It Is About Time!

While running today and reflecting on my training,  I was also reflecting on my academic year and what I have achieved and would like to achieve.

It is about time to reflect on my learning before the next academic year. During the year my students and I share our learning experiences and reflections on twitter which is only 140 characters and I did not storify the tweets.  I appreciate bloggers who share their experiences that connect to my learning I have many posts not published due to timing, over reflecting and  I am not much of a writer!

  I feel I should share my learning journey from my students. As I go through many pictures and video files it is amazing how short and enjoyable the year has been and how much we have accomplished, learned and explored together. 

What do I remember about my year? 

• Giving students ownership of learning and experiencing learning as a process that involves skills and strategies.  Explaining Rock Formation     Explaining air properties      Ownership of learning     Explanation of sound with flour  Learning with my students

• Learning through real life experiences provoking their interest through news, issues in our community and globally, successes in our community and globally. Adam captured a video of our learning process about the effect of hockey lockout on the economy  Learning Experiences  http://gabrielvoices.blogspot.ca/   http://prendre-take-action.blogspot.ca/   Promotion of aboriginal culture   Ojibwe village minecraft    Gr 4 art on provinces inspired by Commendar Hadfield    Fotobablbe children in developing countries    Child labor   I am hoping to connect with more global projects and more French global classrooms.

• Students becoming advisers and learning from each other. Students as advisers

• The assessment process is the key to learning by involving students in daily reflections.  Our learning focus continued daily based on students' reflection on learning. A video eportfolio reflection using Google calenders

• Focusing on the assessment for and as: Feedback (self, peer, teacher), setting individual goals, co-constructed criteria based on learning tasks; tasks that students designed and shared the new learning with classmates.  Evidence on feedback     Evidence persuasive criteria French & text      Tellegami evidence on Science     Evidence on Art      Criteria and evidence of Ojibwe for Minecraft     Cultural evidence on Inuit minecraft   Evidence on science     Science Comparison  

•  Assessment of for report cards is transparent to the students as it is based on many criteria throughout the learning process applied to the achievement chart categories in  a rubric. The rubric was for report cards at the end of the learning process. Categories of Knowledge and Skills p. 17    Students managed eportfolios that housed their curiosities and learning process.   Gr 6 students eportfolios were linked under the classroom site. Gr 4 students used Google drawing for gathering evidence.  There were no grades throughout the learning process only grades were given for report cards.

Google Drawing eportfolio for Social Studies

• Building a collaborative and respectful culture of learning through risks and failures.  Scaffolding our learning in sharing through conversations, ideas, new learning that could also change my learning and listening to students' thinking. Images Respectful Learning culture    Team thinking Medieval Villlages

• Capturing their voices and scaffolding by sharing the thinking and reflecting on next steps.  Tellegami on next steps

• Many web tools and IOS apps capturing thinking, learning and enhancing our pedagogy for reflecting, sharing, publishing and capturing the learning process.  Our favourites: Skitch, audioboo, fotobabble, Showme, educreation, Picollage, sandbox, scribbles press,imovie, GarageBand.  all Google  Apps, Google extensions PicMonkey, Mural.ly,  Voice comment, youtube, edmodo, minecraft & twitter

• We base our ownership of learning tasks through curriculum curiosities which allows the students to deconstruct the curriculum overall expectations and categorize their questions in relation to the expectations. This year I introduced curiosity blocks on Fridays. The students loved it and something that I will continue with next year  Student's curiosity

Learning is a process that we have to embrace with our students. The process composes of many layers including; building a culture of collaboration, respect for listening, speaking and learning from each other, empathy locally and globally, ownership of learning, reflection is learning, supporting curiosities and freedom of exploring and sharing. Students' comfort with the use of technology is important  in order to capture their thinking and the learning process.  

I am looking forward to exploring more with students' thinking and continue with the focus on students taking ownership of learning. What would education look like if every classroom practiced the ownership of students' learning?