Exactly one year ago, I was presenting at the 3E Learning Conference in Ho Chi Minh City and it's crazy to think how much has changed since then. During my Inspire Talk at 3E, I spoke about change and the opportunities that come with it...in education of course! One year on though, I'm thinking there are some important lessons in there for me personally! So this year, whether you are headed back to the classroom or embarking on new adventures in life, let's be sure to view every moment as opportunity. Who knows what wonderful things might come as a result!
I am experiencing some major shifts in life. In March, my first child was born. In June, I moved back to Canada with my young family after 12 years away from "home". And for the first time in 8 years, I am not going back to the classroom this August/September. Right now it feels like my life is all about change, change, CHANGE!
Exactly one year ago, I was presenting at the 3E Learning Conference in Ho Chi Minh City and it's crazy to think how much has changed since then. During my Inspire Talk at 3E, I spoke about change and the opportunities that come with it...in education of course! One year on though, I'm thinking there are some important lessons in there for me personally! So this year, whether you are headed back to the classroom or embarking on new adventures in life, let's be sure to view every moment as opportunity. Who knows what wonderful things might come as a result!
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What makes these my favourite?
Lately I've been doing a lot of thinking about feedback. Last week I participated in the IB PYP workshop 'Teaching and Learning' where feedback to students was emphasized as as strategy for supporting students in constructing knowledge and skills. I am also currently enrolled in the Harvard Graduate School of Education course 'Making Learning Visible: The Power of Group Learning and Documentation in Classrooms and Communities' where we have examined the power of teacher and peer feedback in the context of group learning. I am currently exploring and researching this in my Pre-Kindergarten classroom and wrote a post about it last week.
This feedback is important to me because:
Often when I think about the learning community, I think about students, families and teaching staff. But what about the rest of the community? Are they not also part of the learning (and feedback) process? The feedback our auntie gave made me consider who I look to and seek out for feedback. It made me wonder: Can this be extended? To who? How? As Dylan Wiliam says "Feedback should cause thinking". And indeed, the best feedback always makes me think. It clarifies and consolidates. It urges me to probe further, wonder more, and extend in new directions. And last week, for me, this feedback did just that. What forms and sources of feedback do you open yourself up to as a teacher in your learning community?
Before every school year starts, I try to reflect on what has been successful in my classroom during the previous year and what I would like to change, expand on or even omit. Every year of course there are tweaks to be made and shifts to consider. One of the most important things I reflect on are the routines that organize the day, including the functions they have and purposes they are serving. I like purposeful routines. In fact, I require them. For me this means routines that are developmentally-appropriate, yet complex. Routines that address basic curriculum components and desired learning outcomes, yet also respect students as people, individuals and learners, and reflect their participation as class- and community-members and citizens. Over the last few years I have continued to take this criteria into consideration, continually fine-tuning my approach. The ultimate goal for me is that all aspects of my work with children - including the daily routines - align with my philosophies about learning and my image of the child. This approach has led me to make some pretty significant changes over time in how I implement and address some common-place classroom routines. Here are a few major things I've evolved since I started teaching:
So, the routine needed to be re-thought. There is still a calendar in my classroom. Months, days and dates are still marked. This time though, it's all of them. Now our calendar is a co-constructed piece which evolves every day. The main purpose is not counting and temporal time, but rather reflection and the recording of community events. We look at our calendar in our Afternoon Meeting and discuss what happened during our school day. The Special Helper chooses one or more significant events and draws a picture on the date card. The biggest difference? Now children are engaged in self-motivated and personally-meaningful dialogue around this shared tool - not just memorized songs and scripted conversations. Check out these great reads on classroom calendar routines for more inspiration:
Try it and see how the self-regulation and interpersonal skills that are discovered and demonstrated through the process are also extended to other areas or learning and interaction.
We still have one 'Special Helper' everyday who leads our class line and organizes the Morning Meeting. This person also lends an extra helping hand to any other incidental tasks, but, in general, the culture in our classroom is that everyone is responsible for everything all the time. We are all responsible for recognizing when the recycling needs to be emptied. We are all responsible for keeping track of when the plants need to be watered. In the past, I found that designated classroom jobs didn't really work to support the class community and environment I wanted. While they did give everyone a sense of responsibility eventually, they narrowed it to one area and encouraged those without classroom jobs to 'check out'.
A few key issues I noticed about the chart:
Now, there is no behaviour chart in my classroom. No traffic light, no stickers, no happy and sad faces. Instead, we emphasize supportive group dialogue, private conversations, and trusting relationships. Check out these great reads on class management for more inspiration: What routines have changed and evolved over time in your classroom?
Have you taken the time to reflect and adapt? I've just returned back from one month in Italy where I travelled, reconnected with family and friends, got married, and fell completely back in love with a country I've visited many times and lived for two years. Many wonderful memories surfaced as I re-visited and explored anew. I will always have an attachment to Italy. My grandparents were born there, I still have family in the Venice area, and of course I lived for two years in Milan. But the attachment is more than that. I think I am bonded to the spirit of Italy, which is for me, in essence, the incredible family and community values that still exist. I see these values embedded in so much of the Reggio Emilia approach to education, which explains, at least in part, why I am so connected and attached to that set of philosophies too.
In a 1992 interview with Vea Vecchi, Loris Malaguzzi explained: "The piazza does more than extend the classrooms for it encourages many different encounters and activities, and we assign still other purposes to it. For us it represents the main square of the Italian city, a space where people meet, speak to one another, discuss and engage in politics, conduct business, do street theater, and stage protests. The piazza is a place of continuous passage, where the quality of exchange becomes more intense, whether among children or adults. The more they meet, the more ideas circulate among adults and children. We might say that the piazza is a place where ideas arrive and depart." (The Hundred Languages of Children, Second Edition, p. 164-165)
Where are the potential piazze in your school and community? How can these spaces be used to encourage relationships? What designs and systems need to be in place for these spaces to become places where ideas 'exchange, circulate, arrive & depart'?
After attending a Kath Murdoch (@kjinquiry) inquiry workshop in May 2014, I became interested in exploring how I might introduce Discover Time (i-Time, passion projects, etc.) in my classroom of 4-5 year olds. Kath had been working on developing this with the Early Years teachers at another school in Singapore and I was curious about how this might look in my own school setting and classroom.
I December 2014 I wrote a post on my class blog about how Discovery Time had evolved in our classroom. I was excited by what I was observing during our Discovery Time sessions:
Something kept nagging at me though that I couldn't quite make sense of or even form into questions until recently: How was this time any different from the unstructured playtime children already have in the classroom? My students also pursue projects, passions and inquiries during this unstructured play time. And in fact it's probably more spontaneous and authentic. Am I trying to impose a structure on something that doesn't need it? Am I trying to dress something up in a new way that's actually already happening?
To remedy this imbalance, I went back to an approach quite similar to what I had before: extended periods of uninterrupted free play time in the morning. I keep our schedule almost completely unplanned for these morning sessions until we find a natural time to break for our Morning Meeting (where students have the option to share their play and project work) and then snack. Some mornings this time is significantly shorter and sometimes it extends for a very long time - the schedule is all dependent on that active explorations and interests that are in motion that day. Of course there is also space throughout the whole day for divergence from the teacher's 'planned possibilities' if an important learning opportunity emerges.
While I'm now nearly back to what I did originally, the experience has had positive results:
". . .the goal of teachers and children is the same, to find meaning in their work . . ." - Lella Gandini
For me, interpretation means reflection and collaboration. Time to document and process the events in my classroom, time to discuss with colleagues at my own and other schools, time to read articles, books and blogs that put my practice in context. Time to connect the dots. Always time. Lella Gandini also emphasizes the connection between collaboration and reflection: "a time and place must be set aside...in which the teachers' interpretations, hypotheses and doubts can be discussed and expanded with their other colleagues in the school...All this becomes meaningful and adds to our professional competence." (In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia, 2006, p.135-136) Loris Malaguzzi said that children "become even more curious, interested and confident as they contemplate the meaning of what they have achieved" (The Hundred Languages of Children, Second Edition, 1998, p. 70). Is the same not also true for teachers? While children will always be at the centre of what we do as educators, I wish we could think nearly on equal terms about the rights of and learning conditions for our teachers. How do you and your school find time to make meaning?
What a special time of year we've reached in Kindergarten 1. Every day we are demonstrating how much we've grown and how much we've learned in so many different ways. We are becoming increasingly independent with our self-care and our play is becoming more and more sophisticated and complex. Our fine motor and gross motor skills are becoming more refined and our range of vocabulary and the way we use it seems like it's expanding exponentially! Last week when we were doing a shared reading of a poem at the carpet, we realized something . . . we're turning into readers! Rather than just reading along from memory as I pointed to the words, some students were actually sounding out the words in the text. "We're ready for K2!", one student exclaimed, which made us all very excited and created a perfect opportunity to pause and reflect on how far we've come since the beginning of K1. Special moments like this, when little alphabet and sound explorers turn into little readers, make me so grateful about the job I have. These are the moments that keep me going. I am so lucky to be not just a teacher, but an Early Years teacher. What are the moments that make you grateful?
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I'm a PYP educator passionate about visible thinking, learning environments, Reggio Emilia, arts, technology, pedagogical documentation, visible thinking, nature & play. Always inquiring, always reflecting, always learning!
View the About Me page to learn more. Contact MeRecent PostsEmbracing Change
Top 11 Inquiries: A Reflective Roundup Open-Ended Math Centres in Kindergarten The Reggio Approach: Where Do I Start? The Power of Feedback Developing Metacognition Through Portfolio Reflections Archives
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