Voices...Ownership... reflections...

I was very fortunate to be able to take part in 1:1 International Computing Conference in Atalanta Dec 2nd &3rd. international11computingcon2013  (please visit conference schedule for presentations).  I would like to thank the Canadian Educational Association  http://www.cea-ace.ca/ an amazing team who speaks to learning and thinking for accepting my proposal to take part in the conference. I am proud to have had this opportunity to meet many educators from around the world who put students voice and thinking first.

Jane Hill my principal at St. Gabriel School also presented with me. She set the tone as how principals need to trust their teachers and support their learning and students' learning.  Every student,

• should feel he or she belongs, feel safe, be a valuable contributor and have the opportunity to succeed

1-Yes students need to own their learning as teachers, we need to step back and have a classroom without a front podium.
2-Students need take risks, have clear expectations that they have deconstructed from the curriculum. Students need to  have a purpose for learning with rich tasks that allows  ownership of learning.
3- Many tools could amplify students' thinking like Google Apps, IOS Apps. Teacher need to weave these tools with a purpose for thinking and for students to speak to their thinking. (metacognition)
4- Learning is visible though consolidations and pausing for reflections in order for students to learn from each others and  build a community of trust and ownership.

I am also fortunate to have a large PLN online support through twitter from educators who I have also  learned and reflected from their experiences. @shareski @KristinZiemke @gcouros @KleinErin @permillripp @HeidiSiwak @soxnevad @kathyschrock @tombarrett  and so many more including all Learning Connection Team from Ontario my colleagues at school and at the board office who listen and appreciate students' thinking.  I would also like to thank my colleagues from the board office who invite me for many opportunities and ministry initiatives projects throughout Ontario. I owe my learning to my students who engage me in thinking and learning from them. My students who open up their hearts and minds to learning and enjoy our time together in the classroom. I am trying to keep up to my professional reflections, and time is speeding and hoping to catch up. I am focusing on the classroom blog on a weekly and sometimes daily basis than daily tweets this year. The blog is by the students, their voices on learning and how we learned.  http://ensemble-together.blogspot.ca/

My thinking that I shared at 1:1 computing conference I will share on the blog.  My learning is like a working document that requires updating and enhancing on a regular basis. Today I am following many colleagues in Montreal at #gafesummit who are confirming my experiences in the classroom. The presentation is a summary of my learning with my students. 

International11computingcon2013 

What amazes me is when you invite students to interact they do take ownership in planing, decision making and even voicing in class "I love school"!

Examples of students communicating and planning. Google presentations are attached to the classroom calender that becomes part of the daily plans. 

Comments on the presentation become reflections to our daily plans. 

Students also reflect on a daily basis what I have learned and I have accomplished and what to improve on. 

I continue to explore and learn on a daily basis and I almost wish I had Google Glasses to capture all my learning. I need to take notes as I observe my learning from my students and update my blog. Thank you to all colleagues and educators who share their learning online. 

Teacher collaboration project – Math journals

I have written briefly about one of the teacher collaboration inquiries that has been going on in our three schools.  In this post, the teachers have written an explanation of their work so far.  I am hoping that more of our teacher groups will do the same so we can post their work on this blog.

These rest of this entry is written by Teresa Zappavigna, one of the teacher triad members.

Our Triad team came together in early October to determine an area of focus for our students in our junior grades.  After examining EQAO scores, last year’s records, and our personal running records to date, our next steps became quite evident.  The attitude toward math and in particular, problem solving, needed to be addressed. Many times, students have the skills, but are thrown by the math language.  Students needed to find a tool to help students break down math  problems (scaffold their thinking) in order to understand:  “What do I know?”; “What do I need to know?”;  and “How can I help solve the problem/ What strategies can I use?”. A tool was introduced by our partners from St. Daniel’s.  They were in the process of working on interactive Math journals which help guide a student’s problem- solving process and encourages them to demonstrate their understanding of new math concepts in a personal and creative way (through re-enactment, art, poetry, music, crossword puzzles, etc.,).  Our intention is that if we explicitly teach problem solving strategies and provide opportunities for students to prove, explain and reflect on their learning in Math journals, then students will have more success in explaining their thinking while problem solving.  By allowing students the opportunity to express themselves creatively (be it literacy, numeracy, arts, verbal, kinesthetic, tactile,) we hope to make math fun for students who shy away from math.

We are still in the process of developing a routine using these journals with our students.  Our observations so far have been positive.  Students have been eager to share their rap songs, cartoons etc with the class and are often asking the teachers if we will be working on our “journals today”.  The atmosphere is changing and we hope to continue these “brag books” as a tool to help students develop efficient problem solving strategies.

Video of a student conference…Please watch both (one is the continuation of the other) In this video, teachers can see the importance of conferencing with students on their journals, EVEN if the student puts a GREEN traffic light on the activity. He or she might not fully understand the concept. The example is a student working on Place Value activities.

samples and photos from the teacher inquiry

Sample of a grade 4 journal – this is a collaborative project in grades 4, 5, and 6 being carried out in three schools

Image Posted on November 21, 2013

Making it real – oral language in French class

This is the first Triad (St. Gregory, St. Daniel, St. Monica) whose work is being featured on this blog.  I sat with them last week as they established their baseline for their inquiry.  The group has already recorded a good deal of student work to act as their baseline.  They do have plans to continue to share work using different forms of social media including Skype.

The oral component is always a priority in second language teaching.  Our goal is to make it authentic and usable in the real world (e.g. salutations, good manners, every day basic vocabulary).If students are engaged in authentic conversations in the class and are taught the necessary vocabulary, then they will feel comfortable and be able to converse amongst themselves in the classroom.  This activity is very rich because it brings language arts components to real life situations.

The FSL Triad met on Friday to discuss our Baseline results. Our junior kids were paired up and they asked each other questions EN FRANCAIS about their family.  Some teachers gave them “sentence starters” such as Quand (When…) Qui (who…) Ou (Where…) Est-ce que (Does…) others chose not to.  We noticed some were easier to use than others.  For our mid-line, we will interview another class in the same school (e.g. Jennifer Kealey’s class will meet with Caroline Ghaffari’s class). And our final activity will be to SKYPE with a class from another school.  The question will vary a bit – we will ask “what does your family do at Christmas”.

The students will converse with a partner and ask one another questions about his/her family. For our midline assessment, the students will have the same conversation but with a student from another class in our school. For our final assessment, the students will have the same conversation but with a student from another class in one of our triad schools, through Skype. Results will be examined to see whether the students are more comfortable speaking and if they are using more complex vocabulary and sentence structures.

Paul McGuire

Safe Place: Record your Kinder Parens

In our classroom we practice, conscious discipline which is a self-regulating program that integrates social-emotional learning and discipline.  According to Dr. Bailey, ”Discipline in not something you do to children.  It is something you develop within them.”  

Through the Shubert’s books, the students are learning that our safe place is a corner where they can go to change the inner state of mind from upset to calm or sad to happy in order to maximize learning.  The children are learning to identify their feelings and choose helpful strategies to calm their bodies.  There are different breathing techniques that they are learning to use, for example they can do the pretzel, the drain, the balloon… Also, the students are learning to identify their emotions and choose to self regulate their behaviour (e.g., I am angry that you don’t want to share with me, instead of hitting you, I am going to go take 5 deep breath, relax and then talk about it to find a solution).  When the students go to the safe place, there is a “calm you body bin” where there are different sensory objects to help them relax.  We have squishy balls for touch; a motion wand for sight; aromatherapy scent bottles for smell; and a recording of an I love you message from parents for sound.  

When, I tweeted in September that I was planning on recording my parents at my Kindergarten meeting saying an "I love you message" with the iPad. Then QR code, print it and insert it in a scrapbook for our safe place. I got many retweets and questions regarding how I did this.   Well, it was very easy and one of the best things I've done this year. Here is what I did:

First, during Kindergarten interviews in September, I recorded the parents in their first language saying an I love you message to their child.  I used the app called Fotobabble to snap a picture of the parents and then the parents recorded their special message for their child.  The parents were thrilled to be able to do this for their child. Some parents had tears in their eyes and all their messages were unique and special.  Some even said: "I wish my parents could of done this for me when I went to Kindergarten! Technology is amazing!"  Next, I used the QR code generator extension in Chrome to QR the Fotobabble link. I printed it and the students had fun making our family scrapbook.  Each student brought in family pictures, drew pictures and glued the QR code on their page in our scrapbook.  Then, the scrapbook was placed in our safe place. When the students were sad or when they were missing their parents, they went to the safe place, scanned the QR code with the i-nigma app and listened to their parents. When the students heard their parents message, they felt better right away. It was so comforting for them to hear their parents voices! It was great to see the children's eye brighten up as they heard and saw their parents. It made them feel instantly better. The scrapbook continues to be in our safe place and is readily available to the students! 

Google Forms at Learning connection

Teddy created a blog for the session in order to guide OCSB teachers through the process of Google forms and calender. Blogging as a platform for engaging and collaborating during a session.

http://lcocsb.blogspot.ca/

Why spend time learning to collaborate?

This is the updated post on my professional blog on collaboration. I credit my learning to my students and all colleagues and the professional learning community on twitter from around the world.
This is the updated post: http://learninginprogess.blogspot.ca/

I will soon be sending the OCSB Learning Community a reminder about posting and connecting on Google+ for a sharing session.

Thank you to colleagues who continue to contribute and update our blog on our learning from our classrooms.

GRA/dropittome

This year, my class is participating in the Global Read Aloud Project. We are studying the author Eric Carle.  Our first book was The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Last week, we had a great opportunity to video chat with two different classes from the USA via Skype. Mrs. Jones Grade 6 students read us the book in a creative way and lead a discussion.  We loved the props they used! Mrs. Andrew's Kindergartens taught us the cycle of a butterfly.  We loved their drawings! In addition, my Kindergarten students, used the app Draw and Tell app to create their own representation of a butterfly.  Each student recorded his/her name, where in the world he/she lived and shared something about his/her butterfly.  My students work will be part of a collaborate iMovie video with 3 other classes: Mrs. Lirenman's grade 1's from Vancouver, Mrs. Sargent PK-1st from Massachusetts and Mrs. Goold Kindergartens from California.  This was a lot of fun!

Ms. Lirenman taught me a cool way to share my student's work created on an iPad with her, who is far away. And I was able to do all of this all with my iPad! It's called dropitome! First, I saved the students work on my camera roll. Next, I opened Safari and typed in the http://dropitto.me/  address that Ms. Lireman created and shared with me. I typed in the password, uploaded the file (student work) that I wanted to share with her and hit send! That's it! It was very easy to share my students work with my global read aloud partner.  Thank you to Ms. Lirenman for teaching me how to do this. I've already shared it with some colleagues and they also think it's pretty cool too!