We are all educators!

On a Saturday morning with many events in Ottawa from the Race weekend to the arts and family events, our IT department gathered with many colleagues for an edcamp. The day was rich with many questions, applications, the how to, the why's and problem solving with differentiated application to all levels.

With a set up from an amazing team by our department and differentiating the needs for the participants. It was a landscape of exploration focusing on the process and how tools enhance students' thinking.

#ocsb #plocsb #edcampocsn lots of sessions across #GAPPS #documenting #learning #coding @BrendaWocsb pic.twitter.com/USau9VfpDQ

— Rola Tibshirani (@rolat) May 23, 2015

Learning along #ocsbedcamp #ocsb #plocsb @OCSBelementary @BrendaWocsb leveraging technology on Saturday morning pic.twitter.com/hjpXKc0OzU

— Rola Tibshirani (@rolat) May 23, 2015

 The inspiration started from the opening of the edcamp, that learning does not stop in June!  June is an opportunity for teachers to continue exploring and try tools to enhance students' thinking. Give students and teachers a chance to continue learning alongside each other, try new explorations with a purpose to be comfortable and set new learning to further apply in September.  It is also a time to continue taking risks alongside our students who are our coaches for feedback of evidence of learning.

The first session was on coding. An eager group who not only wanted to learn coding, also to be able to apply to students thinking supporting curriculum expectations. I was so excited to be among this group of teachers from middle school and high school who wanted to roll these ideas today with the students. We finished our discussion about the importance of tapping into the students and take their expertise with the coding process. To reach thinking and learning, teachers need to scaffold the reflections throughout the designing of coding and to have students share, reflect and build on each others learning.  A document was created and shared with links from online sources and connecting to communities in Ottawa. http://code.org/learn  http://code.org/learn
 http://www.smokelabs.net/  https://www.raspberrypi.org/

The second session so motivating with a large number of educators who had an interest in the Makerspace from a classroom to school wide. It is exciting to connect and share a vision of ideas and innovations. Many communities in Ottawa could be reached for support as well online from around the world. Thanks to Lisa Brennen for taking notes.

#ocsb #ocsbedcamp Rick Alexanderson #makered make sure to learn with ur Ss tools have reasons free 2 @BrendaWocsb pic.twitter.com/Q60z29fnvb

— Rola Tibshirani (@rolat) May 23, 2015

#ocsb #ocsbedcamp making with the Ss @BrendaWocsb #makered #onted pic.twitter.com/q9WB3lfTuV

— Rola Tibshirani (@rolat) May 23, 2015

At the last session a full room of educators interested in exploring documentation for learning. The group was separated in order to differentiate the exploration. The room was buzzing with so many questions, so much sharing and so many happy celebrations at solving ideas from all levels.

I shared an example on how I observe and document in Junior by using a Google form while students are at task and how I use the add on Save as a Doc to view responses from Google spreadsheet to a Google document. https://goo.gl/FrDcuu

Bill shared Hapara and accessibility for assessment, sharing GAPPS, viewing students' learning tasks and organizing folders.

Primary teachers explored how to upload videos and photos onto drive from the iPad. During the session with a small group  of primary teachers we explored using blogger for documentation.

All teachers had many ideas to share and reflect on with others. Even when the session was over teachers continued sharing in groups. With a team of teachers, I shared  Kaizena for feedback and documentation of learning https://kaizena.com/  for students' accountability.  Snagit from TechSmith https://goo.gl/RkWR40  and Screencastify https://goo.gl/su66JK for students' ownership of learning documenting and explaining their thinking.

A great learning opportunity took place yesterday with conversations of learning and for learning. It was hands on for learning and sharing. As educators for us to continue exploring and learning, it  will take a team of collaboration from colleagues and from our students.

 What will be your next learning adventure?

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? 

Metacognitive discussions on determining learning goals!

I am sharing the process of metacognitive learning by determining individual learning goals and classroom learning goals.  This process is the base of a valuable connective platform of reflective conversational classroom community encouraging thinking, communication in learning and being clear about what students have accomplished and what needs to be accomplished.

On a daily basis students are given opportunities to engage in reflections in their learning and determining their next steps. The individual goals are shared with their teams, this collaborative thinking promotes questioning, ownership of learning, clarification of any content misconceptions and students converse about their goal setting of inquiry learning and next steps. This process makes learning transparent and it solidifies the classroom as a learning culture based on what individuals have learned and will reach. 

Using one chrome book per team students share their daily documented learning on Google Calenders that is embedded in their sites. As mentioned in previous posts Google is our Learning Platform for all activities. 

This connection also takes place face to face and digitally by inviting their colleagues to reply on next steps during learning tasks. They embrace each others' learning by having students voice on how to meet goals and share learning skills and strategies.  This creates a nurturing social, transparent and intellectual culture of learners committed by caring about each other's learning. 

The following are samples of connective learning:

Teams gather to listen, react and learn about reflective learning goals. 

Student on site sharing her reflective learning.

Students' reflections on Google Calender

We have le "professeur du jour" determining our whole group goals.

Not all reflections are digital some students to choose to write them on a daily basis 

I wished I had Google glasses as I always miss capturing many rich students ownership moment. I might invest in a pair this summer! 

All this learning is also articulated in French not only they are reflecting on their learning that is written in French also enriching their oral French through conversations. Students take risks in a second language and respect all entry levels of learning. Through this process as parents and students admit not only they have learned skills, strategies and content from each other, it has also improved their oral and written French. Through rich conversations on goal setting students take full ownership of learning during their tasks.  I will soon be posting more examples of oral rich conversations learning tasks. 

 We need to provide students with these reflective opportunities online, in writing and  face to face to constantly expose perspective of learning through an engaging community.

Students' partnership in learning!

As teachers we all look for partnership to grow professionally with colleagues and connecting with professionals on social media. I have always appreciated many blogs and tweets that make me reflect on many pedagogical learning experiences.

As mentioned in several posts on voice, inquiry and the ownership of learning, all credits are given to students for their partnership in learning. I was reading Aviva Dunsinger's post on Celebrating Learning  addressing students showcasing their work and how students are amazing teachers when given the choice. In recognition of #AboutThekids and catching up to my reflective blogging this post is dedicated to my teachers of Grade 6 and Grade 5/6 who make me celebrate and reflect on a daily basis.

I am sharing an example that took place with the whole school where students were to lead learning. The reason I am sharing this learning activity  is to demonstrate that every opportunity in class or out of class should always be  reflected on with students, by focusing on learning skills and how learning skills are always applied to any situations.

Students had an opportunity for a day mentoring the primary students through Math activities organized by Mathletes.  As students were mentoring, I had them reflect on their experiences on the classroom Twitter account. I have gathered their responses and videos of the day on a padlet. I am unable to share the live link as the videos are of many students from all grades.

   

All students' reflective tweets during the Math stations are the exact reflections that makes a classroom a learning space. 

The tweets were about:

•  The importance of collaboration when teaching and learning
•   Positive feedback during activities
•  Motivating students by giving them a hint or a question to provoke their thinking.
•  Learning the Math content with the other students while teaching and explaining
•  Learning is fun when students are talking
•   Lots of fun when students were engaged with learning
•  Students listened and persevered when they were challenged
•  Students were accountable at completing their tasks and never gave up
•  Learning through games is motivating.

 Students' reflection mirrored what happens in the classroom and how important to always take advantage of all learning situations and reflect to improve learning skills. I enjoy watching students every year take full ownership and responsibility of learning and perseverance to inquire for learning and share their learning. Teachers who regularly visit my classroom or see my students in action at school or out of school wonder, how do we do it! It is about reflective learning on a daily basis by focusing on learning skills and actions taken to master tasks through skills.