Taking Risks Without Hesitation!

This post is a combination of unpublished posts regarding teacher and student relationship of unplanned learning. This post combines a learning journey for me as a teacher and as a learner with my students discovering so much more than just learning skills, it is building real life skills experiences for us together as creators and learners.

The first reflection is about the social entrepreneurship that we embarked on this year with the Grade 5 and 6 students.  This entrepreneurship program through The Learning Partnership Adventure has  been and still is a learning journey for me and my teaching partner Carolyn Brambles and our business  BMO partner Gordon Mills.

Since the last post Student Lead Innovations  students' experiences persevere from failing to moving forward, from  progressing to regressing with acceptance and pride. The engagement among teams goes beyond tears, laughter, disappointments, reorganisation, commitments, readjustments, ideas, creativity, making, recruitments, marketing and accounting experiences.

Once a week the Grade 5 and Grade 5/6 students gather as a large group to reflect on the progression of the enterprise and determining next steps. Sometimes students choose  to meet at recess to work on their products. The students' experiences have been very rewarding  in discovering unplanned rich experiences bubbling with problem solving, conversations, thinking, decision making, reflections and planning next steps. What an experience! It lead students to bond their creative ideas and to come up with innovations from the designing to the production, ordering, purchasing, the marketing and best of all the fundraising. This real entrepreneur experience embarked the students with the best lifetime learning that could never be taught if planned.

The final teams are: Lip balm Golden Glow makers from natural products,  Activities Book designers and publishers, Cards designers and makers, Paper Makers created from natural products, the tea makers, researchers and producers of dry herbs for Cups of Hope and the Pencil Case Devil designers. These experiences lead students to sewing, designing, creating, making products through a rich process. The students took full ownership of persevering and continuing to prove by reflecting and learning new steps to apply and build on experiences. The hands on experiences are definitely learning skills from imagining, designing, exploring, creating, trying, analyzing reexamining, reflecting to sharing with the community for fundraising.

As an educator this journey confirms that learning is chaos with rich experiences that embeds more than just concepts. Learning is an eruption of skills that builds new experiences in an environment of perseverance, communication, questioning, listening, conversations of  re-examining the how and the possibilities of reaching for success with a purpose.  It is an experience so realistically rich in effective partnership of a learning enterprise with a passion. of an engaging community. The students have developed characteristics that enhance the ability to analyze based on team based implementations with character developments of ownership and visioning. It continues to be a true adventure!




The students have reached more than curriculum concepts, real skills that they learn to nurture and gain for life. As a teacher it is very important to provide students with skills by having them experience,  reflect in order for them to become aware of these fundamental skills.

I am sharing some students' reflections,  if you take the time to read them you will hear students voices!




The students enjoy programming and coding. The school day is too short, we decided on an after school club for innovations to give opportunities for further experiences and implementations with coding. In January we decided to explore together this venture, by building robots using Makey Makey with Scratch. Our school Improvement Plan focuses on mental health, therefore the robots were to interact with the students and gain feedback about their emotions.  Alison Evans Adnani from http://makerjunior.com/  and her sons were able to join us few times for this expereince.

These unplanned experiences of self-building skills and self directedness of motivation and innovation has also flourished in a life long learning experience for the students. This platform of innovation started from building up conductive materials with the Makey Makey to robots that interact when buttons are pressed by the students for checking about their feelings.

The students for the first time presented the robots publicly at the Director Forum on Tuesday April 7th. They will be presenting to the school as well and they will be getting feedback from the students.

The following videos explain the process of building the robots and I the video of the robots at the Director Forum.

The students are always inspired with opportunities to learn. The Entrepreneurship and the robotic experiences have given students opportunities to be more than just creative, an opportunity for life beyond the classroom. We value creativity on a daily basis, this opportunity has been full of unexpected creative challenges for all by building on our ideas. It is a creativity on the teacher part as well as the student and the ability for us to communicate respectfully and grow. It is the ability of learning how to learn with a growth mind set to continue learning together,

Experiences of Significant Ideas

Engaging students with significant experiences during their learning requires that teachers direct students into real problem solving reasoning.  Students should be given the time to experience their curriculum and promote curiosity  into their daily local and global environment. The students need to be presented with opportunities to question and create curriculum real world extensions and fuel their passion to learning. The students become experts at orienting learning and begin extending the curriculum to everyday experiences.

 Grade 5 and Grade 6 students have inquired based on the science curriculum expectations about the human body and biodiversity. Both grades have integrated the arts with the science by explaining their learning through the arts. The students acted and drew about biodiversity and the human body. The post of Collage Of Learning refers to the integration of the arts with science and YouTube for visible Thinking  post,explains how students shared the facts about the science concepts and how they reflected on the drama by using video notes.

Pictures from an eportfolio about the visual art and the drama.

 Prior to unpacking the science expectations, students' thinking is provoked, as it is described at an older post, ,Propelling Curiosity. The Grade 6's were provoked through this video about bear siting in cities  and this biodiversity video.  The Grade 5 students had a chance to observe animal organs from the butcher shop and have discussions about the purpose and functions. A folder of some images of the organs 

During the inquiry process, I need to encourage more problem solving for the students by connecting real life and real experiences in relation to their environment.. Sure students discover for themselves what they don't know, I still think we need to push further on how and why they are learning and encourage further discussions about their surroundings.  The focus of this post is to provide further options for students to discover real issues on why these issues  matter in everyday life. 

The Grade 5 students applied their learning by listening to local events about the flu, vaccination and Ebola. The students also had discussions about healthy eating and how commercials lure us into the industrial food choices, by viewing commercials and reading articles. These images on the Padlets include videos, news broadcasts, and articles that mattered beyond facts. 

 The reason I am not embedding the Padlets is due to privacy of links from students' responses. 

Recently we heard the news about the Medi Robot comforting sick kids, CBC News Calgary, below is the French article that I shared with the students.

Gr 5 Ss relating to article about Robot & comforting Patients http://t.co/gfX87FZo3Y #ocsb pic.twitter.com/s0oGLl1uzQ

— Rola Tibshirani (@rolat) February 20, 2015

Grade 6 students have applied their learning on biodiversity by reaching into local issues that mattered like the effect of the daily applications of salt on the roads and solutions, the Ash Borer Tree  and how trees were cut in Ottawa and will not be replaced until 2017,  the siting of the Coyote in Ottawa and the effect of pesticides on gardening.  The students were able to connect to these issues that they have unpacked in relation to  the curriculum.

An audio example about the siting of the coyote

Video about the effect of salt.

As I am checking the next science curriculum and reflecting on how the new concept should matter in students' everyday life.and reach beyond facts, it is important to give students the chance to be critical at reasoning about their learning. 

Learning is beyond knowledge of facts, it is extending these facts to everyday life experiences. Effective critical thinking skills and collaborative skills need to be implemented through critical reasoning tasks for authentic ownership of learning. The students become  critical, creative, and reflective problem solvers . When promoting local and global issues critical thinking reasoning solidifies the foundation of raw materials that matter within everyday life and future learning.  As I am thinking ahead with the new concepts, how will I extend and bring passionate curiosities for what matters?

Couldn't agree more with this tweet from tonight!

Could not agree more with this statement RT @edlearner5: @gcouros TRUTH. Students don't want to do work that they feel holds no purpose.

— George Couros (@gcouros) February 23, 2015

Students Lead Innovations

Grade 5 and 6 students rolled up their sleeves today and took charge by presenting their ideas and concepts to the Griffins Den (teachers, a bank representative, vice-principal and principal). The students followed their heart and their passion convincing the Griffins Den by sharing their team's name and product for the social entrepreneurship. The students are taking part in The Learning Partnership Program Entrepreneurial Adventure.  @TLPCanada

My teaching partner Carolyn Brambles with our BMO business partner Gordon Mills, we have been mentoring and guiding students' innovations for a social justice entrepreneurship. The Grade 5 students venture will be fundraising for the Shepherds of Good Hope and the Grade 6 students' venture will be fundraising for Free The Children.

For four weeks the students have been developing their innovations around the SMART goal and making sure their concept is attainable, reasonable and realistic. After several meetings in teams and measuring their ideas to the SMART template, today was the day to present and convince the Den and their colleagues of their innovation.

This has been a significant journey as students unpacked many skills along the way. The students had to collaborate, be responsible, persevere, determine and reflect as a team in order to make their concepts real.

By defending their concept through many questions from the Den, students today unleashed the power of innovation:

• Being curious
• Being imaginative
• Initiated in meaningful conversations about their idea 
• Self-motivated
• Reinforcing positivity among each other
• Resilient to pursue the complexity of the concept.
• Collaborative thinkers
• Building on each others' ideas
• Having a vision and creativity
• Critical Thinkers
• Problem solvers
• Risk takers
• Having unique and genuine voices 
• Being reflective for opportunities of growth
• Self-directed learners
• Decision makers
• Being accountable

As educators how are we empowering students to be innovative and take their own actions in developing their skills? 

Below is the Storify of the day.

Thoughts on perseverance!

This year I wanted to take risks with the students by implementing tinkering and making. We have made the Scribble Bot (Blog) and now the automata by focusing on the learning skills and analyzing students choice of design to represent the main idea of the Grade 5 and 6 Social Studies.

 During the making process students are enthusiastic, persistent, engaged and articulate their creative thinking process. The positive mentality of perseverance and persistence depended on each others learning and thinking of the how and why of the function of the automata mechanics. Students stayed engaged and pursued learning together. Students became resourceful and imaginative in building a learning community valuing each others' thinking outcomes.

By taking risks with the students and developing our learning together, we gather resourceful thinking environments in which failing has a purpose for achieving.

Through many learning tasks students are engaged and motivated. Through the making with materials from scratch and designing, autonomy and ownership seem to prevail and be captured by a culture of cultivation by the students who are the makers, who are being meaningful and challenging their thinking with the making. The progression of thinking skills of self-regulation, problem solving. designing and retrying flow and flourish.

By observing and coaching through feedback, I made time for consolidations and reflections which provoked creative thinking skills that students unpacked allowing life long skills of getting through tough obstacles for creating.

The assessment is very rich since it is the actual process of making and documenting the learning. What counts is being able to analyze, pursue their own designing and naturally share, question and learn from each other. Students were constantly analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating, creating and recreating to achieve the automata function. The process is about the learning: How was the student thriving? Did the student have a sense of meaning in what he/she was doing? What role did they play in sharing? The students were thriving: by wondering, challenging their thinking and reflecting on the co-constructed criteria that explained the automata making process.

My learning thrived as well just as the students, I persevered the challenges of opening the maker education with my students. Like any tasks in class, reading, writing, blogging, Math, we need to give the opportunity for open discussions, inviting peer feedback, reflecting and transforming thinking for students to become resourceful, imaginative and creative.

My Self reflective questions during learning tasks:

How am I inviting the students to take risks?
How am I inviting curiosity?
How am I building a community for persistence and resourceful learning?

Evidence of the process: 

Padlet with the criteria and samples from Tinkering and Makers Ed sites:

Created with Padlet

Reflections

An audio reflection

Videos of explaining the process using Explain Everything App.

I would like to thank @maker_junior Alison Adnani for always inspiring me, for the Makerspace G+ Community and The Tinkering Studio Team for learning from them too, 

Coding For Success!

Anyone can do it and anybody can be successful at it!

Coding is creativity, collaboration, critical thinking and communication, it is valuable with interpersonal skills. I introduced coding on the first week of December to my students. I provoked the students' thinking by having each team link to an animation and play while seeing the inside. Students immediately figured out the how of coding. We began co-constructing a criteria and identifying the variety of coding for the script. On the classroom site I shared many coding articles informing parents about the importance of computing language. Once students knew about http://code.org/learn that same evening students were completing the Hour of Code certificate and exploring game designing and sharing them online on the classroom Padlet for coding.

In class immediate collaboration began, guiding each other through the how of coding and sharing new discoveries. Once the coding skills were established, it took students two days to become familiar with the computing language. Students began a project showing their learning about  Social Studies curriculum describing the causes and effects of interactions between European and First Nation for Grade 5 and for Grade 6 Canadian identity by various groups historical and contemporary communities.

Why was coding very successful?

• Peer programming, thinking together 
• Perseverance, resilience and persistence 
• Self- Confidence
• Problem solving
• Sharing thinking 
• Application of new knowledge
• Peer collaborating to improve results
• Explaining their reasoning
• Analyzing 
• Application of feedback
• Reflecting and improving their learning process
• Identifying and assessing ideas for creative application
• Deep discussions and decisions ensuring team strengths
• Collective responsibility for individual expertise 
• Expression of point of view allowing teams to move forward
• Encouraging each others' innovation

Essential skills were highlighted and practiced. Students were getting further ahead by restarting and rediscovering learning by overcoming any setbacks. They were problem solving and caring for each other.

I was activating and giving students the chance to build their self-confidence at learning and I was observing and asking students as they code about the how and what if of coding language. The engagement blossomed and shined and students became tech leaders at improving their thinking, It was a mindset of  learners and creators by unpacking a canvas of many skills.

An example of a certificate and Flappy bird Game

Through Our Learning Connections Fair my colleagues Patricia Fiorino who teaches Kindergarten and Natalie MacDonald who teaches Grade one also spoke about Kodable, Daisy Dinosaur and Scratch Junior. I am sharing the Scratch presentation that has links to the padlets for both classes and also students' reflections and explaining the coding. A group of students also created a site and an Incorporation  for others to try their games and leave feedback.  During the Hour Of Code week my students guided the Grade ones through an online coding Scratch animations.

Gr 1 @NatalieMacDona5 Gr 5 Ss @StGabeSchool #hourofcode guiding gr1 on @scratchteam #ocsb https://t.co/bDKWQYA0MK
— Rola Tibshirani (@rolat) December 11, 2014

Please share your learning from your students when they start coding and unpacking skills.  How successful will your students be at coding?

When students become passionate about History!

How will we ensure that learning goes beyond the classroom?

How do we ensure students get engaged in history?

How  do we ensure that the learning is rich and deep enough that every students finds passion of learning?

Strong provocations hook students to passionate learning and critical thinking. Capturing students passion through experiences that leads to interactions, questioning and discussions of historical events. We began our historical analyzation by Exploring the The Giant Floor Map of 1812 from The Canadian National Geographic.  In a previous post on unpacking what is history and Geography? Since early October up to now students are still referring to their experiences of the War of 182 and are familiar with the concept of events and timelines. Building knowledge of the first inhabitants in Canada and how they have arrived and adapted to the arrival of the Europeens.  From a living library with aboriginal artifacts to the Blanket exercise with my English partner Ms Brambles. Visiting the virtual museum and building individual passion by exploring aboriginal peoples needs. Now we are immersed in the learning of WWI through WW1 Kit form the War Museum. Students have gone home and independently continued searching and sharing their excitement about history through building of lego. iMovies, Powtoon, Google presentations. Students are excited about reading and synthesizing the historical aspects, causes, effects and perspectives. Students are applying their historical knowledge through conversations with respect to the facts from long ago that shaped our lives today.

The passion for learning is stretching students thinking and learning by slowing down to allow them ownership of explorations, discussions. Passion for learning is living the moment for quality rather than quantity of learning,  allowing the curiosity to flow and build a learning community of new concepts through many provocations and thinking skills.

All About Learning Experiences!

Yes I have not tackled the curriculum content yet!  I am still creating learning situations for students to unpack, why collaborate? How to collaborate? What is a task? What is thinking? and What is creating?

These learning experiences are life long skills that would embed in any content and any situations at school and outside school. They are skills and habits that students need to be immersed in and for themselves to develop react and reflect.

Yes of course there are moments that are chaotic, unexpected, as it should be! Teachers need to know the real meaning of scaffolding during all learning experiences, when to stop the whole class and react to the situation, reflect and readjust. These situations become the co-constructed expectations for building a community of risk takers, amplifying students' voices , students becoming accountable, reflectors and owners of learning from these experiences.

Many learning situations throughout the year are successful and unsuccessful, how are we taking the responsibility of owning the learning and reflecting?

During week two we consolidated on the criteria of collaboration. On a daily basis and even throughout the tasks we are determining individual goals on the collaborative criteria, stopping, reflecting and resetting goals. Last week post explains collaborative tasks.

The best moment was when students began discovering that learning is a community. In groups they were writing questions to promote french oral conversations about daily needs. Students come with a backpack of knowledge, we need to give them a chance to share it and learn from each other. In groups they shared their questions and already learned from each other the verbs, the format of questioning. I gave them time to share and add their new learning in their French notebooks.

Meaningful learning experiences are, when students are given opportunities to take ownership, reflect, share learning and apply it. A meaningful learning community is a community of respect for opinions, respect for sharing thinking, questioning, adapting when reflecting. 

This week we also explored what is creating and explaining based on last week's project on the scribble bot. Students' described what is creating, how to explain about the scribble bot and how to capture learning by using some tech tools. Lots of thinking, unpacking of learning that students will continue reflecting on, creating, explaining, sharing learning and skills on using tech tools. Lots ahead!

Some pictures of week two of students' experiences at learning.

What will be your students' learning experiences this coming week? We have lots ahead to revisit and reflect. I would love to hear about your experiences with your students!

Thank you for the feedback from last week's post and so exciting to have teachers try the sticky notes needs in class. As promised I will share our next steps. Students categorized the items and wrote questions about their needs since we are French language learners class. A group also took ownership of finding the cost of the items as we are learning to be a caring community . I had the students reflect on this video: 

With students' permission I am sharing a couple of projects on explaining:

Gr 5/6 students using Google presentation and iMovie to explain the Scribble Bot

A link to 30 hands about the Scribble Bot: 30 Hands Pro  Another video: Sharing learning

The What, Why And How Of Fun On The First Week!

Exciting faces and laughs are a reminder of how lucky we are to be teachers and be able to work with students who become our new family in our learning shelter. 

I find it important to build this community of family as soon as the new members step in with so many wonders about their new home. It is important to immediately make this new home a happy and comfortable environment, Yes even on day one! Letting them connect and feel the ownership, the belonging, making decisions, having all voices recognized, the inventors, the wonders, the responsible and the joy of being together and respecting each other.   

The only instruction that I shared with the students were, where to line up outside for coming and leaving to and from school and how to change classrooms from French to English. I let them discover their needs as the day developed and had them make their decisions on where, how, when of daily routines and with whom to sit. Students discovered cupboards, closets, dug through school bags and around the classroom labeling in French their classroom needs. There was laughter and team collaboration. We will continue this activity by adding on questions for our needs. Some even labelled me as a need and Liam labelled himself being important for his team. Why was it fun? because it was unusual! It was a different first day, it was them moving, deciding, gathering together! 

Met my students through crumpled papers guessing names and selfies shared on Padlet of what makes them happy. 

The goals of the week where to let students explore through tasks to unpack skills of collaboration and self-regulation. Giving them opportunities to learn from and with each other on the first week. To have them feel the sense of accountability and the need to explain their thinking in second language. The videos below capture our tasks.

 Audioboo was introduced to capture voices of collaboration, voices of joy, attempting and sometimes succeeding, as well as communicating in a second language. We co-constructed the criteria on collaboration and the actions required to improve the French language. 

Throughout the tasks I was scaffolding students' attention to become the observers of their actions and reflect on team work.

listen to ‘Equipe 3 JKPB’ on Audioboo


Questions to focus on while I continue to establish the happy and comfortable environment:

Have I established the purpose of  the classroom environment?
Have I established the connections between the students and me?
Have I incorporated risk taking and ownership?
Have I thought of fun and  realistic tasks?
How will I  downgrade my control and promote autonomy?

Twitter is also my learning classroom. I am sharing a couple of tweets that I came across Saturday morning that reflect my thinking.

“@pernilleripp: A great learning environment has room for all people to learn, including the teacher #satchat” #cdnedchat #ocsb
— Rola Tibshirani (@rolat) September 6, 2014

“@shaunyk: My visual notes from @shareski excellent keynote on planning for joy #gafesummit pic.twitter.com/nfzO1szGS8” #joy #cdnedchat
— Rola Tibshirani (@rolat) September 6, 2014

More Than Interactive Cardboard Boxes!

What do you get when you give students a chance to explore their own curiosity, plan for fundraising to make a change and science tinkering with electricity! Interactive arcade cardboard boxes for the whole school to participate and play for making a change.

I have shared a blog post about the curiosity blocks where students lead their own curiosities. Being involved with Free The Children, students decided to create arcade games during curiosity blocks and fund raise for building schools. Blog about Curiosity

This blog post  http://prendreactions.blogspot.ca/   by the Gr 6 students documents and explains all initiatives that they have organized For Free The Children. The students were also featured on Free The Children Blog about their creative fund raising. St-Gabriel-plays-change Free The Children

Students have already created the arcade games for the First Initiative for Play For Change . As a class we decided to keep the arcade boxes and turn them interactive to apply electricity (Science curriculum for Gr 6 students). We started with the fundamentals by exploring through several tasks at discovering what is static electricity and how is it applied in everyday life? What are circuits and how do switches activate circuits? What are the different kinds of switches? The overall expectations of the curriculum were unpacked by the students. Please see previous posts from this and last year explaining how students unpack the curriculum and set their learning. 

Students take ownership of learning when they are creating and producing. Through making students seize control of their thinking especially when they are reflecting during the process on what they have learned and how they have accomplished their creations. Classroom Blog on Electricity by Gr 6 students

As teachers we have to keep in mind that the work should be done by the students. We need to give students the chance to have a voice and control of their thinking, share learning, create, fail and learn from each other. These Interactions are about the assessment and the reflections that are part of the inquiry and thinking process. Through making, collaboration, problem solving and the sense of wondering are ignited which it reinforces skills to solve real problems.

This Padlet has some examples of students' creation on electricity:

Created with Padlet

Thinglink of the Play For Change video with added links on the videos explaining the process.

Propelling Curiosity!

 It is important to provoke students' learning for curriculum inquiries in many exciting and innovative ways. It could be artifacts, videos, current event news, objects, interviews, wordles, pictures and even from a story book.  As teachers we always have to bring reality into the the inquiry process to connect real life experiences into everyday learning.

There are multiple ways of  propelling curriculum curiosity in class and inviting students to spark and ignite in questions that they never seem wanting to stop learning, sharing and collaborating that conversations become an ongoing vehicle of exploring and developing ownership of learning.  It is so exciting to see students push each others thinking and learning by questioning, seeking, pursuing, confirming, convincing, comparing their ongoing development of thinking and reflecting in depth on their learning.

Of course along the way students co-construct criteria not only for the purpose of reading, writing and speaking, also for the learning skills. These foci of strategies that overlap and extend thinking as well as learning skills (responsibility, self-regulation, collaboration, independence, organization and initiative) that loop and promote metacognition and reflection on learning. Reflecting (at the end and the beginning of the day) on learning, is what drives our thinking throughout the process and determines next steps and learning goals. It is explained in this post on Metacognitive Discussions.

The focus of this post, is to share some examples that created opportunities for thinking and provoking curiosity leading students in ownership of learning.  During this process, I become a mentor, a listener, an observer and an activator while students developed their curiosities. Students' questions always lead the inquiry process. Provoking focuses on students' questions, which is a very important step in letting them engage and take leadership and ownership of the process. The process is carried on with categorizing of the the questions then comparing them to the overall expectations of the curriculum.

These questions are a routine in activating conversations:

1- What do think is going on? Background knowledge

2- What makes you think this? Students support background knowledge and share the how and the why of their knowledge before searching to confirm and proceed to new learning. It is very import to give students this opportunity of building on each other's background knowledge and engage in conversations to pursue thinking and inquiries.  I love this stage as it solidifies their dependence of learning from each other then it provokes more thinking and further questioning actions and new inquiries through discussions. This is a very important step to takeby encourage listening, speaking and respecting other opinions and knowledge for further clarification of concepts.

 3- What would you wonder about? (After their discussions). What new learning are you wondering about? Throughout the year students develop searching skills, annotation for reading and choose ways to share new learning.

It takes time to immerse students in skills by providing exciting learning opportunities.We spend time building skills at the beginning of the year which become the core for our success and reflecting on these actions during the process to improve accountability.

There is so Much to share I will post some and every year I keep focusing on getting better at capturing the process through blogging. Some of the process captured on the Classroom Blog by the students  We focus on French daily that typing the process in English lags a little.

I seek the subject related examples off the news and social media.  Some examples of Science and Social Studies for provoking curriculum inquiries:

Science

Astonishingly-lifelike-bionic-man--complete-synthetic-blood-organs--

Teen dies from seizures

Sniffing out disease: diabetes-alert dogs are on the rise

 Blog Post of Earth Day Activities

Gr 6 

calls-for-more-traps-as-black-bear-sightings-in-gta-on-the-rise-

Vimeo on Biodiversity

Ottawa's Great Forest  Before our walk to Beaver Pond

newfoundland-labrador/seal-product-ban-upheld-on-ethical-grounds-

canada/north/northerners-slam-wto-seal-products-decision-

Social Studies:
Gr 6
infographics-on-nelson-mandela  classroom Blog post about Mandela

snowden-docs-show-u-s-spied-during-G20-in-toronto-

it-wouldn-t-be-b-c-without-em-harper-jokes-about-vancouver-protesters

http://www.statsilk.com/maps/world-stats-open-data

If the-world-of-100 villages

-ottawa-canadiens-sotchi-mise-en-garde.

Nestle 'to act over child labour in cocoa industry' For Gr 5 on refugee and citizenship

Indian's exploited child cotton workers For Gr 5 on refugee and citizenship

etats-unis-malala-yousafzai-inspire- Gr 6 & 5

Created with Padlet

Gr 5
-confederation-line Ottawa’s world-class light rail

Justin-trudeau-removes-senators-from-liberal-caucus-

Comment organiser une cérémonie de citoyenneté

Created with Padlet

Created with Padlet

Created with Padlet

An example of students contribution after deconstructing the curriculum expectations:

Created with Padlet

Created with Padlet

Created with Padlet

Provoking learning does matter for curriculum inquiries. Students become so engaged with daily issues that themselves will continue searching and sharing realistic examples in everyday life experiences. What will you do to provoke your students curiosity this coming year? 

Why should students experience the real creation process?

Lat year my students enjoyed curiosity blocks and  I was to continue exploring this year and learn more about how students apply their skills to tasks of their own choice.  

This year with my English partner Carolyn Brambles and I decided to dedicate a block of 100 minutes a week not tied into the curriculum or teacher lead, only students lead curiosity of their choice on Fridays.

Students were in situations where they had to make decisions, problem solve and judge on what and how to create in any format, based on their own curiosity. The students and us struggled at the beginning into making sense of the process and how could this accountability becomes a reflective learning situation for all of us. 

Students ideas form the first curiosity camp. 

We used the same method as Educamp where students would write what they would like to learn, explore and what they could offer. We also provoked students' interest by watching Caine's arcade and Be more dog video- open to take risks. 

Through regular reflections the students and us improved.

First reflection form that lead to more understanding of the process. 

Who would think having students to decide to create was a large task!  We thought that students would tackle it easily. At the first camp, students could not make up their mind as to what they wanted to pursue as they were busy constantly checking what others were doing and changing their mind as they walked around the room.Once they decided what they would like to pursue and started formulating a plan monitoring the next steps and putting the plan into action, they started generating possibilities. They were formulating plans and the ideas were connecting and students were being strategic by conversing,reflecting and problem solving with each other.

The first attempts were not a failure rather a learning experience. By our third camp  the skills and strategies fell into place with their planning. Students pursued in accomplishing their desired task with a partner or individually. Students were experiencing many skills like; self regulation, creating, planning, conversing, reflecting, problem solving, integrating technology for researching as well as explaining or just recording the process online on a Google Doc or in a notebook. .

In the true sense of real learning experiences and full ownership of the learning process that they have explored and that they were immersed in.  Some students were programming games with Scratch , some students were playing and designing with Minecrat. Others were knitting, some designing origami and rainbow loom bracelets or key chains, headbands and animals. Some students were exploring Vietnamese style of painting as well. The amazing part of the whole block was the thinking and the reflective conversations during the tasks. 

Students among themselves were defining the importance of creation by proceeding with the skills and the strategies while completing the tasks of their creations.  

The second reflective form that students' completed focused on skills and strategies.


We need to give students a chance to experience and apply the skills and the strategies that they explore in class and be able to connect them to their choice of curiosity. Through this exploration students could create their own curriculum of their choice. You could call it genius hour or the 20% project like Google employee, giving students the freedom to pursue and be responsible for their curiosity with their own purpose of learning. How can we continue to spark students' passion?


Some  pictures and vine videos of their experiences.

Vine #1  Vine #2  Vine#3  Vine #4

Updated reflections after March Break: Students voices about the importance of skills to accomplish plans: So much learning from Students' reflections about giving them ownership of independent curiosity. 

Planning from the previous camps was important because then you will manage everything better.

J'ai appris que avant Curiosity Camp avoir un activite pour les autres peuvent apprendre. Ne pense pas que quelques va apporter un chose que tu veux d'apprendre, apporte ton activite.

I have learned that planning before Curiosity Camp helps with getting organized on the day of the camp, and it moves things along.

I think if you manage your time wisely, you can get ALOT more work done, so you wouldn't have to worry about it last minute.

I learned that if you manage time well then you will know when your game is great and you don't have to rush.

Organizing is important because you have things in right order and you know what'll happen next and what to DO next.

If your not organized you can't find your stuff that you need and everything is messy you need to be prepared. So then you know what to do.

I learned that taking/demonstrating initiative is important because that shows leadership.

By demonstrating initiative you can come up with great ideas and keep others on task. Also by taking initiative you and your team with feel like you got alot of work done.

i have learned that you should not change your goal even if it is hard try to do it.

That if you set goals you will achieve them and a good goal should be measurable. Goals need to have associated behaviors. There is a word for a goal without an associated behavior. It’s called a wish. For example I want to hold a handstand for 60 seconds. That is what I learned about goal setting.

I've learned that if you set a goal, you can achieve it by working hard and never giving up so you can reach the goal, you'll be happy at the end :)

Goal setting is so important during curiosity camp, and everywhere else because you won't know what you've accomplished unless you set a goal, and be proud when you accomplish it.

You have to be specific on what your goal is and you have to improve yourself to accomplish your goal.


I learned that if you have a plan it is easy to take initiative because you already know your goal and you don't need to be told what to do. Also if you take initiative then you can achieve your task.

Some vines of the Play4change Day

https://vine.co/v/MMAxUDALi1q

https://vine.co/v/MMAdurWiOqO

https://vine.co/v/MMAI2lVdzFg

https://vine.co/v/MMAFE0V2Z0W

https://vine.co/v/MMAVmL7n1tY

https://vine.co/v/MMqBdxmr7dV

https://vine.co/v/MMAxUDALi1q