cross-district meeting: May 6 2020

Due to not being able to meet in person, we had a Zoom session with about 30 educators from eight districts join us at 3pm on May 6 via Zoom to share, reflect on the year and think ahead to next year.

We shared some of the things we had been doing that were bringing us joy in our work and how we could help others to see and spread joy during this time. The following is the Joy slide that inspired our "breakout room" discussions.

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A theme that came up throughout our sharing was the idea of CONNECT. That it was connecting with our students and connections to people and places that was bringing us joy during this time. Sharon spoke of the joy she and her students were feeling in being connected from home-to-home. In order to help students feel connected to special places in their community, Sarah shared how she has been doing some of her read aloud from places around her school and community. There was a also a sense of joy in realizing this whole experience has created awareness in families about what math is and how it can be experienced at home. 

 

A few district resources were shared:

Lauren MacLean from Coquitlam has created a series of getting outside videos, linking math and the outdoors including patterns and mapping. They are not yet posted to a website but can be accessed through here twitter account:

https://twitter.com/lkmaclean

Angela Meredith from Burnaby mentioned the collaboration between StrongStart educators ad Kindergarten teachers at Forest Grove Elementary:

https://sd41blogs.ca/forestgrove-strongstart/​

(scroll through to read posts about Wandering Wednesdays)

Many teachers mentioned the Walking Curriculum by Gillian, Judson, SFU prof, as something have been drawing from for their weekly plans for families. The book can be found at some local bookstores and through amazon.ca.

 

At the end of our hour together, we thought ahead to next year and used the polling feature on Zoom to do a quick anonymous vote about an area of focus for next year.

The poll results were:

So we will as a group focus on storytelling and math (although of course there's great possibilities to intersect, the outdoors, story and math!).

We brainstormed several ideas for this year's version of Outdoor Classroom Day and will share those in another blog post soon!

Take care everyone...we look forward to continuing the conversation on various platforms - Twitter and Instagram and this blog, until we can meet again face to face.

~Janice