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, 

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?

Are Learning Communities effective?

An overdue post since superb conferences like GAFE and  BIT14 as well as amazing learning opportunities from our board the New Pedagogies for Deep Learning (NPDL) to the Learning Connection core team and our planning for December 10th face to face sharing with many colleagues from across the board.

Those three weeks in November have impacted my learning by curating more to my thinking. These thinking skills have confirmed and encouraged to deepen my practice with colleagues and my students.

On Saturday morning on twitter I came across this very pertinent tweet:

“@shighley: Found it! Of course, @ScottCapro had tweeted it! #BFC530 pic.twitter.com/Xiuxs8VKmJ” very pertinent @tmmelb Saturday
— MV Teachers (@MVTeachers) November 28, 2014

So true, without collaboration our growth is limited! These learning opportunities are always a result of collaborating face to face with colleagues. They have been a vaccination of thinking opportunities that jolts us to persevere and persist in our adventure with our students.

On Friday, being part of Learning Connection team and unpacking the 6 C`s  by Michael Fullan New Pedagogies for Deep Learning with my colleagues, tasks focused on the competencies of deep learning, These collaborative thinking tasks got the best out of us by developing a culture of collaborative thinking just like we are expected in our classroom.

The focus is always on the process of thinking skills not just the tools. We further explored concepts of tools, ideas on getting started and ideas for the classroom.  This culture of  collaborative learning takes determination, a culture of `yes`to collaboration, powerful pedagogical influences and seeking support with each other and empowering us to connect these pathways to our students.

As we expect from us to be learning partners with our students the same takes place at these meetings. Karen allows us to be in partnership in learning from and with each other as she permits for team collaboration of unpacking the thinking skills as she also becomes a learner with and from us.

@OttCatholicSB #ocsb #lcocsb Great start fwith Deep learning pic.twitter.com/n8KBFVvvBs @kmcevoy50
— Rola Tibshirani (@rolat) November 29, 2014

These cultures of learning opportunities are permissions provided for us to allow us to take risks with our learning giving and taking back to our colleagues at school as well as our students where the transformational learning takes place.

7 ways to be grateful like a leader: http://t.co/ySseyJYo7L pic.twitter.com/rf9qYRv4RB
— Dan Rockwell (@Leadershipfreak) November 29, 2014

As learning leaders where are we on these daily leadership journeys? How are we being grateful to collaborate and share our learning?

Most innovation occurs because of teamwork and collaboration; building off of on another’s ideas; #drivingthefuture
— JackieGerstein Ed.D. (@jackiegerstein) November 30, 2014

My learning is surely influenced on a daily basis from my colleagues at school, at the board office and colleagues from all school boards in Ottawa, Ontario and my large learning staff room twitter.

We need to always keep a positive learning perseverance, take those risks and keep connected for more learning practices and accept that learning is messy!

What new learning will I be trying with my students? I guess I need to keep publishing more of my posts rather than keeping them in draft. I should spend more time sharing the risk taking process of learning with my students.

Google Drawing And Documenting Learning

We have used many tools for capturing the thinking process and documenting our learning, from Audio Boom , explain everything and other IOS apps as well as GAPPS. In this post, I chose to share documentation of learning through Google Drawing. The students have been applying Google Drawing for explaining their thinking and learning since September. The students document their learning process by uploading it on the eportofolios. We have used Google Drawing with Keizena, attaching a link for the criteria on the drawing, checking for comprehension of a text, and screencasting for evidence of applying feedback.

Google drawing with Keizena: Many layers of sharing and documenting.

1- By commenting, this student explained her favorite photo taken during the Terry Fox walk in September at Kanata's Beaver Pond.

2- The student added a link to the same image, explaining her 2 other photos about the Beaver Pond in relation to the same image. At the top of this image the student's initials LC and next the link. 

3-The link leads to  the Google Drawing that explains what is in common of the 3 photos.

4- Students also added their voices to the Google drawing and teacher's  feedback was also recorded.

Google Drawing and success criteria attached on the Drawing. 

A student explained First Nation People adaptation to the environment. When the title (Les Algonquins) is clicked  the  document of the success criteria that is attached will be viewed for feedback.  The students made a copy of the original document of the criteria, shared and attached it to the drawing.

Google Drawing and assessment for reading comprehension

The students  either labeled the events or ordered the boxes after reading a text for a comprehension self assessment. 

We were very fortunate to have the WW1 supply Line Kit from the War Museum. The students created a Google Drawing explaining their feelings about the war by using the strategy CSI ( Color, Symbol and image). One of our focuses was to improve the French grammar, after feedback from the teacher, the students recorded the evidence of the feedback by using the extension screencastify or snagit.

The following video was uploaded on student's YouTube account:

The video explaining how feedback was applied

Another video explaining how feedback was applied was uploaded on my YouTube account using my laptop as some students had difficulties connecting on the Chromebook with the extension.

Students connected  many skills when applying technology for documenting learning: 

•  Responsibility and ownership of learning for providing evidence of the co-constructed criteria of tasks and learning goals, 
•  The responsibility of planing, monitoring, assessing by peer, teacher and self-assessment,  promoting students' control of their own learning by being mindful, intentional and self-directed. 
• Relating skills to self -regulation of the metacognitive process by promoting problem solving, trying and retrying,  applying many strategies, clarification of expectations, reflective questioning for their own perspective of designing learning. 
• Collaboration for sharing, articulating their own learning .
• Organization plays a big part of this process as students document their learning and upload to their eportfolios.

We will continue building skills focusing on the learning process with many tools for metacognitive purpose and making learning visible by the students for their classmates, their parents and for a global audience. Some self-reflective questioning that guides me while planning are:

• Were the expectations clear?
• Did I set a positive environment of trying and retrying by consolidating with my students?
• Did I provide the time for learners questioning about the process?
• Did I ensure learners were motivated? (Provocation so important)
• Did I provide the resources for scaffolding and feedback?

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.

Connected Educators!

Last weekend I was privileged to attend the Ottawa GAFE summit.  It was an honor to meet with colleagues whom I already connect and learn with as well as meeting Canadian and international educators whom enhanced my technological skills and confirmed classroom learning process.

I recommend Kern Kelley, Jim Sill and Monica Martinez for international presenter on technology.  I attended Julie Millan's session on For, As, Of Learning: Using Google Apps to Integrate Assessment Practices to which I connected to her presentation and gave me the boost and excitement of confirming what I practice in class with my students before my presentation on  How GAPPS Support Thinking and Transparency of learning joined by Cathryn Wake for English Junior and Primary samples.

The reason I choose to only add links to my whole presentation is because I believe to only speak to real evidence of students' thinking. Most of the process that I spoke to, I have been developing for three years now and that I continue to enhance with my students and find a purpose for empowering students' reflection and giving them a chance to speak to their learning process and their thinking.

I also spoke to the" seeing and hearing" of the students' voice when collecting evidence of learning with students for their parents. I had a Google doc during the presentations that had links from the past years to the present showing 'the how' and 'the what' of students' voice and empowering growth through digital portfolios.

Thanks to Cathryn Wake for joining in and showing her application from last years' Grade four students and tempting Google with the Gr 1's. Thanks to Natalie MacDonald for sharing all of the Grade one digitable collaboration with Jennifer Flinn. Thanks also to all who attended and their feedback. Thanks to Jennifer King for staying after her presentation and her feedback while presenting.

I would also like to thank Karen McEvoy for inviting me to be part of Learning Connections and evolving through the years with the skills of learning and being a connected educator by sharing, exploring and reflecting with colleagues on my learning process through technology from my students.

On my twitter connection today I came across this tweet by Tom Whitby.It is true that as educators we need to have a mindset of learning, collaborating, reflecting to become a conceptual teacher focusing on the process of learning than the product of learning and using technology when appropriate for teaching and learning.

Connectedness for an educator must be a mindset for learning. w/o it, Tech is just a bunch of bells and whistles. @LynneOakvik #Edchat #ce14
— Tom Whitby (@tomwhitby) October 10, 2014