and after each experience for our students and us as a teaching team.
Sea anemones, clownfish, puffer fish and more!
Students engaged in an Aquarium Scavenger Hunt using the riddles they
came up with in class as clues!
We hope you enjoy the captured photographs from our most recent trip to the aquarium and we look forward to sharing with you how this experience has pushed our thinking back in our classroom! Stay tuned!
"What kind of shark is this? It's not a great white because it's not as
big as a great white shark." - T.B.
"I see the sharks' gills and big teeth!" - E.S.
"The stingray has a long stinger and uses its flaps to swim in the
water. How come some are big and some are small?" - R.K.
The diver was not only giving away high 5's, but he was also feeding
the stingrays!
The jellyfish were most certainly the highlight of the trip!
"I see all the tentacles and I wonder how they change colour
and swim with no eyes?" - C.S.
"The starfish have their mouths underneath but they have no eyes.
I wonder how they stick on the glass?" - V.D.
Students even got to touch Horseshoe crabs and see what they feel like.
Do you see the sea horse? Do you see the pacific kelp?
"Inquiry...requires more than simply answering questions or getting a right answer. It espouses investigation, exploration, search, quest, research, pursuit, and study. It is enhanced by involvement with a community of learners, each learning from the other in social interaction."(Kuklthau, C.C., Maniotes, L.K., & Caspari, A.K. (2007). Guided inquiry: Learning in the 21st century. Westport, CT & London: Libraries Unlimited.)
The following quote sheds light on the importance for us as educators to make the process and understanding of our students' learning transparent and in doing so, honour their interests, their thinking and their wonderings in a way that builds conversation and celebrates new learning together.
Our Wonder Wall that showcases students' thinking.
Over the past month, our Identity and Map Inquiry has been put on "pause," as one student has ignited interest and wonderings around sharks and oceans. What stemmed from a simple conversation between this SK student (E.S.) and 8 of his peers around what they know about sharks, has now led to a whole class inquiry with multiple entry points!
M.D. uses a non-fiction book to record what he knows
about sharks and how they travel in small groups.
M.D. shares his thinking using sticky notes and recorded
transcriptions of his wonderings.
As a teaching team, we embraced this interest and created learning opportunities that helped our students dig deeper into the learning, pose questions and answer wonderments. Together, we purposefully planned investigations that would push students’ thinking and never wasted any time celebrating their findings in small groups and with the class.
Inquiry in our classroom allows for every student to bring ideas to the table. Inquiry has given us the opportunity as educators to utilize student motivation as a catalyst for learning and in doing so, have seen firsthand the power of being a facilitator in the learning and witnessing our student construct their own knowledge with our support.
Inquiry is not posing the question, “What do you want to learn today?” but rather “what tools do you think we will need to learn about...”. Inquiry puts us educators in the position of facilitators and students in the position of active investigators. Inquiry does not mean we stop “direct instruction,” but it does mean that that instruction itself becomes more meaningful to students interests and yet still targets areas of need.
This post will showcase some of our captured photographs and videos thus far to show how, as a teaching team, we have taken this student interest and facilitated learning opportunities to extend and support their thinking in a variety of ways. Similarly, we have honoured where students' interests are underneath the umbrella topic of "Oceans" and purposefully planned provocations and hands-on experiences within our classroom that allow for every student to feel like an active investigator in this exciting inquiry!
Moreover, Heidi and I have been cognizant about separating this learning as an "inquiry" and not a "thematic" exploration. In doing so, we have had the privilege of working collaboratively with our Learning@School colleagues (Angie Harrison, Carmela Sita, Heather Jelley...to name a few) to dig deeper into how this can be achieved and in doing so, have co-created a "BIG IDEA" that stems from the Full Day Kindergarten curriculum for this inquiry. Throughout our Ocean Inquiry, children are active investigators that can communicate their results and findings from individual and group investigations in diverse ways.
With this lens in mind, Heidi and I have worked hard thus far to ensure that we dig deeper with our students to develop an understanding of this Big Idea and as a result, we continue to embrace this student-led inquiry and celebrate their learning in new ways!All in all, inquiry has allowed us in our classroom to truly reach all of our learners and through differentiation, we have been able to create a community of learners whereby motivation and determination are at the forefront of our program and planning!
Stay tuned to find out how our visit to Ripley's Aquarium of Canada gives us a new lens to dig deeper in our learning and inquiry around oceans and ocean life!
Post coming soon!
For educators: The following Capacity Building Series article entitled, "Inquiry-Based Learning" is a great resource that helps unpack this exciting and engaging way of teaching and learning!
