The start of a new school year always brings forth the feelings of excitement, new insights, ideas and possibilities! Designing our classroom environment into a learning space that embraces all of those feelings is something my wonderful DECE, Heidi Theis, and myself were looking to accomplish yet again as we embark on our second year together as a teaching team! This entire process is one that automatically builds in professional reflection, as we began to rethink, repeat, and remove particular elements within our classroom set-up. Even though the mountain of furniture piled together on newly waxed floors was intimidating during the last week of August, we always view the process of setting up our classroom environment as a way for setting the tone for our school year! We want our classroom to elicit the same feelings of excitement, new ideas, wonderings, and endless possibilities within our students, and for them to enter into our classroom each day eager and motivated to learn! 

The following pictures capture our learning environment as it was set-up for this 2013-2014 school year! 

Over the course of the first week, many exciting things emerged as our students began to feel comfortable and gained familiarity with the materials, learning spaces, and routines within our classroom. From rocket ships and swimming pools being built in our Building & Constructing Area to students recording what they see, think and wonder about the snails in our classroom, we have truly seen our classroom come to life now 

that are students are a part of it! 

 

We truly can't wait to see how our students continue to help make this learning environment their own and we look forward to sharing our journey with you! 

Thoughtful Connections to Summer Clouds

It's hard to believe that the summer is almost coming to an end. I had made myself a promise once school ended to take a break from blogging and focus on what has been quite a large "to-do" list full of personal, social and professional goals! I'm happy to say that I've accomplished a lot of what I had set out for myself this summer...but it's funny how new inspirations, ideas and conversations can add to all the incredible things that I still want to cover before summer concludes and school begins! Thankfully, a lot of these wonderful new ideas can be carried into the school year and it brings me much excitement since I know this year will be full of great things!

Photo taken by Chris Hale

I know I'm kind of "breaking" the promise to myself by blogging now (since there are still two weeks left before we're welcoming new smiling faces into our classrooms), but I couldn't help it! I wanted to share a few photographs that have been shared with me over the course of the summer that have truly shown me the power of sharing our journey!

In short, our Cloud Inquiry was certainly a highlight of our year last year (with many previous blog posts shared). The reason why I'm sharing these photographs is because I found it to be incredibly inspiring when colleagues that are part of my Professional Learning Network (PLN) on Twitter connected to our journey, felt inspired, and shared their own cloud discoveries with me!

 

Photos taken by Angie Harrison

 Photos taken by Chris Hale

 Photos taken by Shelley Walker

 As a way of signing off (for only a short amount of time), I wish everyone a wonderful, restful and relaxing final two weeks! As we begin to prep our classrooms for another year, remember, 

"The true strength in our classroom lies in the collaboration of learners, 

not in the knowledge of one expert" - Krissy Venosdale. 

A big thank you to Angie Harrison, Shelley Walker and Chris Hale who took the time to not only think of our team and journey, but capture and share such beautiful photographs of one of Mother Nature's many wonderments!

Our Cloud Gallery

This post highlights the celebration of our Cloud Inquiry as the school year came to a close and how our students helped transform our learning space into that of a Cloud Gallery! 

The inspiration for this idea of an Art Gallery came from when my wonderful grade partner, Melanie (@mela4education) and I had the lovely opportunity of visiting another amazing educator Robyn Ecclestone (@robynecclestone, http://tocreatered.wordpress.com) at Wendat Village P.S. in Stouffville. It was there where we were introduced to one of her fabulous grade partner's Hallie Montreuil (@my_wonderings). After discussing with Hallie how her class presented their various art pieces (e.g. drawings, paintings, etc) in the form of an Art Gallery, I immediately presented the idea to my DECE and we were sold! The exciting part of this process was taking the inspiration and making it our own to ensure that it was unique and meaningful for our students.

Considering our Cloud Inquiry was reaching new heights with the integration of various art techniques inspired by the Group of Seven, Heidi and I wasted no time in presenting the idea of an Art Gallery to our students! With the use of acrylics coupled with various painting techniques, our young artists truly embraced every ounce of learning that occurred throughout the process and we couldn't be more proud of all that they accomplished!

BEFORE THE OFFICIAL OPENING:
To recount the exciting preparation of events that took place over the course of the final two weeks of school, our students had a number of fabulous ideas:

1. Students created announcements that they read over the P.A. system to advertise and invite other classes in our school to come down and visit our Cloud Gallery.

2. Students created posters that were displayed around the school letting students, parents and staff know the title of our event, date, time and place!

3. Students created personalized tickets for their family members to attend the exciting event that were then sent home!

4. Students decorated Cloud Cookies to be given to parents on the day of our official Cloud Gallery opening! (Thanks to our good friend Joanne Babalis for the idea!)

5. Students fully embraced the role of an Artist as they explained to their family, friends and staff the techniques they learned and how they created their masterpieces!

DURING OUR CLOUD GALLERY:

On the day of our "official" Cloud Gallery opening, words cannot even begin to describe how proud Heidi and I were of our students and how truly humbled we were to have seen such an overwhelming amount of support from our parents! Their enthusiasm, participation, feedback and support was a true testament to parent engagement at its finest and we couldn't be happier! This event will be one that we'll always remember and look back fondly on as a true highlight in our careers (which have only just begun)!

Our model airplane to signify our connections to our Airplane Inquiry.

Paintings created by myself and Ms. Theis that helped inspire our students.

Official Cloud Gallery cards - every students' masterpiece was showcased.

The following are a list of events that took place during the "official" opening of our gallery:

1. Students and parents watched a surprise video that documented the entire process behind their masterpieces!

2. Students each had a special "Artist Station" that they led their parents too after the video that helped begin our interactive gallery approach. Each station contained the following: Cloud Cookies, "Ask an Artist" card, and official "Gallery Program" that included a list of the artists as a memory of the event.

3. Students, staff and parents contributed towards a collaborative cloud painting that will be hung in our classroom in memory of this event! (Thanks again to our good friend Joanne Babalis for the idea!)

4. When other classrooms visited throughout the afternoon, our artists became ambassadors and led their peers in a Scavenger Hunt (K-3) and an Artist Critique (4-8) around the room that incorporated elements of their masterpieces.

5. Parents, students, and staff also signed our Gallery Guest Book to act as a memory of this event!

The following pictures are of the incredible artwork created by our students and we hope you feel inspired by our young artists, their efforts and their undeniable talent!  

I apologize for the long post, but feel that in order to give our celebration justice, all of the above needed to be included. Thank you again to all of our wonderful parents who came out to this special occasion and we are thrilled to have ended the year on such high note! We hope you have a restful, relaxing and enjoyable summer and we look forward to seeing you in September!