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

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creating spaces for playful inquiry: encounters with charcoal

Posted on: December 14th, 2018 by jnovakowski

To launch the 2018-19 season of our ongoing professional learning series, Creating Spaces for Playful Inquiry, we created opportunities for educators to have encounters with charcoal and make connections to teaching and learning across the BC curriculum. Inspired by our learning from Opal School in Portland to use different materials to explore ideas and emotions through an aesthetic dimension, we chose charcoal specifically as we believed it was a material that educators might need some support with, in understanding the material in new ways.

We shared a blog post from the Opal School Blog: Thinking with Charcoal

and shared the Canadian books The Art of Land-Based Early Learning (volumes 1 and 2) that can be found HERE.

I actually experimented with making my own charcoal. I trimmed some willow branches from my backyard, tightly wrapped them in cheesecloth and then aluminum foil (to eliminate any oxygen inside) and put them in our fire pit. I didn’t have enough wood to maintain a high enough heat for long enough (researched needing about an hour) so I “finished” the packages the barbecue. They worked out quite well but next time, I will strip the bark off the twigs first.

We curated a collection of charcoal and related materials from DeSerres and Phoenix Art Studio

and invited educators to engage with materials, ideas and concepts.

Our resource document about charcoal, including the questions provided to provoke educators’ thinking can be found here:

playful_inquiry_charcoal_2018

Some educators commented that it was their very first time using charcoal themselves and they reflected on what it meant to explore a material for the first time, how that made them feel both curious and vulnerable and also sparked many connections and ideas for using charcoal with their students.

Two of our playful inquiry mentors, Sharon and Christy, shared experiences and stories from their classrooms

and then after dinner together, we broke off into mentor group to share ideas and think together about ways to engage with playful inquiry this school year.

We have been growing our playful inquiry community in our district for several years now with both our own initiatives and projects as well as continuing to nurture our relationship with Opal School and it is exciting to continue to welcome teachers into our conversations. Our next district event will be an open studio at the district conference on February 15 and a playful inquiry symposium on the afternoon of the district pro-d day on May 17.

~Janice, on behalf of the playful inquiry mentors

creating spaces for playful inquiry: thinking about the hundred languages – April 2018

Posted on: May 16th, 2018 by jnovakowski

For our final session of this year’s Creating Spaces for Playful Inquiry professional learning series, we focused on the Hundred Languages – a grounding element of the educational approach from the childcare centres in Reggio Emilia, Italy. The Hundred Languages concept is based on a poem by Loris Malaguzzi who suggests that all children have a hundred languages (or more) in which to express themselves and that are role as educators (and school systems) is to nurture these languages, not suppress them.

As Richmond educators entered the room, they were invited to they were asked to reflect on how the hundred languages are living in their classrooms.

Hundred_Languages_Provocations_April19_2018

The Richmond educators who visited Opal School in Portland over spring break shared their reflections on the experience through documentation panels.

Carrie Bourne, Jen Yager and Julie Curran shared what they learned at Opal and how they have taken some of these ideas up in their own teaching contexts.

Marie Thom and I shared some of our experiences from our Canadian Study Tour of Reggio Emilia in March. I shared some ideas I saw about intersecting digital and analog languages through digital landscapes and Marie shared the power of the language of food and the metaphor of the table to bring people together.

After dinner together (enacting the table metaphor) our interest groups met with playful inquiry mentors to share ideas and go deeper with their understanding about playful inquiry.

We collected feedback from educators who have attended this three part series as we reflect on our learning from this year and think ahead to next year.

“Love the opportunity to collaborate with others and hear others share about their thinking/learning and what they are trying in their classrooms. It is thought-provoking and inspiring.”

“Playful inquiry and teaching is a learning process, always growing and changing and best in collaboration with others teachers and peers.”

“This series has kept me inspired when I’ve felt uninspired or simply tired.”

“This series completely changed the lens through which I see my role as the teacher and the roles of the students.”

There was considerable interest in creating opportunities for teachers to visit others’ classrooms to see playful inquiry in action and to be able to collaborate with colleagues from across the district.

Regardless of how how things unfold for professional learning opportunities in our district for next year, we know we have a strong and growing community of educators committed to teaching and learning through playful inquiry. Thanks to all of the educators involved in this series for their contributions and participation!

~Janice on behalf of the Playful Inquiry Mentors

creating spaces for playful inquiry: thinking about reflection – January 2018

Posted on: May 11th, 2018 by jnovakowski

On January 25, Richmond educators gathered at Grauer for our second dinner session of our Creating Spaces for Playful Inquiry professional learning series. This month our focus was on reflection and time. Educators shared their experiences engaging in playful inquiry with their students and considering the role of reflection in documentation and making both students’ and our professional learning visible.

After dinner together, teachers participated in interest groups facilitated by our playful inquiry mentors.

A handout with curricular connections to the idea of reflection can be found here: Reflections_Provocations_Jan25_2018

~Janice

creating spaces for playful inquiry: thinking about relationships – September 2017

Posted on: October 5th, 2017 by jnovakowski 1 Comment

Inspired by our staff’s visits to the Opal School in Portland, we continue this year with our Creating Spaces for Playful Inquiry Series. Sixty Richmond educators registered for this three-part dinner series, with a growing waiting list of educators wanting to be part of this series. This continued interest in this work speaks to the ripple effect that our playful inquiry community is having in schools and in our district. Many new teachers have heard about playful inquiry and how it aligns with goals and aspects of BC’s redesigned curriculum. A goal for the series is for teachers to consider: How can we create new possibilities for joy, wonder and inspiration?

So what is playful inquiry? Playful inquiry is not a new term and much has been written about it as a pedagogical stance. In Richmond, we have drawn upon our experiences and relationship with the Opal School in Portland and made connections to our BC context and curriculum. At our last study tour to Portland in March, the following explanation of playful inquiry was provided:

In this explanation of playful inquiry words such as community, collaboration, citizen and uncertainty pop out. The term “learning alive” resonates with the spirit of inquiry we are hopeful of nurturing in our classrooms. Why playful inquiry? The above definition suggests an approach that will support students in thinking through the uncertainty in the world around them and nurture student agency in seeing themselves as contributing citizens in their community. So we can work together towards the goals and vision of what playful inquiry can bring to our classrooms and schools.

So how do we enact playful inquiry in our classrooms? For planning purposes, we often use the framework of –

playing with materials
playing with language
playing with ideas

to help us consider different ways to engage our students and ourselves with playful inquiry.

Playful inquiry creates opportunities for deeper engagement with concepts and idea, choice in ways students may pursue uncovering the curriculum, personalization and meaning-making as well as providing openings for connection-making, seeking relationships – both with self, each other and with ideas.

*****

As teachers arrived at Grauer Elementary, they were provided with provocations created by our playful inquiry mentors. These provocations were either pedagogical – meant to experience through the lens of an educator and to reflect on practice or, were those that students engaged with in Richmond classrooms.

After a welcome, introductions and an overview of the series, teachers shared and discussed questions such as:

What is a provocation? How is a provocation alike and different from an invitation or a rich open task?

Some conditions for provocations were shared:

responsive
provokes thinking
connects to a big idea, concept or theme
is ongoing, lingering, extends

We talked about the theme of relationships for this session and how relationships were an inherent part of teaching and learning – social and emotional relationships but also relationships with and between curricular ideas. Some of the provocations shared and how the concept of relationships is embedded throughout our BC curriculum were provided to participants here:

SD38_Relationships_Provocations_Sept28_2017

Other big ideas and themes that we have engaged with as a playful inquiry community were shared:

Three of our playful inquiry mentors shared stories from their classrooms. Michelle Hikida from Diefenbaker shared how her and grades 2-4 group planning team are focusing on the big idea of stories this year and how they collaborate together to plan provocations based on students’ interests an questions. Laurie David-Harel from Whiteside shared the movie trailer she created for her school’s parent evening to share how the Kindergarten students in her class engage in playful learning. Karen Choo from Blair shared how sharing circles and using clay as a metaphor supports relationship building in her grades 4&5 classroom.

After dinner together, teachers met in interest groups with conversations and sharing facilitated by our playful inquiry mentors.

Many of the interest-based inquiry groups will continue their conversations with schools visits, online collaboration or other forms of sharing before our next whole group session together in January.

Participants were asked to consider what “one thing” they will play with, try , take risks with…what might be your one thing?

Blog posts from previous years can be found HERE

More information about the Opal School can be found HERE

~Janice

thinking about fractions

Posted on: June 21st, 2017 by jnovakowski

One of the foundational concepts in grades 3-5 is an understanding of fractions – some of the questions we investigate with students are:

What is a fraction? What makes a fraction a fraction?

How can we order and compare fractions?

When do we use fractions in our daily life?

What different ways can we represent fractions?

What are equivalent fractions?

In our BC mathematics curriculum, the big idea for grade 3 that we guide students to understand by the end of the school year is that “fractions are a type of number that can represent quantities” – this is a significant concept. I often have discussions with older students who have the conception that fractions have something to do with shapes/geometry, possibly because of the models used in school to represent fractional numbers (think circles/pies/pizzas or rectangles/chocolate bars). An intentional focus is to provide opportunities for students to see and represent fractional amounts using different models – area/region, set and linear. In grade 4, students learn about the relationship between fractional and decimal numbers and in grade 5, consolidate their understanding of fractions by working with equivalent fractions. During these investigations, students may begin to see relationships and connections to whole number operations when working with fractions and decimals. We want students to be able to think flexibly with fractions and decimals, just as they do with whole numbers and think about composing and decomposing, benchmark numbers, etc as they consider addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

This term I have been thinking a lot about fractions with students and teachers. I visited two classes at Homma and a class at Wowk and hosted classes at The Studio at Grauer to investigate fractions including a grade 4 class from Woodward, the grades 3&4 class from Grauer and the Richmond School Program students from Blundell.

The following are some images sharing our investigations. As you scroll through the images, consider:

What do you notice? What do you wonder?

What instructional routines and structures have we used to support students in their understanding of fractions?

What different materials have been provided to create opportunities to think about fractions?

What conceptions do students reveal in their representations of fractions? What might you ask students? How does this information guide where we go next?

~Janice

The Studio at Grauer

Posted on: June 11th, 2017 by jnovakowski 2 Comments

The Studio at Grauer came to be based on a need we felt existed in our district – a space to engage in professional learning experiences for teachers as well as for a learning environment for students that could be left “set up”. My office partner, Marie Thom, and I have been talking about this for the last couple of years. The notion of a “pop-up” classroom emerged and Andrew Ferguson, the principal at Grauer, was approached to see if we could use one of the school’s unused classrooms.

December 16 2018 – Room 102

Room 102 was being used as a storage room until we began our transformation of it in January 2017. Blending Marie’s background in learning environments and my understanding of mathematics teaching and learning, we developed a space focused on mathematics, filled with inspiring materials in a learning environment designed for learners K-Adult. Our goal was to create a flexible, responsive and inclusive learning environment.

Room 102 – January 10 2017

January 13 2017

The learning environment is set up to create opportunities for choice, collaboration, personalized learning and inquiry. More specifically for mathematics, our hope was to broaden understanding of what mathematics is and what the teaching and learning of mathematics can be. Often school mathematics is perceived as “arithmetic” and mathematics is a much broader discipline that this. We wanted students and teachers to see math all around them and be inspired to think about mathematics in different ways – to see mathematical ideas in the materials, in pinecones, in buildings and structures, in images of our community, in art, in stories.

As we discussed how we were going to use the space, we decided to call it The Studio, inspired the notion of an atelier, a studio space used in the early childhood schools of Reggio Emilia.

Classes from Grauer, as well as visiting classes on “math field trips” visit The Studio to engage in mathematical inquiry. Marie and I take on the role of atelierista or pedagogista, working with the classroom teacher to facilitate learning experiences through different materials in the space. We have intentionally curated both mathematically structured materials like pattern blocks and Cuisenaire rods alongside materials often known as loose parts such as ribbons, gems, rocks, pinecones, etc. We also have art materials available to the students such as paint, clay, charcoal, yarn and wool so that students can express themselves and think using different languages. Students also have access to various tools to support their investigations such as measuring tapes, protractors, grids and ten frames.

The first class to visit The Studio – the grades 3&4 students from Grauer on January 18 2017

The learning environment is intentionally flexible with choices in seating and tables available for both students and adults. Interestingly, although we have some chairs available, none of the students using The Studio have used them, preferring instead to stand or sit and lie on the carpet or use pillows. We have observed the flow of movement in the space and intentionally have large open spaces for students to move through. Shelves filled with baskets of materials are open and accessible to students. Students can choose the materials they want to use and take them to where they would like to engage. We took doors off of some cupboards to create more open shelving. All of the furniture, except for four small Ikea open shelves, was found in school storage rooms and thrift shops.

Provocations are set up on tables for students (and educators) to inspire mathematical thinking and inquiry. Inspired by one of the students’ interests in optical illusions, the grades 3&4 students from Grauer investigated the mathematics embedded in optical illusions. I gathered materials and tools that I hoped would provoke their thinking about optical illusions and the students also accessed and were inspired by other materials in The Studio.

As we have more classes through The Studio, we have developed documentation to share in the space. Panels, photographs and photobooks are available for students and educators to engage with, to reflect upon and to inspire new experiences.

One area of pedagogical intention in The Studio has been on noticing, naming and nurturing the Core Competencies and the Mathematics Curricular Competencies from our BC curriculum framework. A focus has been on both communication and creative thinking in mathematics. We intentionally create opportunities for students to engage in different types of communication and to reflect on how they are doing.

We have had many groups of educators also visit The Studio. Our District Support Team, educators attending our Playful Inquiry professional learning series and teams from schools in our district. Many BC educators involved with our BCAMT Reggio-Inspired Mathematics project have visited the space as well. We have also had visitors from Manitoba and Sweden! We often focus the visits with the questions – what do you notice? what do you wonder?

We also have a dedicated professional learning library with the teacher resources we recommend around teaching and learning mathematics, the use of loose parts and the importance of the learning environment.

We had hoped The Studio would inspire similar learning environments in our district but recognize that many schools do not have access to a dedicated room for a studio space – we hope that teachers will be inspired by elements of The Studio for their own classroom learning environments. What has been exciting for Marie and I is that this little project has had a huge ripple effect at Grauer, in our district, and beyond!

~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

Vision, Mission and Values Project at Blair Elementary

Posted on: March 20th, 2017 by jnovakowski

The two kindergarten classes at Blair Elementary took part in our district’s Vision, Mission and Values project in February. As our district develops new Vision, Mission and Values statements, student comments and contributions are being collected to inform the process.

I worked with teachers Lauren MacLean and April Pikkarainen to develop questions to be a part of their regular routine of morning provocations for when the students arrive at school.

As the students chose what materials and question to engage with, we had the opportunity to capture some of their thoughts about what schools could be.

The students had clear ideas about what schools should have and how they should be designed. They talked about natural spaces and spaces to work together. There was a lot of conversation about how schools are for all children and that happiness is a feeling we should have at school.

The classroom teachers then facilitated a sharing circle during which students shared their ideas about school. We unpacked the questions around Vision, Mission and Values with the students. The students “turned and talked” to a partner about one of these questions.

Building on and connecting to the ideas they heard from their classmates, the students were given time to go back and revisit their creations and ideas.

I was able to “interview” some of the students and capture their thinking about what schools could be. This tweet kind of sums up the wisdom from these amazing kindergarten students:

I am looking forward to a district gathering in April when artifacts from classrooms across the district will be available for us to think about and am glad that the voices of these kindergarten students will contribute to the important discussions our district is having.

~Janice

investigating numbers with the Kindergarten class at Garden City

Posted on: March 20th, 2017 by jnovakowski

I visited the kindergarten class at Garden City twice over January and February, introducing different routines to develop number sense and to investigate numbers. Teacher Lori Williams had initially asked me to come to her class to introduce counting collections to her students and after that lesson, I suggested some other routines or practices she might try with her students.

To introduce counting collections to the class, the students and I sat in a circle together. The class’ “special helper” and I counted a collection in different ways, taking suggestions from the suggestions. I intentionally modelled working together as a “team” – taking turns, taking on different roles (one of us moving the items, the other counting, etc) and having each of us support each other when we were unsure or “stuck”. We counted a collection by 1s in different ways – each of us placing an item in a container taking turns while counting, putting the items in a line and counting them together, moving the items from one pile to another taking turns counting as we moved the items one by one. I asked the students if they could think of any other ways they might count their collections and they had some new ideas as well as some suggesting that they count by 2s or 10s. Pairs of students then went off to choose a collection to count, with the expectation that they count it in at least two or three different ways.

The students and I came together after about 30 minutes of counting and I invited some pairs of students to share what they counted and how they counted their collections. I encouraged the students to listen and make connections in their mind as to how they had counted their collections.

For my next visit, I introduced the clothesline and explained that it was another way to investigate counting, particularly ordering numbers.

The students took turns placing different representations of numbers on the clothesline – they were asked to explain their placement decisions. We followed this routine with an invitation to investigate ordering and sequencing numbers using a variety of materials.

The students were creative in their use of materials and the inspiration of the materials often nudged them beyond their familiar counting range and what the curricular expectation are for kindergarten in BC (number concepts, including counting from 0-10).

For the classroom teacher, this was a time to notice her students engaging in new routines with different materials and to think about how she might incorporate them into her classroom. It is always a conundrum for kindergarten teachers – there are always more materials to add to the classroom but we also have to let things go and put things away, even if temporarily, to create open access to the materials students will use regularly and purposefully.

~Janice

creating spaces for playful inquiry: January 2017

Posted on: March 9th, 2017 by jnovakowski

Richmond’s Playful Inquiry Mentors hosted their second dinner event of Creating Spaces for Playful Inquiry series. For this session, we focused on the theme of identity and its connection to the core competencies as well as curricular competencies and content in BC’s curriculum. As sixty Richmond educators joined us in the Grauer multipurpose room, the playful inquiry mentors had set out provocations to engage in.

A handout of the provocation questions and curricular connections can be downloaded HERE.

Three Richmond teachers (Kelly, Anna and Christy) who visited the Opal School in Portland last June shared how their visit to Opal has inspired their learning environments and their teaching practice.

Kelly’s presentation on the impact her visit to Opal on her own teaching was summed up in two words – her presentation can be seen HERE.

Christy’s presentation on Fine Arts Provocations with her grades 5&6 students can be viewed HERE

For our professional learning area of focus for the evening, Marie and Hieu shared their thinking about using loose parts as an inclusive practice that particularly supports English Language Learners in our classrooms.

After dinner together, we broke out into mentor groups to discuss specific areas of interest and to collaborate and plan together.

Some of the playful inquiry mentors along with some of the participants in this series will be attending a Lower Mainland Study Tour to the Opal School in Portland over spring break and will bring back new sources of inspiration for playful inquiry to share with teachers in Richmond.

~Janice