Beverly Papove Constant Learning, Inquiry, Outdoor Learning, self reflection

Stewardship/Sustainability in SK

With our winter inquiry coming to an end, the biggest challenge in my mind was how to facilitate the opportunity for my senior kindergarten students to use what they have learned so that they can become valuable stewards of the planet.

To provoke an understanding of the need to care for and respect the environment which related to our winter inquiry and hoping the students would automatically spring into action, I wrote a note from the creatures the students have observed living in and around our schoolyard. In the note, the creatures complain that the snow is so dirty, that it is making them sick: “Chers Amis, Our homes are not healthy any more! When the snow melts, the water we need to live is making us sick. Many of our friends have already left to find a cleaner place to live. We don’t want to leave! Can you help us? Signed, your friends – Earthworm, Chickadee, Rabbit, Crow and Cardinal. I folded the note and tucked it into a space between the bark and trunk of one of our maple trees growing along the fence in the schoolyard.

During the morning Outdoor Learning period, we started off the lesson with a turn and talk activity to review some of the things we learned about What Happens in Winter. Information flowed as the students chatted with their peers. When they had finished, I gave them the challenge of looking for and finding evidence of living things in the schoolyard. I was beginning to wonder if anyone would find the note, when finally, a group of students came running back, all talking loudly at once about something they had found in a tree.

I gathered the students together and read the note aloud to them, ending it with the question, “What do you think?”  They turned and talked with their neighbours excitedly. “Rabbits can’t write!”  “Yes they can.” And about the message of the snow being unclean; “It’s true! There is sand in the snow. I can see it.”  “Snow looks clean but it’s actually really dirty.” Others mentioned the microbes and the dirt from cars as well as the dogs that dirty the ground. So I asked, “Can we drink the water if we melt this snow?” to which came the answer, “Ewww! No way!”

At this point, I was hoping the students would acknowledge that humans played a part in the messing up of things and that, consequently, it was up to all of us to stop it. However, I was quickly made to realize that, of course, how to clean up the planet is a gazillion dollar question that nobody can fully agree on, let alone a group of five year olds. At this age, they are very capable of figuring out how to help in such a situation, one animal at a time, by giving a bowl of clean water to drink, which is what they do for their pets at home. And what did I really have in mind as far as stewardship goes? Petitions? Posters? Protest marches? It became clear to me that rather than ask HOW we might help the creatures, a better question was, WHAT IF? So I started over again, asking them, “What Would Happen If There Were No Winter?”,  and I explained that, “There is something called Climate Change which is making our Earth warmer than it should be. Scientists think this is happening because of pollution caused by people using cars and airplanes to travel around, and building factories to make things.”

At first, the group was rather quiet, but then one of the students made the comment that a warmer Earth meant that the snow would melt. RIght away, more students began to add their thoughts as a conclusion began to form itself:

“If the snow melts, then the polar bears would have no home.”

“And the seals and foxes, too.”

“There would be no habitat for the animals.”

“All the animals would lose their habitat and then they won’t have anything to eat.”

“Their habitat is broken and the animals would get dead.”

Losing habitat is something the students could visualize and understand, and so I was able to ask them, “How do you think we can be habitat helpers, then?” They were so happy to articulate how they have bird feeders in their backyards, how they compost and recycle garbage, how they plant gardens with their families, and how sad they are when they see destruction of habitat such as trees being cut down, or dried up worms on the pavement. While five year olds may not independently engage in activism on a large scale, when we finished this inquiry, many of them realized that they already do have a positive impact on the environment. My own learning came when I had to acknowledge that Stewardship and Sustainability in an SK classroom are, of course, tied very closely to the five-year-old developmental stage and the way children at this age perceive the world, with themselves firmly at the centre of it all. I was reminded that everything does, after all, start with the individual.

Kelly.McLaughlin Combined Grade Classes, Constant Learning, Inquiry, Inspiring Students, Inspiring Teachers, Integration, Learning in a Real Life Context, Making a Difference Through Education, Resources, Students as Teachers, Use of Technology

Tech Talk

I would like to share a new initiative my class is starting at our school Ancaster Meadow.

Our class realized the large need for technology in the classroom. We noticed that students are sometimes unfamiliar with apps that are available for completing work and for presenting learning. We are starting a new program called “Tech Talk” where as a class we travel to classrooms and instead of “Reading Buddies” we will assist the class one on one with apps of the teacher’s choice. We came up with a benchmark of five:

  1. Explain Everything
  2. Kahoot
  3. Weebly
  4. Pic Collage
  5. Prezi

These apps will be explored in detail by my class so when we visit our first class after the break, the break off sessions will be smooth and very productive. We will offer this program to grades two-five and speak to teachers before regarding sign up. Students will be able to explore the apps, prepare a small task and then share it with the whole class. The sessions will be fifty minutes long as that is how long a period is in our school. We hope that students will learn from each other and that everyone will be able to use these apps in the new future. I hope it will be a meaningful experience for my class to teach younger students skills that they already have. I cannot wait for our first trial after the break. I encourage everyone to try this  “Tech Buddies” program and share your experiences as well.

Tisha Nelson Black History Month, Challenging Topics, Equity, General, Inquiry, Math

Geometry and Race

Can you have a conversation about Black History Month without discussing race?

Important question? Bold question? Irrelevant question?Let me digress here to share an exchange I had with my grade 3/4 students during math class in February.

I’m a math teacher. Although the conversations that take place in my class go deep within and far beyond the math curriculum, I love inviting my students to make connections between real life and the mathematical ideas we explore.

In an integrated unit on Data Management and Geometry, my students were invited to investigate and name the many attributes of 2D figures with a focus on the properties of polygons. They learned the latin prefixes used to name various polygons based on the number of sides. We engaged in an angle scavenger hunt all over the school, classifying the angles we noticed as acute, obtuse and right angles. We also wrote a song that highlighted our learning, adding verses as the learning progressed throughout the unit (https://heartandart.ca/?p=3638).

In a particular conversation about the similarities and differences among quadrilaterals, I questioned my students on the need to classify polygons and then further classify them within the category of quadrilaterals. I then invited them to name the other ways in which things or people are categorized based on different attributes. Almost immediately some students shouted, “skin colour!” Was I shocked? A little bit, but I thought, let’s go there. I had never really engaged in an conversation about race with this group of students and I was curious to hear what was on their minds about the subject. The conversation then delved into discussing the confusion between incongruent language that is often used to describe skin colour when the actual colours in questions were browns, tans and peach-like hues. This conversation invited students to voice questions and make connections between the experiences of fitting in and not fitting in in particular spaces – in a similar way that a trapezoid fits into the category of a quadrilateral, but not in the experience of being a parallelogram. It was an interesting conversation that led to what one student called it as being “shape racism” and another student naming it as “social injustice.” Students have a lot on their minds – I was intrigued with what they shared and the ways in which they articulated their thinking and confusions about the experience of labeling.

Race and geometry were intertwined in that one conversation. Who would have thought? So back to my original question which may, depending on how you look at it, or may not be related to everything I just articulated. Can you have a conversation about Black History Month without discussing race?

Beverly Papove Indigneous Ways of Knowing, Inquiry, Learning in a Real Life Context

…What I have Learned

Well, true to form, the trajectory of inquiry can never be predicted. And so it was that at the end of the couple of weeks of exploring What Happens in Winter, our students ended up quite aways beyond knowing that animals hibernate and plants die off when the weather gets colder. Following a visit from a teacher from the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre, their understanding was now in the realm of recognizing how a wintery landscape not only makes animals adapt in different ways, but how it has also influenced the lives and culture of the Inuit.

The students touched sealskin, fox, and rabbit pelts; tried on an amauti (anorak), kamik (boots), and bone snow goggles; played a caribou skin drum; held seal knuckle bones which were used to create pictures during storytelling; and played Inuit games that involved strength and stability (hilarious wrestling games which they discovered are also easily played outside in the snowy school yard). Our KWL bulletin board filled up with sentence strips on which the students wrote about what they learned and liked about the visit; “I learned that sealskin is best for clothes and boots because it’s warm and waterproof.”; “I learned that Inuk live in houses not igloos.”; “I liked playing Inuit games.” At the art table, several chose to paint what they learned; “I learned how to play a drum – a man’s drum and a woman’s drum,” “I learned that fox don’t hibernate in the arctic – they change color,” and, “I learned how to tell a story using seal bones.”

In activities and centres we set up following the visit, we offered opportunities to draw on their learning.  In math, after discussing the best shape of rock to build an inukshuk, students were challenged to draw an inukshuk with more than 5 rectangles and then to tally the total number of rock rectangles they used. Later in the block centre, several students took the challenge further and built free-standing, life-sized inukshuk (which are usually not very tall). Another day during the week following the presentation, a group of students were tipping over chairs and using them as blinds while they were hunting seal and polar bear – it started to get very physical with running and squealing, so, for safety reasons,  the crew were redirected to the art table to make paper bag puppets of seals, polar bears, hunters and dog sleds. They were so excited to use the puppet theatre to act out their skit which we were later all invited to watch. Another provocation was posting the Inuktitut ‘alphabet’ on chart paper. Next to each symbol I wrote out the sound it represented. While some students recognized that there were several triangles in the alphabet, others attempted to find the syllables they could use to write their names.

Now when we are outside for our outdoor learning every day, I ask questions about the snow, the sky and clouds, and animals; “If we had to build a shelter, would this be good snow to use? Let’s find out.”; “What are the clouds telling us? What do you notice about the weather today? Is it different from yesterday?”; “Can you hear any animal sounds? Have you noticed any signs of animals?” (scat, tracks, birdsong, etc.)

The students are also now aware of the fact that, according to our local groundhog who got scared of his shadow, we are in for a few more weeks of winter. What does that mean for them? Now that they have learned a bit more about What Happens in Winter, and have explored how arctic animals and the Inuit have adapted and survived in a wintery land, my next challenge is to provide opportunities for them to show me what they will do with that knowledge. The big question is, what do I need to do to help my 5 year old students take the next step into stewardship and sustainability?

Beverly Papove Inquiry

I know and I wonder…

Coming back after the holidays meant jumping into high gear, getting report cards ready and pulling together a winter inquiry with the SKs…still haven’t quite finished either, but regardless of how overwhelmed I may feel, the work always gets done. Although I dream of being organized and efficient in my career, at this point my work ethic is a little more like; procrastination/panic/pull-all-nighters and then I can relax. Not very professional, maybe, but I am so relieved when I hear of colleagues who work in much the same manner. I’ll be better next year.

In both of the classrooms I teach, I dedicated an area on the whiteboards to our winter inquiry. To make it a little more interesting and easier to see the information and the work the students produce, I covered the area with cobalt blue bristol board and delineated three sections as a giant KWL (I KNOW, I WONDER, I have LEARNED) in English and French (Je SAIS, Je me DEMANDE, J’ai APPRIS). This is how far I have gotten with the inquiry so far;

I KNOW/Je SAIS

The students brainstormed what they knew about winter. Most of what they mentioned involved plants dying, and animals, particularly bears, hibernating. In one class, I collected their ideas and wrote them in a winter web on chart paper, while in the other class, I asked the students to write their ideas themselves (using inventive spelling) on a strip of cardstock. I am not sure which method I prefer. Regardless of the fact that one process is faster and the other is more authentic, I feel that in both cases, the students benefitted from the discussion we had just prior to writing.

I WONDER/Je me DEMANDE

Our team found books such as, “What happens in Winter?”, “Who lives in the Arctic?”, and “Grandmother Winter”, that highlighted the cooling and darkening of the Earth and the variety of ways all creatures find ways to stay warm at this time. My English counterpart read a beautiful book called, “Ben and Nuki Discover Polar Bears” by Michelle Valberg, which is a wonderful story of two boys – one from a big city in ‘the south’, the other from a village in the far north – who learn about polar bears as well as each other’s cultures.  As a provocation about polar bears and life in the arctic, it was a fantastic launch. As a result, the Wonder Wall quickly filled up with questions about animals who don’t hibernate in winter when we had assumed that they ALL do (“What do seals do in the winter?”), and about the people who live in a climate which is wintery for a much longer period of time than what we experience here in ‘the south’. The students asked questions such as, “How do they get their food?”, “What do they make their clothes out of?”, “What is fur made of?”, and, “How do they build an igloo?”. The students wrote their questions during our Writer’s Workshop period, always using inventive spelling when they were not sure of how to write a word, then they would share their question and the drawing they had done to accompany it, with me or with our ECE. We got a fine collection and were really able to see where their questions were going and how deeply the students were connecting with the topic as this helped determine whether we needed to find different ways to engage them. 

The drawings and questions have now been posted on the bulletin board for all to see and to help guide the students’ inquiry. Stay tuned for the grand finale of our winter inquiry learning journey.

 

Beverly Papove Building Inclusion, Inquiry, Wellness

This is who I am

Through the winter inquiry my senior kindergarten students and I are involved in at the moment, I have recently been reminded of the importance of seizing opportunities for students that can spark a sense of self and place within the school setting. 

In one of our classes, we have a five-year old Inuk girl who is from Pangnirtung (on Baffin Island), and who was adopted by a family from the south. When we began talking about how people stay warm in the winter, her mother spoke to me of an opportunity for her daughter to bring in and share some of the clothing she has received from her family in Pangnirtung; a spring amauti (anorak), sealskin slippers and mittens, and a pair of sealskin kamik (boots).

Elisapie (not her real name) is a quiet student who plays happily with her friends and who engages in a variety of activities and learning opportunities during her school day without making a big splash. However, since beginning this journey of exploring the wonders of the north with her classmates and her unique connection to it, Elisapie has become a bit of a superstar. She is definitely proud of her uniqueness and this inquiry seems to have offered her an opportunity to step up and claim a place which is her own within the school setting. We have all noticed how she has become more engaged in class – asking where her amauti is every morning and wanting to put it on to go visit other classrooms in the school to show and tell all about it. When one classmate came back to school after an absence, Elisapie said, “I have to show her my amauti and slippers. When can I do that?” I am finding I occasionally need to open a window to get some cool, fresh air in the classroom before her cheeks start to glow red (sealskin is very warm), because she likes to wear them during centre time now. According to her mother, Elisapie talks more about her school day when she goes home in the afternoon, and also mentioned that Elisapie is showing an interest in going to Inuktitut classes to begin learning her language again. In class the other day, Elisapie and two of her best friends took an Inuktitut early reader from the class library and used it to write a message in Inuktitut. It is a collection of words that no one can read at this point, but it is definitely an exercise in writing in Inuktitut.

Because of the nature of inquiry, you never know where it will take you and your students. While our winter inquiry is not quite finished, I am very inspired by the learning journey and where it has taken Elisapie in particular and the whole class in general.

We may all have taken workshops on diversity and inclusion which remind us how representation in a school of every child’s culture and people can have a positive impact on their sense of self and place. As teachers, we understand that learning in a school and seeing people and images that, for a change, are familiar rather than largely representative of the dominant white culture, is not only important but imperative for a child’s well-being. None the less, seeing the world from the unique perspective of all of your students may be hard to consider. Furthermore, if you find that each of your students seems relatively well-integrated and engaged in school life, you may not seize on opportunities that may make their school experience even more worthwhile and personal. That is why I feel that workshops, books, and discussions which encourage you to make diversity and inclusion regular aspects of your teaching day are invaluable to individual students as well as the broader school community.

 

Beverly Papove Inquiry, Planning

Plans for January

Well, it’s a good thing I hadn’t planned on trying an inquiry on SNOW this year. With the unusually warm weather, I am wondering if maybe an inquiry on climate change would be more appropriate! However, that would be a rather depressing topic for 5 year olds (as it would be for people any age), and regardless of the lack of snow, there is still plenty to explore about Winter.
During the last week of school before the holidays, we had our team meeting to make sure we all have an idea of what we will be doing when we jump back into the game in January.
Here’s what I am planning on doing when we get back:

 

  1. I’d like to do a Winter Web of ideas, to gather what the students know about “What Happens in Winter”. Following a field trip to a bird sanctuary in early December, we have been reading books and talking about what people, plants, animals and bugs are doing as the weather gets colder. A Winter Web will help anchor the ideas and vocabulary we are hoping to expand upon through our inquiry.
  2. Winter Wonder Wall – A Knowledge Building Circle is so helpful for giving students a space to ask their questions, and where possible, to have them answered by their peers. We write “I wonder” questions that need more exploration on sentence strips and will post them on the board beside the Winter Web to be answered as discoveries are made. To help with our Winter Inquiry, we are really looking forward to a presentation from the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre where we will learn to play some Inuit Games as well as see and touch Inuit clothing and tools.
  3. Assessment/Evaluation – Following threads of wonder, each of the educators for our classes (2 ECE educators, 1 English teacher and 1 French Immersion teacher) will provide opportunities, such as the live Bear Cam of two grizzlies hibernating at https://www.grousemountain.com/wildlife-refuge/bear-cam , for the students in both classes to explore in more depth an aspect of the Winter Inquiry (hibernation, adaptation, migration, etc.) The goal is for the students to show us what they have learned about “What Happens in Winter”.

 

I am not sure how this inquiry will evolve. I can imagine our classrooms being completely transformed into wild places where the sand and water tables have hibernating reptiles and insects deep below the surfaces; where the cubbies are stuffed not with backpacks and coats, but furry animals curled up for a long sleep, and where tables and shelves have evidence of the life cycle of various plants. And in the middle of the space (with the windows wide open), the children, dressed for the cold, are playing Inuit Games. Sounds rather perfect, however, we will have to see where the students decide to take their learning. Stay tuned!

Beverly Papove Inquiry, Learning in a Real Life Context

The First Snow

We had our first snowfall last week! Glorious, white, sticky snow. Enough to shovel and slide a toboggan over. We have been learning vocabulary in French to describe the weather as well as identifying winter clothing, so the students were really excited to be able to put it all into practice outside while playing and later inside, during their writer’s workshop period.
In the morning, instead of the usual buckets, shovels and dumptrucks, we hauled out a collection of toboggans and shovels our school had bought a few years prior to Full Day Kindergarten. (The winter equipment must have been on a wishlist of a kinder teacher who has since moved on, but to whom we are very thankful!) Curricula, such as language and science, as well as physical and health education, were accessed in multiple ways that morning as the students pulled, piled, rolled, and slid on the snow, and then later wrote about their day.

It is not surprising, I suppose, that not all children loved the snow. I could generalize and say that it tended to be the ones who were not dressed warmly enough for the weather – there certainly were a few who forgot snow pants or splash pants – however, one or two seemed to have an opinion about snow that I thought only adults would express; “I don’t like snow because it’s cold and winter is long.” So, although this statement is true, and I understand there are some people who really do not like snow or winter, I feel hopeful that opinions such as this, coming from a 5 year old, may be changed with a more positive representation of what is a reality in Canada for five months of the year.

 
One aspect of the Overall Expectation in the science curriculum is for children to “demonstrate an understanding of the natural world and the need to care for and respect the environment.” With this in mind, and with the hope that we can foster a group of learners who love being outside in the snow just as much as we do, we have also talked about how different living things prepare for the winter; losing their leaves, dying off (annual plants in the garden), getting thicker coats, hibernating, flying south, digging deep in the mud under a lake, etc. We read books and sing songs about winter, winter clothing, and winter weather – Youtube has a vast collection to choose from – and set out activities where students can draw winter scenes with white crayons on blue construction paper, cut up paper snowflakes or make snowflakes on mirror tiles with straws, cotton balls and blue glass beads.

 
Being aware of the natural environment is also an expectation of the science curriculum, and so, sharing the Scandinavian expression, “There is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing,” offers the students the opportunity to explore what that might mean and why it is a common saying in a cold part of the world. To delve deeper into snow-based culture, we have invited presenters from the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre to present clothing and tools and teach Inuit games to our kindergarten students. We are hopeful that if the students become aware of all the children, just like them, who live in a snowy world for a much longer period of the year, they will see how it is necessary for us to become more connected to our environment so that we can adapt and live within it, rather than try to avoid it.

Beverly Papove Inquiry, Inspiring Students, Learning in a Real Life Context

Fall Gardening with Kinders

Because we have made it part of our timetable to spend the first and last block of every day outdoors with our SK students, we have become pretty regular weather watchers. So when we noticed that they were calling for 20 degrees on a Thursday in November, we decided to plan for a full morning of activities outside.

 

The first thing we did was brainstorm what learning opportunities we could provide that were a little different from the regular. Then we let the parents know of our plans, reminding them of the importance of dressing their children appropriately for a day of exploring outdoors, a day that included a filled water table. We also included the principal in our communications and were very happy when she had no objections or concerns.

 

With 2 ECEs, 2 teachers, a parent volunteer and a Child and Youth Worker placement student, we were able to put together a good variety of activities 2 days ahead of time. Besides the climbing structure which is always a big draw any day, we had cooperative games on the pavement; a reading area under a tree with a basket of books on a tarp; and a water table and Lego ship building. We also provided metres and metres of mural paper attached to the school wall for painting on; dump trucks, watering cans, shovels and pails for digging and building with; and a chance to do some gardening in the raised vegetable garden beds.

 

I was in charge of gardening. I brought some gardening tools from home (trowels, sequiturs, forks, and cultivators) which the students could easily manipulate. We set about pulling up the dead plants in the vegetable garden, trimming the perennial herb garden plants (lots of great things to smell and taste), planting about 20 bulbs of garlic, and covering the four raised beds with leaf mulch from the school yard. We had so much fun! We dug up a small Rosemary plant to overwinter in the classroom and a small maple seedling that was out of place growing in the middle of the vegetable bed. The students decided that we should dig the seedling up, bring it into the classroom and look after it until spring, at which time we could plant it in the school yard.

 

The students were so enthusiastic about the plants, but even more so about the bugs they discovered in the garden. Although many of them were hoping to find worms, we found slugs, grubs, potato bugs, and spiders, all of which they handled gently for closer inspection. One student asked if we could bring one of the slugs into our classroom. Since we already had a small aquarium set up for observing worms from the vermicomposter, we discussed whether we could use it as a slug habitat. Now we have worms AND a slug in our classroom. I mentioned in last month’s blog what great class pets worms could be. Slugs are even easier!

Beverly Papove Inquiry, Learning in a Real Life Context

Everybody loves worms (in our class)

We have worms. Actually, there are three senior kindergarten classrooms with worms. Our parent council very generously paid for the vermicomposters and 2 pounds of Red Wrigglers which eat fruit and vegetable scraps from student lunches and snacks. If you don’t mind worms, they are a great class pet – fascinating, easy to handle, quiet and odourless (when fed properly). Setting each vermicomposter up and settling a few hundred worms into their new home is pretty straightforward, but I recommend following the instructions provided in the kit – the worms will be much happier, sooner.

To help with the settling in process, the students used authentic writing to make posters and signs so that visitors to the classroom would be aware of the worms at work. Also, for the first five days, the lights in the classroom needed to be on all the time because if the worms think it is daytime, they will stay in the dirt, otherwise, if they think it is nighttime, they will go out crawling. Signs were made NOT to turn off the lights, tape was placed over the light switch in case it was accidentally turned off, and the custodial staff were alerted and kindly asked to change their evening routines for a few nights. Despite all the warnings and signage, sadly, one classroom wasn’t so lucky with their worms as the light was turned off one evening….The morning I went to check on the Wrigglers , I was shocked to see the floor covered in dried worms scattered in a 5 foot circumference around the vermicomposter… Luckily, there were one or two worms who stayed put and will have to carry on all the work on their own for a while. In time, we will introduce some worms from the other 2 vermicomposters to increase the colony (if that’s what you call a collection of worms), however, the lights-on routine will have to happen again to make sure another exodus is averted.

We have big plans for the worms. So far, we’ve read the Diary of a Worm, made a poster of what they like to eat, and a mural of the underground world of worms and insects, using lengths of brown wool as worms that can be easily glued into squiggly tunnels. After a Knowledge Building Circle, we collected a host of intriguing questions the students have regarding how the worms live, eat, why they are the colour they are, etc. and so we will be guiding the students through this inquiry with the help of books, collective knowledge in our group, and observation. What’s fun is that the questions about worms are leading into wondering about other creepers and crawlers in our world – spiders, centipedes, beetles. And although winter will soon be upon us and the bug world out in our school yard will be covered in snow, the Museum of Nature in Ottawa has just begun a major show on insects which will run until the spring and which many students will be thrilled to attend. Myself included.