What a day today! An awesome Talent Show showing off all of our Keeler Talent, a whole bunch of missing chairs, confetti, a stolen car, and a wonderful eHR 4 hour session for Lisa B, Anita, and Derek! Sounds like a usual day at Keeler School!
I know everyone is getting tired and kids are giving us a run for our money as we head into Spring Break in another week and a half. I am sure these are the times that our CILO time is so important, especially as I know a lot of big work is being reflected upon and planning for after Spring Break is in full swing.
In our Fireside Chats, most people have identified that our CILO time is a huge benefit and is helping to lead us to improving our practice and collaborating with others to create the best learning opportunities for our students. We are sitting in the library at Forest Lawn High School, and I must say it is interesting seeing where the work we do will lead to within only 3 more years for our grade sixes…
Hope the afternoon was fantastic, and as always,
Work hard, learn tons!
UNFURL - Unraveling New Frontiers - Utilizing Real Learning 
The grade six team took time to reflect on the integrated story writing and Social Studies unit that is currently wrapping up. We went through the student’s writing and identified the growth that came out of this project and examined the ways in which we could have made the process more effective. When we began this combined project we did not fully realize the complexity that it would bring and the challenges that we would encounter. For example, we found that adding the historical fiction piece to learning effective story writing techniques made the process overwhelming for some students, causing students to focus on one aspect of the project over another. This reflection has given some direction for how to move forward with our story writing and we will be implementing some of these new strategies before the end of the year and have a better idea of how authentically integrate the creative writing with the Social Studies curriculum next year.
As the grade two team is wrapping up their arctic animal research project and several other projects on the go we took today’s time to discuss how we are going to present the student work for parents to see at student led next week. What we’ve noticed as a team is even though we plan projects together we end up with different products. For example, with our arctic animal project Harjyote and Krystle have their students work displayed at their desks with the outline of each slide, rubric and planning process to show the parents. Jen’s class used QuickTime to voice record and capture their project to show the parents their interactive SMART board slides. We also noticed that our treasure map ideas all have a different twist to it. AND WE LOVE IT! Although we plan the project together we also see a variety amongst the students and between the classrooms.
This afternoon I was in a meeting with a parent of one of our students discussing the progress he has made since joining the PLP Program. It was great to communicate with the parent (and DOLSA worker), as building connections between home and school is key for this students’ success.
The grade 3 team planned our new Math unit on Multiplication and Division. We developed a number of centers to support the whole class mini lessons. The centers focus on problem solving, Math games, working with money, Math vocabulary and independent work. As many of our students struggle with addition and subtraction we decided that the money center would focus on improving these skills in a fun way.
We needed a bit of time to collaborate over our curriculum newsletter, so used the time to look past and reflect on the many things we’ve done over the last term to support our kids. We’re so impressed with the gains they’ve made thanks to the support of lots of dedicated adults on our team (specialists and strategists etc.) and the hard work we’re able to plan for as a teaching team. We discussed some of the ongoing and new goals we’ve put in place for our IPP students. We also problem solved some tech issues we were having surrounding reports and things (grrr!).
We also looked at how to spend the remaining teaching days with our students to ensure that routines and expectations stay in place despite the imminent break – which sometimes has unexpected consequences in the behaviours of our students and parents alike. We’ve seen some issues arise with a couple of parents lately, so we used a bit of our time to make sure that they are getting a consistent message and we’re on the same page with regards to resolving those.
Looking forward to the weeks after Spring Break, we’re excited to continue our inquiry into what makes a hero (“The Hero Within”) to begin making plans to instigate some heroism beyond the walls of our classroom. It’s a lot of work to collect media, books, and other resources that are appropriate for our age group on this topic, so we worked on gathering those resources a bit to in order to guide our learning in that area.
The grade four team collaborated on possible social projects for the Maverick’s unit we are starting next. We examined possible final projects using stop motion animation and connecting the stories of the people of Alberta with a classroom timeline. The timeline will be a progressive project that will start with a few basic dates and information and students will work in teams and independently to add to our timeline different events and people from Alberta’s past. The timeline will flow around the classroom on the top of the wall, circling the perimeter of the classroom. As a team we also examined how we would like student led conferences to be organized. We brainstormed possible ideas and activities and created a checklist that students can utilize to guide them through the activities and explaining their work. We will have interactive activities set up at the Smart boards and computers. Students will have the opportunity to share the class Wiki page, keynote presentations and videos. We will also have student assessments, peer assessments and self-assessment rubrics and bull’s eye rubrics from the social unit on the regions of Alberta, including their keynote presentation and Wiki page contributions for students to share and discuss.