Daily and Seasonal Changes Inquiry

At St. Thomas Aquinas, as a part of the Grade 1 Science unit "Daily and Seasonal Changes," we began by reading the picture book City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Williams as a provocation.  The story is about the unique friendship of a dog and a frog over the course of a year.  Throughout the book, the seasons change with wonderful splendor in the illustrations that brings the seasons to life for the students.  However, the changes are subtle and not mentioned in the book.  Following the reading of the book, the students were asked to point out if they noticed anything about nature throughout the story.  One of the students mentioned that the weather changed through the book; another mentioned that the colour of the grass and trees changed; while another introduced the changed in seasons throughout the book.  This led to a discussion about what seasons were.  For the most part the students could name all four seasons.  We then listed all of the things they knew about seasons in general.  Here is what they came up with:

While the students demonstrated some understanding and knowledge about the seasons being about change (some only focused on the current season of autumn), they did have questions about what causes seasonal changes and how they are different from each other.  Here are the questions that they posed that they will answer through our inquiries and investigations:

 

 

This seems like an interesting beginning to our seasonal inquiry!

Talking about self-regulation

The teachers at St. Dominic Savio Catholic School have been actively in engaged in exploring and discussing the learning skills with their student to help them establish a deeper understanding of each one.  Three of the classes I work discussed the learning skill of self-regulation by showing them the video "Me Want It (But Me Wait)" starring the one and only Cookie Monster from Sesame Street.  The video was a hit with the primary, junior and intermediate students who watched it, not only because of it's humourous take on self-regulation, but the deep conservation it illicited.  Here is a snapshot of the brainstorming the that Grade 3/4 class did together to establish their understanding of self-regulation:

Following this, the students broke out into small groups to write their own ideas of what self-regulations means and how to show it in class.  Then, they came together as a class to compile a class success criteria to refer to on how to show self-regulation independently.  Here's what they came up with:

 

The Grade 2 class also shared ideas on how to use self-regulation in class.  Here is what they discussed together:

As we unpack self-regulation and other learning skills, I will continue to post on our discussions, activities and explorations, so stay tuned!

Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn

One of the best books I read this summer was definitely Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn by John Hattie and Gregory Yates.  The book is divided into three sections:  Learning Within Classrooms, Learning Foundations, and Know Thyself.  According to Hattie and Yates this three sections have very particular foci.  The first part, Learning Within Classrooms, deals with learning within classrooms, teacher practice, student thinking and processing (Yates & Hattie, 2014: p. XV-XVI).  The second part, Learning Foundations, delves into major ideas about learning including acquisition, memory retention, mental storage and overload (Yates & Hattie, 2014, p. XVI).  Finally, the third part of the book examines knowing oneself as a learner and who your learners are (Yates & Hattie, 2014, p. XVI).

Within each section, there are chapters dealing with different topics within each section.  As a classroom teacher, I appreciated the insight and sound knowledge that Hattie and Yates provided based on scientific and educational research.  This book not only provided the opportunity for me to reflect on my own practices and my role as an educator, but also on some of my own experiences as a student.  Although there were some chapters that were more engaging or applicable than others, overall, I really enjoyed this resource as it provides sound knowledge that is helpful to understand how your students learn and how you can better help this process as an educator.  This is definitely a good read for all teacher regardless of experience!

Pumpkin Inquiry

During Hallowe'en week, the Full-Day Kindergarten students began an inquiry on pumpkins.  We began the inquiry by placing a mystery object in the center of the carpet.  The students had to guess what the object under the blanket was (see the photo).  Some of their guesses included a ball, a watermelon and a toy.

What's under the mystery blanket?

After taking a few predictions, the mystery object was finally revealed...

Ta-da!  The mystery object revealed!

After revealing the pumpkin, the students began to share what they knew about it.  They knew quite about about pumpkins from previous experience, but they still had lots of questions about them.  Here's what we came up with so far... we will be exploring our wonderings about pumpkins in the coming days!

Look at what we know about pumpkins!

Here's what we want to find out about pumpkins

Out inquiry is off to a fine start!