RPTSG

Welcome!

Welcome to the Richmond Primary Teachers' Study Group (RPTSG) blog. Our study group has been active in the Richmond School District for nine years. Over the years we have focused on different areas - critical thinking and critical challenges, reading for information across the curriculum, mathematical problem-solving and communication and writing. This year the group has chosen to investigate emergent curriculum and technology integration.

Our study group aims to be a collaborative community in which teachers share and learn from each other, provide feedback and suggestions and that creates a connected network of primary teachers. We want to nurture professional learning and inquiry.

This blog is a way for study group members to both share and archive what we've been investigating. Several of our study group members have their own teaching or classroom blogs and these are listed and linked in the right side bar.

Our study group meets once a month, afterschool on Mondays from 3:30-5:00 in the Blair Library.

For more information about this study group, please contact Janice Novakowski at jnovakowski@sd38.bc.ca

Thank you for visiting!

inquiring more about mathematical inquiry

At our last session, some questions were provided as starting points for our discussion:

What is mathematical inquiry?

How is mathematical inquiry different than inquiry in other subject areas? Or is it?

Does inquiry need to be emergent to be authentic?

How can we create openings for emergent mathematical inquiry in our classrooms?

As teachers shared their experiences and examples of mathematical inquiry, iPads and a QR code linked to TodaysMeet were available on the tables. Teachers could post their thoughts and questions and respond to others and watch the conversation develop on both the iPads and the big screen.

I was able to save a transcript of the discussion to review and use to inform the discussion at our next session. Some excerpts include:

~Janice Novakowski

visual recording in the primary classroom

Our last study group session focused on Visual Recording using technology in the primary classroom.

Web Cams

Skype an Author

http://skypeanauthor.wetpaint.com

The Hancock Wildlife Federation has several webcams of eagles' nests around the Lower Mainland. You can find them here:

http://www.cbc.ca/bc/features/eaglecam/

The Vancouver Aquarium also has several live webcams operating for jellies, sea otters, belugas and penguins:

http://www.vanaqua.org/learn/see-and-learn/live-cams

The Richmond Nature Park also has a nest cam in the Chickadee nesting cam. You cannot access a livestream but the City of Richmond posts clips on its YouTube channel here:

http://www.youtube.com/cityofrichmondbc

Scroll down to find them under Popular and Recent uploads.

 

Digital Cameras

teacher resource book recommendations:

Picture Science by Carla Neumann-Hinds

The Kids' Guide to Digital Photography: How to Shoot, Save, Play with and Print your Digital Photos by Jenni Bidner

iPad Apps: Skitch, PicCollage, Motivational Poster

 

Digital Storytelling

Lots of great digital storytelling ideas here:

http://www.slideshare.net/kbosch/digital-storytelling-with-an-ipad

iPad Apps: Haiku Deck, SonicPics, PixnTell, iMovie, Animoto

And example of digital storytelling from Jen Woo and Janice at Blair is explained in this blog post:

http://blairdragonslibrary.blogspot.ca/2013/04/ocean-animal-storytelling.html

Sasha shared her idea of doing video penpal letters and using the Paco app to isolate images from a video. She also shared how to use Download Helper with Firefox to load an online video to your computer so that you can access it and play it without internet access.

~Janice Novakowski

use of audio technology in the primary classroom

We are loosely following the Scholastic book Teaching with Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts & More by Kathleen Fitzgibbon for the technology component of our inquiry focus this year. Many members in the group are relatively new to technology use while others are fairly experienced and confident. This little book dedicates a short chapter to a technology topic and gives a brief overview and some suggestions.

This past month, our focus was on the use of audio. Although many of us use the voice memo feature on our phones for personal use, we are all beginning to think of the many ways these tools can be used in the classroom. 

Janice has begun to use the app AudioBoo in the library with the primary students to create book review podcasts for the Chocolate Lily picture book award nominees. An example can be heard here:

listen to ‘Seal Song’ on Audioboo

The students have really enjoyed using this app and they almost ALL want to use it. Until recently, Janice had been using her own iPad to record the podcasts but her school just added AudioBoo to all the iPads. You can sign up for an account on audioboo.com so that you can access your podcasts from multiple devices/computers. A nice feature is that you can pause it during recording if a student needs to turn a page or pass on the iPad to another student for his or her turn. At the website, you can also create a url for each podcast or copy an embed code so that the podcast be embedded in a blog post, like I did above.

So that parents and students could listen to the podcasts at home when they take home the corresponding library books, Janice created QR (quick reponse) codes, printed them out and included them on the inside cover of the books. The podcasts are also included on the Blair Library blog for those parents who don't have devices that can read QR codes.

Jen Barker shared an online application called Jing that allows you to do an audio screencast. Jen talked about the potential she saw for screencasting with students, particularly around mathematical problem solving and having students explain their strategies and thinking.

Because some of the study group members did not know how to create a QR code, I played around with Jing and created a screencast explaining and showing how to create a QR code. You can view and listen to it HERE.  As I was working with Jing and then watching and listening after, my brain was swirling with all sorts of ideas for screencasting with students! Thanks for the great introduction to Jing, Jen!

~Janice Novakowski

 

mathematical inquiry

For our February session, our inquiry focus was on mathematical inquiry. I shared two examples at January's session:

1) Using the iPad app, Haiku Deck Making 5 slide show) and the

2) photo book with students' inquiry questions that were inspired by the photos

These examples served as ideas for what mathematical inquiry can be in a primary classroom and how the process of the inquiry can be documented and shared. In these two examples, the Making 5 example documents the final stage of the inquiry and the What Shapes do you see? photobook documents the initial stage of the inquiry.

Using the frame of structured/guided/open inquiry that we have been talking about (reference: Inquiry Takes Time, Science and Children, September 2012), here are some more examples of mathematical inquiry tasks in the primary classroom. 

Structured
During a study of place value, the teacher asks the students to think-pair-share with a partner about how they use numbers in their lives and the teacher records a few examples - addresses, phone numbers, money, time, the date. The teacher chooses a number appropriate for the whole class  (or have the student choose a number within a range) and asks "How many ways can you represent ______?" Students are asked to build the number with cubes and represent it using pictures, numbers and words.

Guided
The class is studying measurement and the students have brainstormed a chart of wonder questions such as "how long is the longest snake in the world?" "how could we measure how long the basketball court is?" etc. The teacher chooses one of the questions for the class to work on that afternoon and invites the students to pursue the question however they like (could have students share their ideas first so they can hear and learn from each other) and that they will need to present their results/findings at the end of the afternoon. So for example, for the snake question, a student might ask to go the library to find a book about snakes and find out what snake is the longest and how long it is and then use a piece of string to create a model of the length to be able to show and share with the class. A guided prompt for students could be...What do you think is longer than a snake? to extend the inquiry and create new investigations that build on the first question.

Open
During a study of geometry, the teacher reminds the students what the PLOs are that the class is focusing on (or big ideas, learning intentions, etc). She asks them to choose one of their inquiry/wonder questions from their math journals that corresponds to the PLOs (the students in this class keeps an ongoing list and are given opportunities to pursue their questions about once a month) or to consider a new question of interest. The children are invited to investigate their questions and share their findings the next day.

As in Jen Barker's example with the Steve Jenkins book, Just a Second, picture books are great starting points for inquiry as well, and there are many resources in your school libraries to support you in this area. A book called Primary Problems to Ponder was developed in Richmond classrooms and there are many Marilyn Burns books about using chilldren's literature and mathematics for problem-based or inquiry learning.

Three of us from the study group recently attended a symposium about Technology and Inquiry. During his keynote, Neil Stephenson, District Principal of Innovation and Inquiry for the Delta School District, explained that mathematics is the most difficult area to work with an inquiry-oriented approach. He felt much of this is because of students and teachers' assumptions and conceptions around what mathematics is. Maybe that could be the initial inquiry in our classrooms...What IS mathematics?

Opportunities need to be provided for students to engage in authentic inquiry that is meaningful to them. In a primary classroom, creating openings for an emergent curriculum allows for authentic inquiry. This can happen during block play when a student wonders about a tall structure or during a discussion of current events when a student wonders aloud about the number of an endangered animal left in the world or the temperature in a country far far away. In our time with students,  it is often easy to let routines and schedules and "have to do this" tasks take over our days. I think we need to be thoughtful and seize the moment when the moment presents itself and jump into some rich mathematical investigations with our students. So if a group of children building in the block area making towers wonders what the tallest buildings in the world are, whether we are currently "doing measurement" or not, embrace the potential of that investigation and watch the engagement lead to learning.

~Janice Novakowski

presentation software and apps to share inquiry work

Our tech focus for our last session was presentation software. Most of us use Powerpoint regularly and some of our upper primary students are using it themselves for independent projects. A grade three student I am working with is doing an inquiry project on the uses of technology (and using technology to share her findings!). I am amazed at her fluency with powerpoint at her age and her passion about thinking about the purposes and roles of technology at school.

I shared a relatively new iPad app called Haiku Deck that I have been using regularly with students. We have it loaded on our school iPads but I also use it on my personal iPad to quickly capture inquiry work as it is happening. There is just enough space to capture a student's question or comment in the caption for each image. I like that you can either use your own images or upload Creative Commons images from the site. Once you have finished your "deck" you can export it as a pptx file so that those that don't have the Haiku Deck app can view it as a powerpoint presentation.

The following is a Haiku Deck created with kindergarten students as we walked around outside during the winter. I documented the students' questions on a piece of paper as we walked and I added the questions to the Haiku Deck when we were back in the school.

Here is the link to WINTER WONDERS.

And some examples of the slides...

Other apps that can be used for presentation like this but in which you can also record audio include Show Me  (shared by Lisa Schwartz) which only utlizes a single slide but multimedia, drawing and audio can be added to it and PixnTell which I am started to play around with.
~Janice Novakowski

time inquiry

On our sharing site on Richnet, Jen Barker shared a time inquiry she did with her upper primary students. Thanks for sharing Jen!

I thought I would share a mini-inquiry I began with my students last Friday and completed today.  I read aloud the book Just A Second by Steve Jenkins: A Different way to Look at Time and then the students brainstormed three questions they wondered about - connected to a unit of time such as a minute, day, week or year in a style similar to Jenkins.   Next each student researched their most favourite question and typed their response in a Word Doc.  Lastly they each took a screenshot and dropped their screenshots in the public folder.   I then uploaded them to the program Animoto.

   

The sources we used were quite broad and possibly not all accurate.   Initially most of the students typed their question into Google.   I then suggested they find three sites/blogs that state something similar - I briefly talked about triangulation and how news reporters do this -  but not every student could find three sources.   I popped around and helped those that needed it.

The public folder is standard on the Macs in the computer labs.   To take a screenshot on a Mac you hold down the Shift, Command, and the number four key at the same time and then highlight the portion you want to capture.   The screenshots show up on the desktop.   I had previously gone into the Public folder at my school and created a folder called TIME and then students then opened the Public folder, and dragged and dropped their pictures into the time folder.   It sounds complicated but it really wasn't.    

The last step was dragging the Time folder onto my Richnet desktop.  Then when I logged on to Richnet through my personal laptop I pulled the Time folder off and was able to place all the screenshots on my desktop.  Animoto wouldn't let me upload the screenshots within the file, but would upload all of the screenshots from my desktop.

 -Jen Barker

introduction to the smart board

For our Deccember 3rd session, our district's teacher consultant for technology integration, Chris Loat, presented a session on the Smartboard.

Thanks to Lisa Schwartz for the following notes!

Exchange.SmartTech.com is a website that you can go to where you can get smart board files (not the only place you can go).  You do need an account on this website (free account).

Can sort by grade, type or subject area.  Go to the US one because you can get about 40 times more files.  

 You can also create files with the Notebook software.  The Notebook software is in all the labs.  You can  get students to create the lesson or the notebook files.  

You can save any lessons you create right onto your computer.  A good idea to create files to save your files based on curricular areas.

You can also google Smart Board lessons or Smart Board files to find many lessons that are free. Teachers are sharing their lessons on the web.

 Primary ideas:

Classroom attendance up on the smart board.  As students enter the classroom, they drag their name from "At home"  to "At School"  There is a spot on the side for Total Students.  Total Absent.  Students Present. Don't save this at the end or you will have to go and manually move all the names back.

Calendar can be done on the SmartBoard.  Weather. Month.  Can also be found on Exchange.SmartTech.com

A graphing activity on the Smart Board, During the Summer, did you....many choices.  If they did more than one, they can clone their name and put it under more than one choice.  Tap the name once and an area will appear.  Click arrow for choices and select clone.

Canadian Provinces and Territories-  another set of lessons available from Exchange. SmartTech.com  It is like a jigsaw puzzle.  Take the map of Canada apart.  Now the kids move the pieces back to re-create the map of Canada.  Name match is another activity.  Ability to check and see how many you got right.

Students could download these lessons onto computers in the lab and the kids could work on their own maps and jigsaw puzzles. Notebook is in all labs in the school district.  Any of these lessons can be downloaded onto the lab computers.

Sort Canada's Provinces and Territories:  put it into the spinning vortex, if it is right it stays in and if it is wrong the vortex spits it out.

Geometry:  3D shapes.  A lesson where students can match the names to the shapes.  Vocabulary:  Base.  Vertex. Edge.  Face.

A Smart Board can be used like an electronic white board.  Michelle uses it in small groups to practice sight words, word families, spelling, unscramble sentences.

-Lisa Schwartz

 

welcome to 2012-2013!

This is the ninth year of the Richmond Primary Teachers' Study Group! At the end of last year, the study group was surveyed and three main areas of interest emerged - personalized learning/emergent curriculum/learning through inquiry and what this means in a primary classroom, pedagogical documentation and how it supports assessment and learning and the integration of technology in the primary classroom.

For our first session, our study group inquiry questions that we will investigate this year were shared:

What does an inquiry approach offer students and teachers?

What is emergent curriculum and how can it work alongside a prescribed curriculum?

How could the integration of technology support teaching and learning in the primary classroom?

How does pedagogical documentation support formative assessment?

And of course, new questions are going to come up along the way!

The picture book Questions, Questions by Marcus Pfister was shown to the group. This is one of our study group books this year and can be purchased for $8. Janice shared how she used it with students in a K and a K/1 class to inspire their own inquiry questions. 

After drawing and recording the students' questions (using video and scribing), Janice took the students outside to go for a very short, first walk outdoors. The students looked up, down and around and shared what they noticed and wondered.

What are raccoons called when they are babies?

How can gold be shiny?

What kind of bird did this feather come from?

Is that honey on the tree?

Photos of the students, their drawings and questions were compiled into a short video via animoto. These videos are a way to document the process and products of learning and young students love seeing themselves and their ideas in a "movie". Free 30-second videos may be created using a combination of photos, text slides and video clips or a subscription can be purchased for a small fee that includes more options and longer videos. Some teachers were able to get a free limited time subscription for teachers through the website. Your animoto videos stay saved and accessible through an online account. You can also retrieve embed codes for them to embed in blogs or websites as well as save the videos as mp4 files to your desktop. An animoto app is also available for iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads.

Three forms of inquiry were shared and discussed (structured, guided and open) and teachers considered and discussed openings for inquiry in their classrooms.

Our second study group book is a technology resource book and the first chapter was shared with the group. The first chapter focuses on  websites and search engines. We learned about boolean terms and searches and three primary student-friendly search engines were shared:

 www.askkids.com

www.boolify.org

www.kidrex.org

We also looked at how to access worldbookonline.com and the different features available.

Chris Loat, the district's new teacher consultant in the area of integration of technology joined us and will be sharing the new district templates for classroom websites at our next session (October 22).

Teachers had some time to discuss how they were using technology in their classrooms and how they might incorporate an idea from today's session. For our next session, teachers were asked to try something new in their classrooms and think about how they would document the process so they will be able to share it at the next session.

~Janice

point of view writing

Having young students consider another's point of view can often be difficult. Using children's picture books is a way to model how writing from a different point of view might sound. Many of these books also involve personification which is a literary device students often use in poetry writing.

 

Memoirs of a Goldfish

 

 

Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin (and other titles)

 

 

 

 

The Little Red Pen

 

 

 

After reading one of the stories, have students choose an animal or object they are familiar with and think about what that object might think, see, feel, wonder about, do etc. Students can write a story, write diary entries or write a letter to someone from the animal or object's point of view.

 

children's books to inspire letter writing

Children's Books to Inspire Letter Writing shared by study group members during our January session

Dear Mr. Blueberry by Simon James

 

 

 

I Wanna Iguana by Karen Kaufman Orloff

(can also use for persuasive writing)

A persuasive letter writing lesson in partners can be found HERE.

Meerkat Mail by Emily Gravett