We should never assume what students know!

Our school received the Giant map of 1812 from the Canadian Geography. These giant maps are perfect for students' inquiries on Canadian History, Geography and Science. If you have not ordered one visit The Canadian Geographic Site for the Giant floor Maps

Provoking (Previous post) is the most important step for inquiry especially relating to the current Canadian and world issues. The Franklin Expedition was on the news and we began our discussion on why is it important for Canada to spend money retrieving the expedition? Why did Stephen Harper show an interest in visiting the site?

I was presenting the social studies curriculum to the Gr 5/6 students to start our inquiry about the Canadian History and Geography. I told my students that history is all about asking questions.
I thought I would ask the first question what is History and Geography? It was so interesting to find out students' reaction in teams and brainstorming of the two concepts. History was a little easier as they had some knowledge and no idea about Geography!

Hold on! Before I proceed with the war of 1812 and unpacking the overall expectations of the Social Studies Curriculum., An unexpected great discussion was necessary that I assumed students knew!

I gave students time to explore posters from the Legion about Canadian participation in wars. I had just participated in the Army Run and shared my shirt that showed celebrating
100 years of WWI.  We revisited  the graph on what they knew about History and Geography and so many more ideas were provoked and added.

                       

By analyzing the meaning of history and geography and taking time at exploring these general concepts students have developed a meaning and interest at not only looking at the passed, also at reasons for our existence of where we are and provoked discussions and interest in exploring so much more of the changes, effects and how do we know what we know?

An unplanned discussion by listening to students is important. The extra time spent on this discussion engaged students' focus and perception of presumably simple knowledge to excitement and inquiry through the the curriculum that they will start this week. 

The map also provoked an understanding of historical events prior to 1812 for the G5 curriculum and historical Canadian identity and contributions for the Gr6.

It was a powerful, unexpected progression in which the students became completely aware about the reasons and impact of history and geography. I do not regret taking that extra time as it merged them into a meta-inquiry of why we learn history and geography. 

This made think do we always have to rush through the planned activity?  Do we have to rush from activity to activity? 

A short video of the Gr 5 historians and geographers on the map of 181.

The Padlet for provoking historical and geographical events. 

Created with Padlet

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

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

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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? 

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.