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.

Powerful Partnerships!

Today was a great day! This afternoon  teachers and principals were partners in learning.  It was an opportunity for teachers from Learning Connections to partner with their school principals and co-facilitate speed dating sessions about Apps /Tools for other principals. The session was organized and lead by Karen McEvoy an Educational Consultant at the board office who leads Learning Connections.

Jane Hill our principal at St.Gabriel School and myself lead a session about coding. The best part of the session was when I highlight how Mrs.Hill interacted and learned coding with and from the students.

The students sent Mrs. Hill a Christmas Greeting Scratch card. Of course Mrs.Hill replied back by sending a New Year greeting Scratch Card. The students were excited that they remixed the coding and added notes identifying Mrs Hill's next steps in coding (changing backgrounds, changing sprites...).

This slide had the examples of students cards and replies after speaking about coding apps and Scratch.

Scratch card #1

Reply #1

Scratch Card #2

This collaborative partnership of a principal  implementing new learning with and from the students, creates joy for the students and instigates valuable collaborative team learning.  Understanding by doing also applies for school leaders to value the change in students learning. What can you do to invite and interact the students with your principal?

An update from today's twitter!

Success includes the ability to establish and nurture relationships.
— Dan Rockwell (@Leadershipfreak) February 5, 2015

A Collage Of Learning!

Learning is a day of collage!  We always hear learning is messy what about an interactive messy collage of innovators with many ideas!

Earlier in the year I captured the learning by vlogging about our day and producing videos of the learning process. I get carried away now with students' process and giving feedback that I forget to capture the learning. 

 This post focuses on. how does learning roll out and how do students make learning last?

We start our day by looking at the daily reflections from the students eportfolios. Yesterday one of the students reflected on the step by step of how to create a photo slide show on youtube. Her reflection became the criteria of the day for the students who are using youtube to create a photo slide of the functions of the human systems.  The students also had a great question that we will pursue tomorrow. 

Students following Angelika's reflection as a criteria for creating the photo slide at completing the Gr5 Science about the human body.

 Some students are persevering with the art of an organ from the system and building a model of the system with plasticine.

Liam is preparing the prop for the drama to explain the urinary system.

I even captured a video of it!

Learning is always fun and lasting and there are always ways to have students invest in their activities.

How can we always create an interactive environment of connecting students experiences? How can we always grab student's' heart and minds for learning?  What will the collage of learning be like tomorrow?

Why are we doing this?

Today I was inspired by this tweet and had me reflect about students interactions from the classroom to real life connections andexperiences.

Why are we doing this? @DanielPink #TLDSBleads #edchat pic.twitter.com/3ihIPc4vFb
— David Sornberger (@davidsornberger) January 30, 2015

Gr 6 students are applying their learning from the Science curriculum about the human impact on biodiversity.

On Friday, after analyzing a French text about pesticides and its impact on plants, animals and humans, students were  able to apply the French and science context to a relevant experience about the use of salt in the winter. The students thinking was provoked by watching  Road Salt and its impact on the environment.  Today we also looked at the news on how the National Capital Commission report will not be replacing the diseased ash trees until 2018 .

The students also analyzed this video in French and made connections to the parks in their neighbourhoods and the Beaver Pond near the school.

Students curiosity lead them to the City of Ottawa bilingual site to further learn about the disease and its treatment. 

The tweet had me reflect on the importance of making learning relevant and how learning is important to the students. How can learning become relevant enabling students to think differently?

Why collaboration matters!

As I embark to be part of the  #28daysofwriting with Tom Barrett who has always been an inspiration for learning in my online learning Twitter community, my focus will be reflecting on pedagogical and daily inspirations from my students.

In class we always develop a positive approach for learning from each other. We reflect on our learning skills and determine our next steps. Last week I recorded short vines about students analyzing their science reading about "Les éléments nutritifs". The students, together analyzed a text for understanding in order to learn the importance of nutrients on the function of the human body (Gr 5 Science Curriculum) on healthy eating habits. Students shared their background knowledge on daily nutritions and referred to the Canada's Food Guide for further inquiry.

For reading students are provided with opportunities to analyze and think together rather than relying on the teacher or Google translate. It is a collaborative thinking  community, building on each others' knowledge, understanding, and strategies developed by the students . The students annotate the text while reading, highlighting Mots amis, inferencing unfamiliar words and connecting to their background knowledge.

The purpose of our collaborative community is to overcome challenges, learn together by giving everyone a voice and building on each others' learning. Students question, connect, share and build their confidence in learning a second language. Students persevere, take risks by caring and persist on finding meaning together.

With positive engagements of building confidence, students' accomplishments become team based, and collaborative skills become comfortable leading to conditions for thriving together. Students learn interdependence of decisions by ensuring each others strength and building new learning to the benefit of all.

This week students will follow up by reflecting on their skills when watching the video and sharing their point of view on healthy eating habits. We need to keep in mind by asking, what opportunities are we allowing for learners to learn form each other? How students can become their own self-directed learners?

Still learning!

How can I reach my students and the parents at the end of the process?

As we know learning is messy and assessment is the core of the process that loops backwards and forwards and develops the pedagogy and next steps of learning. Grit is something that you don't teach, students experience grit through rich tasks and giving them time to reflect on their learning skills by focusing on next steps. A reflection becomes an inspiration for learning through sharing and learning from each other. Therefore, reflections are the core of the learning process. It is the looping of the forward and the backward and bridging the learning. My students are asked to reflect on Google calendars and document their challenges and their new learning. I posted about the process last June. Reflection Post

After 4 years of monitoring and learning the reflective process with my students and its effect on their learning process, reflections have changed from a requirement to an inspiration for learning.  Reflections became the perseverance for the next steps in the learning community.

 Teachers in Ontario are responsible for providing grades at two reporting periods. The focus of the assessment is the process based on the overall expectations from the curriculum that the students unpack through many learning tasks. The process becomes a collection of evidence that have been reflected upon by the students with each other and with me, based on the co-constructed criteria and its details (mechanism) that determines the assessment of learning. This takes a long time! As it is not just a coverage it is unpacking the metacognition throughout the process giving time to reflect, to determine learning goals and to apply the feedback as well as allowing autonomy to flourish among the students and adapt to this process.

Documented feedback and applications of feedback are gathered through audios for oral evidence, screen capturing of online learning, written evidence, evidence of thinking through organizers and conversations in class. Learning is seamless with technology by connecting and providing evidence throughout the process. Learning is enjoyable, completed with perseverance based on clear expectations and interactions with the students and the teacher.

Communicating throughout the process is key to learning for the students and tracking the progression, where assessment becomes a community based on purposeful learning. There is always room for learning and improving with the assessment process and the evaluation. By honoring students roles and relationships at individual levels with their learning and building relationship with students to parents and to me, I have invited the parents to the evaluation. Parents and students should be able to comment on the evaluation. Last year's success motivated me to continue and  this year I am incorporating  the co-constructed criteria and audio for commenting on the skills by using keizena.

This post will focus on my own learning of sharing the evaluation with the parents. Students are responsible at home to unpack the steps and the process through the evidence based on the criteria on the eportfolio. I still have so much more to achieve in my learning and I will continue to share. This is how technology has allowed for the evaluation process to become seamless. I took a screen capture of it due to privacy and respect to the students than adding live links.

A picture of a comment from a student about her Social Studies Journey.

I am still learning and this is what is working for me at the moment. I am trying out many tools for documenting feedback. With Hapara the process has been much easier for me to track and for the students to take ownership as well.  I will still use my two days of professional  development to arrange learning fairs with the parents in my classroom. The students and I will be thinking about how it might look like . I will continue to share my learning and would love to hear about your learning too.

I continue to persevere and learn with my students about autonomy, assessment and documenting. I always think about: How am I communicating to the students the evaluation?  How am I and the students communicating about the assessment process and next steps? How am I speaking to the evidence? How students are taking autonomy of their learning and identifying their next steps? How can assessment and evaluation become a community?

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,