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!  

"A Week in the Forest" ~ Inspiring Learning Outside

"It's a good thing to learn about nature in order to share this knowledge with children; it's even better if the adult and child learn about nature together. And it's a lot more fun." 

~ Richard Louv

This quote sums up beautifully the amazing experience and positive impact of the Ministry Pilot Project our class was fortunate enough to be a part of last week entitled "A Week in the Forest." This project was founded by Tanya Murray, an Outdoor Education Teacher and Specialist with Sibbald Point and Forest School Practitioner, with hopes that every child and educator alike could feel inspired to learn outside! Part 1 of the Pilot took place at Milliken Mills Public School in Markham and focused more on the urban school setting. Our school was Part 2 of the Pilot since our landscape was one that promoted a more rural environment and something we will now always call the "magical forest." 

Curious about Caterpillars

Here is a snapshot of some of our documentation about our most recent and exciting inquiry! This is a very exciting time because next week we will begin a Ministry Pilot Project called "A Week in the Forest" which will allow us to embrace the outdoors in our learning and we are excited to bring this inquiry into this wonderful opportunity! Stay tuned for more posts to come!

Lights, Camera, Action: Extending our Movie Theatre Inquiry beyond the walls of our classroom!

This blog post is long overdue but one that I'm excited to be sharing nonetheless! Our Movie Theatre Inquiry continues to be an engaging and exciting learning space in our classroom! Prior to our March Break, we had the incredible opportunity of visiting The Roxy Theatre; a historically restored movie theatre located in Uxbridge, Ontario.

Image from Google Images

The planning and purpose of this field trip was to support our students' understanding of what movie theatre's look like and what roles are needed, but also extend their learning beyond the surface to develop a deeper understanding around how they operate! Little did we know as an educator team, that the morning itself would be full of surprises!

What is a Superhero? What makes a Superhero special?

After taking a break from the blogging world for the past month or so, and in part of celebrating the new year, I wanted to finally showcase and share our documentation from our students' Superhero Inquiry (since it's been on my very long "To-Do" list for a while)! It was most definitely an inquiry that was fantastical in nature, however, it was so empowering for our students to take lead on answering each other's questions and wonderings and using their imagination to drive their thinking forward! 

This inquiry has tied in perfectly to our "What can you see? How can you help?" global inquiry project since our students made the connections to "heroes" in our community! Police officers and Fire Fighters were at the top of the list and it was incredibly meaningful since many of our students' family members are part of those professions! 

Moreover, as a teaching team, the Visual Arts was a perfect opportunity to celebrate their imaginative thinking by creatively designing their own Superheroes and describing the powers they uphold! We used Sharpies and water colour crayons to create these representations of each students' unique visions of themselves as a Superhero! We have selected a few products to show and celebrate with you!

Superhero rules:

Be Kind

Be Brave

Be Extraordinary

Be Strong

Be the best you can be!

"The rainbow trees get saved"

With much excitement brewing within the walls of our classroom over the past few weeks, this post will highlight a new path of our Rainbow Inquiry whereby our students' have taken us from a scientific exploration to one that is imaginative and taps into our students' creativity through oral language, authentic writing opportunities and through visual arts! 

I would like to dedicate this post to our students who have collaboratively co-planned, co-created, and co-constructed our class' very own...

RAINBOW TREE!

Moreover, I would also like to share the following story since it was created by our students as part of an interactive writing experience. We hope you enjoy reading and witnessing our rainbow tree come to life!

"The rainbow trees get saved"

Written by the students in Room 126

Once upon a time there was a rainbow tree. This tree lived in a rainbow forest (M.P). All of the trees were rainbow trees (D.K). 

One day, there were regular trees in the forest and somebody dropped fruit by accident. The fruit went inside the dirt and it went all the way to the rainbow forest. Then, the trees became all the rainbow colours through the roots. An apple became a red tree, orange became an orange tree, lemon became a yellow tree (T.B).

 Then, one tree got magical and it grew rainbow leaves (S.R). It had special powers and any tree that was brown, that magical tree made it rainbow (D.K). And then, it started raining! 

 The sun came out again and then a rainbow came out of the leaves and it went way up into the sky so everybody could see it (J.S-SK)! 

But then, one day, a guy came and chopped down three of the rainbow trees (E.S)! The magic disappeared and there were no more rainbows up in the sky (T.D)! 

The guy took those three rainbow trees with him (E.S) because he was trying to steal the magic (T.D)! Then, a bunny came and planted a magic carrot so that the rainbow trees can grow again (P.B) but it did not work (H.R)! 

One day, a group of Kindergarten students found out that these trees were missing so ... (Ms. Schmidt) they made their own rainbow tree! They painted it white first and then rainbow colours (E.Sk).

 The next day, they went to the rainbow forest (S.R) and they dug a hole and put the rainbow tree in the hole (T.D). 

All of a sudden, more rainbow trees started to grow (Z.P) and lots of rainbows appeared back in the sky (J.S-SK)! 

THE END