our second sharing session of the year

The lead teams from the districts involved in our project (Richmond, Surrey, Delta, Burnaby, Vancouver and West Vancouver) came together during the evening of February 3 at Elsie Roy Elementary in Vancouver. We welcomed a team from Coquitlam and hope that a Langley team will be able to join us at our next event.

Several different materials were brought and displayed for others to be inspired by, or to add to their shopping lists!

We provided some updates to our project - that we received a third grant from the BCAMT to support our work together. We will need to write another article for the BCAMT journal Vector - wondering what we should share this time!

Each district team shared an update from their district - we are all in different places and points of our own professional inquiries and hearing from other districts helps us to consider professional learning structures that might work to support teachers in our districts as well as hear about exciting things happening in classrooms!

We heard how the Surrey School District hosted an event for their teachers - almost 130 of them! More info about this is here on Sandra Ball's blog: click here

There was lots of tweeting during the evening...

We heard about how counting collections have taken off in many classrooms across the Lower Mainland, how some classes are beginning to consider the question "what mathematics lives in this place?" and how digging deep into a concept like shapes, big numbers or equivalence provides such insight into students' thinking and understanding and how students' questions can guide the learning.

 

Based on some questions from district teams, I shared some thoughts on place-based pedagogy and the First Peoples Principles of Learning in relation to Reggio-Inspired principles and practices. Focusing on the ideas of self, story and place, we talked about the possibilities of story-ing in math and how the use of natural materials is relevant to our context. Here on the west coast of Canada, children find and use shells, pinecones, rocks, twigs etc as their "loose parts" in their outdoor play and it only makes sense to bring these into the classroom to provide a blurred line between these learning spaces. Teachers were able to create a "story box" to take away with them.

And the next day on twitter, this pops up in my feed. Alana in Delta brought together ideas about mathematical ideas, place and story in her classroom.

 It was another great evening of networking, sharing and learning. One teacher came up to me at the end of the evening and thanked me - she said she always felt "filled up" after time with this group. It is always stimulating, inspiring and collaborative - we are learning together.

We will be having a sharing meeting again in the spring and plans for a Saturday spring institute are in the works!

~Janice

Comments

[Melanie Lynchuk]

This is great. Thanks for sharing. Where are those totem pole wood figures from? They're beautiful!

[Janice]

hi Melanie
They are actually puzzle pieces from a toddler puzzle made by Native Northwest, a Vancouver company.
Janice