"We're Skyping with our friends from New York City! Look!" - A.C.

Since watching Ms. Callenbach's (@monicak206) Kindergarten class' digital book at the end of January, some of our students have been busy thinking about and writing down questions they would like our new friends to answer as a way of teaching us more about their school and community! In preparation for our New York City Skype session, we decided to revisit their "What Can You See?" book and review our connections, comments and wonderings! This opportunity allowed for rich dialogue amongst our class since they used their prior knowledge from the book to generate new wonderings! 

Just like when we skyped Ms. Gomez' class from Monterrey, Mexico, and Mrs. Harrison's class from Keswick, Ontario, our students came up with six questions that they wanted Ms. Callenbach's class to answer so that we could gain a deeper understanding of their school and where they live! 

Here is what we came up with:

1. How many friends do you have in your classroom?

2. What is a butcher shop?

3. How many trees do you have?

4. Why do you have ladders on your buildings?

5. Why is your fire hydrant black?

6. What is a boiler truck?

As students arrived last Tuesday morning, they could tell we would be skyping with our new Manhattan friends with how the room was set-up! Our morning announcements hadn't even begun and you could feel the excitement in our classroom rise! Once our Morning Meeting had finished, our selected speakers grabbed their interview clipboards and we made the "call" to our new friends!

Here is what we learned from Ms. Callenbach's class and their community:

1. We have 25 kids in our class! Our class is called K206!

2. A butcher shop is a shop where people cut meat. You can buy stuff like hamburgers, steaks, and stuff.

3. We have 2000 trees! (corrected by Ms. Callenbach) - We have very little trees around our schoolyard and very few with no leaves.

4. The ladders are fire escape ladders. Not all buildings have them but the older ones do. They are special ladders to use in case of a fire. They make it easy for the firemen to get into buildings and get out.

5. We don't know why we have black fire hydrants. In New York City there are lots of different coloured fire hydrants. Megan's dad is a firefighter so we will find out and ask him! 

6. A boiler truck is something that repairs stuff. A boiler in a building heats things up and makes buildings warm. 

Here are the questions Ms. Callenbach's class asked us about our classroom and community:

1. How did you make your "We can see" book?

- We went on a Nature Walk and took lots of pictures then we added our words. - S.M.

- Ms. Callenbach's class: We went on a Neighbourhood Walk and took pictures too! Our neighbourhood is very busy and loud.

2. What colour is your rug?

- It's rainbow colours and has lots of letters on it. It even has numbers and clouds. - E.S.

3. Does your school have an elevator?

- Yes! We can't go in it though. Only the pizza goes in it on Pizza Day. - L.D.

- Ms. Callenbach's class: We only have stairs in our school because our school building is old. 

4. Do you have a bathroom in your classroom?

 - Yes, we have one bathroom. It's big. - A.M. 

- Ms. Callenbach's class: We have one bathroom too but we have separate doors. One door is for girls and one is for boys.

5. We looked your school up on Google Earth! We saw so many houses and lots of green stuff. Do you have trees or a forest near your school?

- We have lots of trees and a park but we don't see a forest. That would be really cool! - J.S. (SK)

We also discovered that they have a "Nature Table" in their classroom to which our students made connections to our "Discovery Centre!" We learned that Ms. Callenbach's Nature Table had a lot of the same learning materials as our centre and they even have 2 GUINEA PIGS named Roxy and Zamboni! Our SK's got excited that they could share their connection from last year when we had 2 frogs in our classroom! We also learned that two students in Ms. Callenbach's class had the same names as two students in our class (J.S. and E.S.) - that brought on a lot of excitement! 

To conclude our Skype session, our new friends asked us if we would like to be pen pals and write letters back and forth to each other to help us learn more about each other's communities! Our class shouted "YES!" and we can't wait to read and learn more about their school and city! 

Our SK's have already been very busy crafting their letters on "special" paper to send to our Manhattan friends and are very excited to send them in the mail! We also added a new "school bus" to our world "What Can You See?" map in our classroom to help signify and illustrate all the places we've connected with over the course of this incredible project! We truly look forward to reconnecting with Ms. Callenbach's class again in the near future! Stay tuned for more updates! 

PicCollage and Daily Goals

I am very excited to be writing this post not only because it has been a while since I sat down and shared some of our classroom learning, but because it is a true celebration of some of the risk-taking my DECE and I have been doing in our classroom and we are thrilled to see the results!

Throughout this school year, we have been using technology to enhance our practice and programming but most importantly we've been experimenting with how it can truly push our students' thinking and learning. After being introduced to PicCollage by our friend and colleague Angie Harrison (@TechieAng), we have been finding new ways of embedding this incredible app into our classroom!

As the company description outlines, PicCollage lets you instantly arrange your photos into frames - or get creative with freeform collages, cutouts, filters, borders, stickers, and text. It's like photoshop with your fingers! That being said, I felt inspired to share some of how we've been using PicCollage on my blog with hopes to inspire others.

Since before the Holiday Break, my DECE and I have been chatting about ways we can use technology to support student reflection, sharing of ongoing learning, and act as a medium for celebrating our successes. After seeing examples of how PicCollage could be used on Angie's blog (http://techieang.edublogs.org) as a way of documenting learning, showcasing problem-solving, and illustrating observations and recordings, I was instantly inspired!

To begin, we decided to create something called a "Learning Collage." This collage is created using pictures (approximately 5) that have been used to document a day's learning and embeds simple sentences to describe each learning moment.

Once put together, we showcase our Learning Collage the following morning by hooking our iPad up to our SmartBoard. We use this framework as a way to build dialogue during our Morning Meetings and it gives students a chance to think back to the previous day's learning, make connections, ask questions and give compliments.

Using different strategies like "Talking Partners," "Think-Pair-Shares," and independent think time, our students have blown us away with how they're able to articulate what they see, think, and wonder based on the images shown on our learning collage! Once we share our thinking back as a whole group, we turn to our "Daily Goals" for the day. We decided to use "2 Stars and a Wish" as a framework for our goal-setting since this strategy allows us to give ourselves two stars for yesterday's learning based on what our students think is worth celebrating, highlighting, or something we're proud of (e.g. "We did a good job drawing pictures and writing our words"), and one wish to pursue for the day (e.g. "We can use a book to learn more about ice") - something we would like to continue investigating, learning more about, explore and/or practice.

At first, we used this strategy as an opportunity to model how to give compliments, think-aloud about our classroom environment and make a plan for the day. For example, we used "stars" like, "We can share our materials" and "We can clean up our classroom when we're finished" to reinforce classroom expectations and to have students recognize them in pictures. This eventually evolved as students began to creatively come up with many goals that have inspired new learning to happen within the walls of our classroom. Here are a few examples of some of the daily goals that have come out of our Learning Collages and morning reflection:

We did a good job writing words.

We did a good job using the scrapers to make art. 

We can make a plan using a picture and words.

We liked how we measured our towers using blocks.

We worked hard on making different patterns.

We can make a pattern for a friend.

Furthermore, our students have used our Learning Collages as a springboard for learning by looking to their peers as a form of inspiration! We have noticed them approaching each other to ask questions, practice learned skills and challenge themselves by trying something new that they saw on the Learning Collage from the morning.

Witnessing their independence, self-regulation, and pride in their learning has been more than we had hoped for when we first started this idea! To top it off, we used our students' interest and engagement with the app to introduce "PicCollage Teachers" within our classroom. After exploring the app with a small group, three SK's have taken on quite the leadership role within our classroom and have been teaching their peers how to use the app in order to create their very own Learning Collages! Safe to say, this idea has gone above and beyond what we had anticipated and we couldn't be happier! Our students are able to utilize this technology by documenting the learning of their peers, talking to them about what they are doing, and using such a user-friendly app to record their thoughts in simple sentences.

We are thrilled that our professional planning and exploration has reached new heights within our classroom and we truly look forward to seeing where it takes us next! We welcome any comments, questions or suggestions so feel free to leave me a note below! Here's to new adventures and happy learning!

Feel free to visit PicCollage's website to learn more: http://pic-collage.com
You can also follow them on twitter: @PicCollage

Part 7: "What Can You See?" and China!

As part of this amazing project, we have been encouraging our families to bring in pictures or create their own "What Can You See?" books to share with our classroom and other participants! We have been overwhelmed with such a positive response (comments, questions, connections, family vacation photos, etc) because this is actually where we hoped this project would go!

One of our student's (A.C.) has made connections to her own culture in China and with her parents, they contacted their family overseas to see if they would be interested in sending us pictures from her cousin's school!

We are so excited to be sharing this incredible addition to the "What Can You See?" project! We thank A.C. and her family for collecting these wonderful photographs and for letting us put them together into a digital book to share with all of you!

This video has generated lots of discussion in our classroom and has certainly made A.C. very proud of where she comes from, her family, and her ability to teach us new things about her culture at school! She has recently been teaching all of us Chinese, Chinese writing and how to count!

We continue to encourage our families to participate in this wonderful learning opportunity by commenting, asking questions, making connections or by creating their very own "What Can You See?" book with your child! We look forward to sharing more of this journey with you as it unfolds!

www.wecanseesharingspace.blogspot.com