french immersion Archive - Mathematics and Science in SD#38 (Richmond)

Archive for the ‘french immersion’ Category

playful storytelling celebration

Posted on: June 13th, 2017 by jnovakowski

We held our year end celebration for our Playful Storytelling through the First Peoples Principles of Learning project on June 1 at Grauer. Teachers and school teams came together to share what they had been working on during this school year. It is always interesting to hear how each school makes the project its own.

An overview of our session at the beginning of the year is HERE

After an acknowledgement of territory and a welcome to some visiting educators from Manitoba, in circle each teacher introduced themselves and shared the principle that they have most connected to this school year.

A group of us involved in this project visited the Vancouver Art Gallery in early May to see the Susan Point exhibit. We made so many connections between her work and story and came up with several questions to guide our practice when having students engage with art. We shared this with the group and also shared how some teachers had already taken up these ideas with their classes.

School teams then shared how they have investigated playful storytelling in their schools.

We noticed a clear move to many classes taking storytelling outdoors and this will be something we continue to investigate next year.

After a lovely dinner together prepared by Marie Thom, we moved to The Studio at Grauer to engage in some sensory experiences with materials that can be used to enhance the storytelling experience. Experiences with clay, watercolour and wet felting were provided, for teachers to consider – what stories live in these materials?

We all left inspired by each other and full of new ideas to enact with our students. Looking forward to continue this work in our district next year!

~Janice

creating spaces for playful inquiry: April 2017

Posted on: May 28th, 2017 by jnovakowski

For our third session of our Creating Spaces for Playful Inquiry dinner series, Richmond educators came together at Grauer Elementary to share and learn together. This year at our sessions we have focused on broad themes or big ideas that cut across curriculum areas and grade levels, beginning with community, then identity and for our third time together this year, we chose to focus on place. Those that attended our Lower Mainland study tour to the Opal School in Portland created panels reflecting on their experience. Many of our playful inquiry mentors set up either pedagogical provocations or shared provocations they developed to engage their students.

Playful_Inquiry_Place_Provocations_April2017

Four teachers shared their experiences visiting Opal for the first or second time – what had an impact on them and how it is affecting their practice. Thank you to April, Louesa, Laurie and Karen for your thoughtful and passionate presentations!

Based on feedback from the mentor groups during our January session, Michelle Hikida and I did a short professional learning presentation on playful mathematical inquiry and how we plan around a big idea, use provocations and projects based on students’ interests and curiosities and how we extend and sustain a math inquiry.

After dinner together, we spent time in our mentor groups, zooming in on an area of interest and sharing and learning from each other.

We are looking forward to continuing working together next year to support professional learning and building a playful inquiry community across our district.

~Janice

Big Mathematical Ideas for Grades 3-5: year four

Posted on: May 25th, 2017 by jnovakowski

This after school series is in its fourth year, focused specifically on the foundational mathematical concepts in grades 3-5 such as operations, place value and fractions. This year, we met once a term after school in Jennifer Plummer’s French Immersion grades 3&4 classroom at Homma Elementary (thank you for hosting Jennifer!).

For our first session in the fall, we focused on number sense and operations and the curricular competencies of reasoning and communication. I had recently been to the NCTM Regional Conference in Phoenix and shared a great game that I was reminded of in one of the sessions there.

The Product Gameboard

The Product Gameboard instructions

At our second session, in January, we focused on financial literacy and mathematical inquiry. I shared the new Pizza Co. game for the iPad from Osmo as well as some other resources and children’s books to support the financial literacy content in the BC Mathematics Curriculum.

BC K-5 Mathematics Big Ideas

BC_Financial_Literacy_Resources

For our third session in April, teachers in the series requested a focus on assessment, place-based learning and connecting the core and curricular competencies.

BC K-5 Math Communication

K-5_Math_Connections_between_Core_and_Curricular_Competencies

We explored curricular content and competencies by investigating with power polygons.

Looking forward to continuing the conversation around big mathematical ideas next year!

~Janice

elementary math focus afternoon 2017

Posted on: January 17th, 2017 by jnovakowski

We hosted this year’s Elementary Math Focus Afternoon on January 16 at Byng Elementary. Over 250 educators attended, from 14 schools.

There were a range of sessions to choose from and a huge thank you goes out to all the teacher facilitators who shared with their colleagues. A special thank you to our colleagues from Surrey and Delta who shared with us.

Elementary Math Focus Afternoon Jan 16 2017 program FINAL updated Jan 13

Rebeca Rubio shared some of the many math resources and kits from the District Resource Centre.

Tracy, from the Canadian Federation for Economic Education, shared resources to support the financial literacy component of the math curriculum, particularly around the Talk With Our Kids About Money initiative.

The schools attending each contributed a display of materials, documentation or resources sharing an area of professional inquiry amongst their staffs.

QR code Math Tags were available with links to IGNITE videos, websites and blogs.

Math Tags 2017

General Handouts:

BC K-5 Mathematics Big Ideas (one pager per grade)

BC 6&7 Mathematics Big Ideas

K-5 Math Connections between Core and Curricular Competencies

6-9 Math Connections between Core and Curricular Competencies

The Sum What Dice Game Jan2013

Product GameBoard

BCFinancialLiteracyResourcesShared

Session Handouts:

Fred Harwood Grid Algebra 1

Fred Harwood Grid Algebra 2

Barker & Schwartz Picture Books Math & Literacy

Bebluk & Blaschuk Formative Assessment

High-Yield Routines September 2015

Linear Measurement final from Marie Thom’s K-2 Measurement session

Primary Math Routines (Carrusca, Wozney, Ververgaert)

DST Formative Assessment for All

Jacob Martens Numeracy Competencies Presentation

Sentence Frames for Math ELL

ELL Tier 2 words poster

Carrie Bourne Mental Math Poster – Faire 10

Carrie Bourne mental math poster – valeur de position

(contact Carrie for more Mental Math Strategy posters en francais)

MIchelle Hikida Grades 1-4 Mathematical Inquiry

Michelle Hikida Symmetry

Sandra Ball’s Power of Ten Frames presentation and handout

A big thank you to the Byng staff for hosting and to all the facilitators for sharing their experiences and inspiring their colleagues in their sessions.

~Janice

creating spaces for playful inquiry: October 6 2016

Posted on: October 16th, 2016 by jnovakowski

In the Richmond School District, we have a history of groups of educators visiting the Opal School in Portland, Oregon as it is a school that enacts many of the goals of BC’s redesigned curriculum and the teachers have been researching their practices together for years and share openly through their blog, twitter and visitation days and symposiums. In response to a visit there in January 2015, we have developed a professional learning series in our district to further nurture our thinking around playful inquiry in our school district. Educators who have visited Opal become our district’s “playful inquiry mentors” and open their classrooms to visitors and contribute to professional learning events. This year, our main series is a three part dinner series open to 60 Richmond educators. In September, our playful inquiry mentors met together to think about their role and what their own professional goals are. We thought of a powerful word that captured each of our goals and then wove these words together on a loom.

We thought about ways to enact and nurture playful inquiry in our classrooms, schools and within the district.

And finally, we planned our first session of the three-part series. For each session we focus on a big idea or “theme” and after much debate, we settled on the big idea of community for our first session. After hosting this series for two rounds, we have a bit of a structure that works – open with provocations, sharing by educators, a professional learning segment, dinner together, breaking out into interest-based mentor groups and then a closing.

And so on October 6th at 4:00pm, 60 K-7 Richmond educators descended on IDC and engaged with provocations about community created by the playful inquiry mentors.

An overview from our BC curriculum was provided as to ways the big idea of community is woven throughout curricular areas and competencies:

Erin Cammell (grades 4&5 EFI at Dixon) and Kevin Vines (grades 6&7 Quilchena) shared how they began their school years focusing on community, identity and using circle pedagogy. The importance of building relationships was a theme throughout their presentation.

Sarah Yick (grades 1&2 EFI Dixon) and Carrie Bourne (K-12 French Teacher Consultant) shared how they were both inspired by the responsive learning environments at Opal and are transforming their classrooms (a process…) to better meet their students’ needs and to create access to materials for students to use for thinking and representing their learning.

Brooke Douglas (VP at Anderson Elementary) led us through the focused professional learning segment of the evening – connecting provocations to the core competencies and using I can statements for self-assessment. Her slides are now available on our site on the portal.

After a lovely dinner together, educators chose an area of interest and met in small groups to share, ask questions, discuss and set goals. Each group was facilitated by playful inquiry mentors.

After a few closing words from Marie Thom, reminding us “that we are all researchers of life,” teachers left the event with a large black felt mat and a collection of beads, wire and wire cutters so they could use these materials with their students, mirroring one of the provocations teachers had engaged with earlier in the evening.

We have an open group on our Richmond School District portal so that we can continue our conversations and share between our sessions. And of course, there’s twitter 😉

~Janice

SD38 professional learning in math in September 2016

Posted on: October 11th, 2016 by jnovakowski

In September various professional learning events in the area of mathematics were held in Richmond.

On the morning of September 23, Carrie Bourne (new K-12 Teacher Consultant in French) and I facilitated a morning with the Whiteside staff overviewing the components of the redesigned curriculum, the role of provocations as inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning and then we also looked at mathematical routines such as counting collections, number talks and WODB.

On September 26, the Woodward staff and I had similar conversations, thinking about the context at Woodward and the potential spaces for outdoors and place-based learning.

During the afternoon of September 26, several professional learning sessions were hosted at Anderson Elementary, open to teachers from across the district. I hosted a session on Playful Mathematical Inquiry making connections to our curriculum. Teachers had time to look at their grade/s mathematical content and competencies and plan provocations and opportunities for inquiry in their classrooms.

On Wednesday, September 30 after school, I hosted a session for teachers who were curious about Reggio-Inspired Mathematics and connections to BC’s redesigned curriculum. More information on this professional collaborative inquiry can be found HERE.

Looking forward to even more professional learning in October!

~Janice

Opal Summer Symposium 2016

Posted on: June 26th, 2016 by jnovakowski

A team of 17 educators from the Richmond School District attended the Opal School’s Summer Symposium (at the Children’s Museum in Portland) from June 16-18. Our team consisted of four teacher consultants, one elementary school principal, two Strong Start teachers and ten K-7 teachers from both French Immersion and Neighbourhood programs. We joined educators from all around the world (and quite a large Canadian contingent) for three days of examining what it means to invest in a pedagogy of play. We heard inspiring speakers, visited the amazing classrooms at the Opal school and engaged in studio experiences. As we were inspired to think deeply about our practice, we made connections to our context in Richmond and to BC’s redesigned curriculum and how taking a stance of playful inquiry, of seeing inquiry as a state of being, can be transformative for education.

“Be curious, try it out and say I can do it.” – lots to be learned from children as we aim to continue to create, nurture and grow spaces for playful inquiry in the Richmond School District.

~Janice

creating spaces for playful inquiry: April 2016

Posted on: May 16th, 2016 by jnovakowski

For our second year, a team of Richmond educators who have visited the Opal school in Portland, Oregon, have facilitated a professional learning series called Creating Spaces for Playful Inquiry. Blog posts about our first two dinner sessions this year can be found here and here.

Our third and final dinner session of the year was held on April 21 at Diefenbaker Elementary. Educators were greeted in the library with several provocations prepared by our playful inquiry mentors that focused on connections to the natural world and the use of art materials and visual tools. The following question was displayed to provoke thinking and engagement with the materials:

During and after engagement with the materials, we asked educators to share what they noticed about the affordances of different materials and what connections they were making to our redesigned BC curriculum.

Some teachers had been invited to share what they have been working on with their students since our last session in January. Christy and Jo of Cook shared their students storytelling experience connected to the First Peoples Principles of Learning and their study of residential schools. Jaclyn Cruz shared how she has been using morning literacy provocations and how she extended students’ storying with materials to think about “cover stories” inspired by book covers. Melissa Vervegaert has visited the Opal School the week before so she shared some of her experiences, specifically noting how the teachers and students accessed and used and were inspired by art materials.

After a lovely dinner together, we came together in our different mentor groups – intermediate, primary, kindergarten, mathematics, outdoor learning, non-enrolling (teacher-librarians and learning resource teachers) and engaged in discussions and sharing facilitated by our playful inquiry mentors.

This has been such a powerful series for teachers in our district and we have grown a community of teachers committed to playful inquiry in our K-7 classrooms. The following are some of the reflections from educators in the series:

What did this series offer you as an educator?

A chance to listen to others and hear their ideas – knowing that we are on a path together.

We can all try strategies in our classes but we truly gain a deeper shared understanding through engaging conversations.

It was a great opportunity to hear about what other teachers are doing in their classrooms and how they are taking risks and opening the door for their students to explore.

An understanding of the power of using materials to scaffold thinking, build stories, develop relationships and self-awareness.

A way to connect with others in the district and the inspiration I left with each time – what an amazing experience!

What will you take from your experience in this series that will endure in your teaching practice?

From this experience, I will take with me a different approach to my teaching in all aspects – my outlook, my word choices, how I view my students, how I tackle “subjects” and so much more!

That I need to connect and talk with like-minded colleagues. Sharing circles, provocations, playing with a purpose.

Creating an environment that supports deep thinking, community building and communication.

Use of materials in many different ways. Arranging the classroom environment to better support student engagement.

Inquiry happens naturally – honour the curiousity.

Letting go.

Risk taking…the courage to let go and make small but significant changes.

Wow. Rich professional learning.

We have a team of 16 Richmond educators visiting the Opal School in Portland for a summer symposium in June. Our playful inquiry community continues to grow and we look forward to continuing this series next year!

~Janice

Richmond’s first IGNITE event – #sd38ignite 2016

Posted on: May 10th, 2016 by jnovakowski

The Richmond School District hosted its first IGNITE event on Monday, May 9th at the Big River Brew Pub. The first IGNITE took place in Seattle in 2006 and is now a movement that is international in scope. An IGNITE talk is a five minute presentation consisting of 20 slides, auto-advancing after 15 seconds whether the speaker is ready or not. The IGNITE tagline is….”Enlighten us, but make it quick!” More information about the IGNITE movement can be found here.

Having presented a few ignite talks and experiencing the inspiration and fun that goes along with these social events, I really wanted to be able to bring this professional learning format to our district and my colleagues Rosalind Poon and Lorraine Minosky were on board and we ran with it. Chris Loat created our logo for us…

And both Chris and Lisa Schwartz agreed to be our technical support for the event. We found a site and had a meeting at the Big River Brew Pub to see where attendees would sit and how the technology and food service would play out.

We invited Richmond educators representative of primary, intermediate and secondary as well as a balance of teachers and administrators to share a story about something they are passionate about. We also invited two out of district colleagues to add to our Richmond stories.

Two weeks before the event, we hosted a rehearsal especially for educators who were new to the ignite format. It gave them a chance to meet other igniters and to practice their presentation in front of an audience. By seeing and discussing what we appreciate about others’ presentations, I think it also gave presenters some ideas for their own ignites. And its always great to have sushi…and pens.

As we were setting up on May 9th, we were all so excited to see everything fall into place. The venue was great and it was a beautiful day so the patio was open, the technology was cooperating and the tables were set with programs and sweet treats from Sinfully the Best for our guests.The burger bar was a hit and the company was great. Unfortunately two of our igniters (Neil Stephenson and Sarah Garr) had to pull out due to personal reasons.

Some of the guests…

And then the talks began! I was live streaming the talks using the Periscope app and people that weren’t able to attend the event could still watch the talks live. Between each “set” there was a 15-minute break for guests to chat about the talks, etc.

Twitter was alive with #sd38ignite…we were trending!

It was such a positive, passionate event and such a great way to build community amongst colleagues. All our igniters shared their own personal narratives within their professional narratives and these stories are what connect us and make us better together.

We will be releasing the IGNITE talks on youtube soon…watch twitter for announcements!

A HUGE thank you to our igniters…you are what made the event the success it was!

~Janice

playful storytelling project celebration

Posted on: May 10th, 2016 by jnovakowski

On Thursday, May 5th Marie Thom and I hosted a year end sharing celebration for our Playful Storytelling through the First Peoples Principles of Learning project. This project began as a Ministry affiliated Quality Teaching and Learning project (hence the QTL tag in the category section of this blog) with four of our Richmond schools and has grown to ten schools being involved – Blair, Blundell, Diefenbaker, Kidd, Steves, Ferris, Cook, Tomsett, Bridge and Debeck. This year we were glad that a French Immersion school wanted to be a part of the project.

We had our first session in the fall (blog post here) and teachers have been providing storytelling experiences to their students over the year. Because of other curricular demands, Marie and I haven’t been able to make it into classes as much this year but we were able to provide TTOC release to our teachers in the first year of the project to go an visit teachers’ classrooms who have been involved in the project for a couple of years. This proved to be a valuable experience!

At our event on Thursday, each school shared one thing that they have tried this year from felting story settings, retelling stories from picture books, creating cedar storyboards to creating story stones.

Teachers shared their professional learning in different ways – through powerpoint slides, sharing student creations or preparing documentation panels.

After a lovely dinner together, each school team was provided with some new resources from Native Northwest and Strong Nations. We looked through the new books and shared ways we might be able to use them in our classrooms.

In asking teachers to reflect on their experiences in the project, they commented on a need to share resources and ideas and wanting more opportunities for collaboration and observations/visits to other classrooms.

When we asked teachers to consider a moment or event where they noticed a shift in their practice regarding the First Peoples Principles of Learning, some of the written reflections we received included:

“When I noticed during our sharing circles how students’ responses had changed and reflected the principles of patience and respect.”

“I noticed the children’s relationships to each other and the environment around them.”

“Children were using the ideas of place in their play.”

It is powerful to see the First Peoples Principles of Learning enacted in our classrooms and in our professional learning communities. Marie and I are looking forward to continuing our work with this project next year!

~Janice