This new blog is intended to be a collaborative venture and a place to host and archive resources to support educators interested in Reggio-inspired and inquiry-based mathematics. This professional collaborative inquiry project emerged from teachers' questions and continues to emphasize the important role of teacher as researcher.
Here is a little history of how this project came to be...
In September of 2013 I began a new position with the Richmond School District, supporting teachers and students from K-12 in the areas of math and science. One area of interest expressed by our kindergarten and primary teachers was to consider how the practices inspired by the early childhood schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy might enhance the teaching and learning of mathematics. Our early years teachers were embracing these practices in their classrooms but had not yet focused on the area of mathematics.
We hosted an afternoon on a professional development day in September where teachers came together to see some images and materials that we had been trying out in classrooms. And that was the beginning of the story.
Interest in our district grew and we began to compile our ideas, writing an article for the BCAMT journal and drafting a resource for educators. Our published articles can be found in the right side part of this blog. Over the summer of 2014, we applied for and received a grant from the Vancouver Reggio Consortium to further support our collaborative inquiry. Classroom teachers expressed a need for more and "fresh" materials and we used our grant funding to create four kits - number, pattern, shape and measurement. These kits were piloted in several classrooms over the school year and our now available for circulation through our District Resource Centre.
Teachers who have used the kits have now found ways to have these materials accessible to their students all the time but the kits are being well circulated to teachers new to the project.
In our second year (2014-2015) of our project, along with the kit development, neighbouring districts became interested in the work we were doing and so along with Delta, Surrey and Burnaby, we applied for a grant from the BC Association of Math Teachers (BCAMT) to foster cross-district collaboration. We had two dinner meetings, planning and sharing together. By this point, teachers from West Vancouver and Vancouver had now joined us.
We began using the hashtag #BCAMTreggio on twitter to share and collaborate and teachers from across Canada began to join the conversation. In May 2015 we published a resource through lulu.com, sold at a minimal cost as we do not make any sort of profit from the sales - we just wanted to share our work with those that were interested. At last check over 800 copies have been sold to educators from all over the world...and we look forward to continuing this collaborative project together!
As we move into our third year, there continues to be growing interest in this project, particularly as teachers begin to enact our redesigned curriculum here in BC and notice how closely aligned the practices and principles of Reggio-inspired pedagogy are with the "new" curriculum. We continue to receive support from the BCAMT and have been asked to share our project at conferences.
Many blog posts about our project can be found on the Richmond School District Math and Science Blog linked HERE. In the right side-bar of that blog, click on Reggio-Inspired to search for archived blog posts that might be of interest.
Please check the right side bar of this blog for a photo album of mathematical provocations (click on photo to see whole album), pages that have links to articles and instructional resources as well as a list of blog posts from educators involved in this project.
This is just a start, please join us as we continue to grow this project!
~Janice