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Lab school reflection

I went with look fors, but felt more than saw what inspired me.  The school itself was quite cluttered and in disrepair compared to our beautiful new environment.  But our three grade six hosts showed us around a school that felt calm, safe and that they were proud to call their school.  Why?  What was the difference?  When the art, music or gym teachers came to their classes they would only take half of the group.  Leaving the other half in the classroom with the teacher with approx. 10 children.  I saw some behaviours but they didn't escalate.  Why, I presumed that with the lower numbers and the calmness of the class situations were dealt with easily and without much fuss.  I wanted that calm feeling!  I lost sleep over this, trying to figure out how in our large kindergarten classes could this calmness be achieved.  I am in the process of trying an idea out.  I spoke with our prep coverage teacher and with my teaching partner and asked if it was possible to split our class in half?  For the past two weeks when the children go to gym, music and drama we have been splitting up.  So far so good, I never have time in our large classroom with 12 to 14 children.  Just the logistics of more space and less bodies feels calmer.  I am able to observe and document more because of have less fires to put out.  I feel more engaged less like a referee :).

Drama in the Forest

I want to thank Tanya, for letting me help facilitate her drama lesson. I had a blast! The lesson was right up my ally, as it was in relation to identifying emotions. 
The students each picked a popsicle stick with a emotion written on it. The students were not to share the emotion they picked. Students then were put into pairs. Students could not tell their partner what emotion they had. Each group took turns acting out together their emotions in front of the class. The rest of the students had to guess what emotions were being acted out. 
It was a challenge for the students on stage as they had no clue what emotion their partner had. The students were able to come up with some very creative ways to act out their emotions. Some students used tools such as sticks and logs from the forest to assist with their performance.
-  It was great to see the students so engaged in the activity. It was also great to see students who normally have difficulties  participating in drama, taking part, interacting with peers and being so engaged with big smiles on their faces. 

-Tanya I cannot wait until next time!!!! Thank you for the great learning opportunity.😃☺☺☺☺

The Meandering Path

The journey continues.
The grade 3s were very busy planning their Indigenous communities. The excitement continued            
with students bringing in rope, wood, twigs, homemade games and more! It was amazing
momentum. Then it was March break. We couldn't build prior to the break so we decided to take one period to visit the space and determine which area of shared space would be ideal for creating the community. Students used our social studies resource to reflect and discuss which area is more like the studied communities. How will we build our homes? How will we demonstrate our understanding of how the land was used for food? How will we represent transportation?

"This is like the Anishinabek community because
they lived near the water to catch fish."

"This could be where we store our hunting tools" 

Although the dialogue was rich within the forest,  student behaviours to and from the forest were unsafe and silly. I returned feeling overwhelmed by firefighting (putting out student fires everywhere) and was frustrated.  It was great to have the week off so that I could reflect and rework this plan.

BACK AT IT...
I was so fortunate to attend a session at Brickworks the Friday before March break where I was able to experience multiple teaching strategies  (all in one day) to engage and motivate students. Guess what? They kinda work. LOL
Upon our return from March break, we had a class discussion of the importance of safety and each  community group committed to four goals of what they can do to promote a more safe experience.
We reviewed  expectations and went outside to work on our routines. Our goal was to improve our teamwork skills, attend to tasks and follow listening routines.  My fox feet, eagle eyes and deer ears were out and I integrated various activities:
Walking there- A line game of Hawk & Bunny (someone shared it with me-it worked)
A field game - Seeking shelter from predators in a Beaver Dam or Rabbit Den
Hawk & Mouse game
Nature Hunt
Hawk & Bunny on return back

                      

               We found this. Can we use it for our longhouse?  

What kind of animal poo is this? I think it is a dog.
No it isn't a dog's poo. 

             

                                  Mrs. Mott, this is scat paradise right here! 

Are these seeds? Can we take it inside? 

We came back, had a meditation and then reviewed how it went. How did it feel? It. Felt. Great.

I am struggling with a few things.
I can see the excitement and engagement of our learning outside. They cannot wait to jump in and keep building, collaborating and creating. At the same time I  am thinking of the idea 'never work harder than your students'. I feel I am working tirelessly at trying to keep them focused on the way to and from and throughout group or whole class discussions. It appears that they are so stimulated outside that they just don't want to stop, wait or engage if it means stopping their body. Unfortunately, it is not a free for all.
Did I jump in too fast? Do I continue to revamp lessons and stop and work on specific and necessary skills? At the same time, I realized that I need to acquire more skills to help support our learners for outdoor learning. The workshop at Brickworks came at a perfect time.

I am so happy that we have this knowledge in our building and I enthusiasticly look forward to continuing our learning with only slight trepidation. :)

First of many Nature Walks!

Our very first "Nurture Walk" was exhausting, in a good way!  We had sent out notification to our families that we would be going on Friday mornings for our Nature Walks, only to be cancelled in the event of thunder and lightening.  The children generally came dressed well for the weather with the exception of one student but boots were borrowed from another class.  Both Jeremy and I felt that we really wanted to lay a strong groundwork for our Nature Walks to be successful.  Whole group discussions with regards to what our Nature Walks would look like and sound like.  We went out in pairs on the cold damp Friday morning.  For an hour we walked the forest, for some of the time walking like a fox, seeing like an eagle and listening with deer ears!  Upon our return it was our hope to have introduce the knowledge building circle and to actually have one.  Time only allowed for a brief introduction of Jeremy's special hawk talking feather and a few children had the chance to share.  This week we will revisit our ideas of what our Nature Walks will look and sound like to make changes, adjustments to our original ideas.  We didn't stay in pairs and that was fine, we weren't always quiet like a fox, was that a problem?  We did collect lots of things, what are we going to do with the stuff?  When will we do stuff with our stuff?    So our goal this week, revisit last weeks ideas, have a kbc, teach children in small groups about sit spots and what we think their use will look like.
Learning is what happens when you are busy making other plans!

Team 114
Jeremy and Brenda

I made it online!

Hello Everyone,

Sorry for my late post.... I had thought that I was able to post and then had some troubles so a big thank you to Stan for helping me out with my tech issues!

It has been a little while since we spent the day learning together and  I feel as though I am still working through all of the great dialogue and topics raised throughout the day. I feel very lucky to be a part of this group and to have had the day to meet, discuss and learn with all of you!

So far, Jen and I have made plans to take part in "Walking Wednesdays" with our classes. Our classes have met together and discussed safety and how we can prepare for our adventures outside of the school. Huge thank you to Tanya for coming in and helping us learn how to be safe and what we can expect outside! Needless to say my class is VERY excited to go out and I am as well.... I've been meaning to get outside more all year and this was the perfect catalyst to take a leap and try something new with my learners. Stay tuned for pictures on my class twitter site (which is also a new endeavor that my class is taking part in!)

I've also been incorporating the idea that we should "never work harder than our learners".... and upon reflection I was definitely doing things that my class could easily do on their own. We've been trying our Knowledge Building Circles in class and it has gone fairly smoothly. Most learners have jumped at the chance to have their voice heard and they enjoy choosing who speaks next. As we are in Grade 1 we still sometimes struggle to stay on task and to listen respectfully to our peers. I'm hopeful that the more we use the KBC, the better we will get at it!

I'm always open to new ideas to help keep the attention of my sometimes "restless" learners who struggle to stay on task during group time on the carpet. Does anyone have any ideas? :)

I'm ON!

Hi Everyone, 

Took me a few tries to get on BUT I'm here and I've got it! Just spend the last little while looking through all the posts and before I say anything can I just say WE ROCK! I'm so excited to be apart of this team learning journey. After reading the posts I've become inspired with so many ideas. Jen - I love how you've labeled Wednesday as 'Walk Wednesday'. What a great way to have structure and routine mixed with flexible learning (learning that happens organically during 'Walk Wednesday'). I welcome the idea to have some of your students share their journals entries with my SK S. 

Since our large meeting my teaching partner and I have added different strategies into our program. One of the things we are working hard on is "not working harder than our students" After listening to Stan talk about this I stepped back and realized how capable young minds are. We have done this in simple ways - i.e. when there is a problem we simple support by saying, "I notice _ looks sad how are we going to problem solve this." I catch myself posing more questions and giving less information at the start. 

We continue with our Forest Friday adventures - although the last two Friday have been cold we have still gone out. We have changed our loose parts station to objects collected in the forest by our students. This makes it personal and gives a sense of empowerment because they have chosen it. 

Next, I'd like to focus on finding something that is a "problem" (real life problem within our community - learning locally) and determine as a whole how we can solve it.

We are continuing with our amaryllis investigation which will come to an end after March Break because its life cycle is over.. We've noticed a sense of "providing" with our student when they took care of, observed and researched our amaryllis. We've got some seeds from TomatoSphere (controlled seeds - from earth, and seeds that harvested on the international space station in July and August 2016). We plan to grow these inside and place them (the ones that survive) into the outside school garden. We also plan to place a birds nest (that I found) in the forest and have our students find it - our hope is that our students notice the garbage in the nest - the rest is up to our students. 

Caitlyn