Changing Views

So here’s the deal. I’m a bit impatient when it comes to some things.

“How long is that download going to take?”

“Come on, boot up faster”

“Seriously? Six months until the next OS update?”

Interestingly though I find myself patient when driving in traffic and generally calm when waiting in line for things.

One thing that really gnaws away at my low frustration tolerance shortcoming is change. Change in myself and other people. I want it all to happen faster. Not only do I want it to happen faster I want it to mesh perfectly with my utopian ideals of the way things should be. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

It took me a couple of months to realize that this was contributing to the dissonance around my classroom practice this term. People weren’t buying what I was selling. BYOD didn’t happen in the first week…

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primaryinquirylearning

Wow…I haven’t posted in a long time.  It’s absolutely a busy time of year, but then again, what time of year isn’t a busy time?  Having said that, I had to post because I had such an exciting lesson on my mental math strings today.  Once a week, I dedicate a forty minute period to “whiteboard math,” focusing on mental math strings.  This is an approach inspired by the work of Catherine Fosnot in her book, Young Mathematicians at Work.  Essentially, a “string” is a set of computations that builds understanding towards utilizing a particular strategy.  I have been focusing on the strategy of “jumping by tens” to add two numbers together.  For example, I started my string with 63+10 and I asked my students “How many jumps of ten do I need to make?”  Using an open number line, students begin with the bigger number and make one…

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primaryinquirylearning

Over the past week, I have been including a variety of games and problem-solving questions for students to work on.  Personally, I see a lot of value in the math games, as it provides a highly engaging way of helping students understand concepts of number.  I am hoping to include some updates and pictures of these games in my next post. 

In conjunction with our work with estimation, I asked students to solve a problem posed by the parent council.  The question:  They want an estimate of how much food they will need to order a special lunch for primary students in grades 1-3.  They need to order enough food for each student: 1 hot dog, 1 salad, 1 milk, and 2 cookies.  We discussed how many primary classes there are (10), and that there are approximately 20 students in each class.  We also had a conversation about the fact…

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primarilylearning

I wanted to know if my students knew about numbers –  more specifically, could they talk about themselves numerically, recording their ideas in a poster using numbers, pictures and maybe words.  I modeled the activity first, using my numbers, starting with my house number, and number of people in my family. I asked the students if they could think of any other numbers that might be important to me. The kids came up with lots of ideas; phone number, age, license plate, birthday, number of pets I have etc. I was quite impressed with the range of ideas that developed. I then gave the task to them, to create their own “My Numbers” poster. As I walked around it was quite evident those who knew their numbers (house, phone numbers, birthdate) and those who didn’t. I was impressed to see kids correctly write correctly the year they were born. I…

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primarilylearning

A detailed drawing of what the sidewalk looks like in the eyes of a grade 1 child.

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Patience

I have been thinking about the knowledge and skills that we need to have as we embark on the inquiry journey. We can know what to do – starting with a long term vision of what we want the classroom experience to be for our students. We can also have an idea about how to do it (consider the First Five Days of Inquiry…) but perhaps the most important element I think is the disposition, or mindset, that we bring to teaching itself.

I see teaching as inquiry. We need to approach new ideas and challenges with curiosity and openness and a willingness to persevere.  Along with this, I think there is one very important characteristic that is often implied but not explicitly described which is the habit of Patience.  We need to be patient with ourselves, patient with our students and patient with the idea that it is not possible to change everything at once – that change is incremental and that an inquiry-based classroom evolves rather than appears.  When our current realities seem so far from our long term vision, patience is needed.

Patience is a characteristic that needs to be nurtured.  When we step into our classrooms and feel they do not meet up with our ideals we need to remember to celebrate small successes. To notice and reflect on the positive changes – the student who builds on a classmate’s idea, the students who persist with a challenge a little longer than the day before, the student who responds with wonder, the student who asks a question without an easy answer…..and to celebrate these as they are all signs of an evolution towards an inquiry-based classroom.

 

 

 

 

Inquiry Into Estimation

primaryinquirylearning

Yes, my second post of the day.  I intended to post my diagnostic yesterday, but was too tired (September exhaustion!).  But I felt like I needed to post my inquiry into estimation because it really didn’t go the way I had planned, and the whole point of this blog is to document the “messy” parts of my math inquiry, too.  Armed with my lesson plan and materials (chart paper and centimetre cubes in cups), I asked my students to get together in groups to estimate how many cubes I had in each container.  Based on the diagnostic, I grouped students who were already unitizing in their own groups, hoping that the students who counted by 1’s might be able to discuss strategies to estimate and count more efficiently.  I had my clipboard ready with anticipated strategies – those who used a benchmark to estimate, and those who did not.  When…

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Week 1 —-hummmmmm

Beginning with INQUIRY in Mind

So begins a brand new year.  I won’t lie, it’s been a little different this year.  I want to give a shout out to all those teachers who don’t have their own classrooms and teach in the rooms that are not being used by random homeroom teachers.  

I found myself in a very different place this year.  With my job slightly changing and not having a classroom to call my own I was very apprehensive about starting off this year.  I have to thank one of my grade partners who has basically let me take over parts of his room and teach my literacy block.  I made a deal with him and took over some board space (chalk and bulletin) for daily routine type stuff and in turn am sharing a SmartBoard with him.  We’re finding the partnership quite great and it has really forced us to share ideas…

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First Week

primarilylearning

 I had high hopes for a first day of school activity which I thought would illicit a plethora of questions from my grade 1 students about what they saw in our classroom and what they might be doing.  After having the children wander the classroom, stopping them often to question them about what they saw that was the same as their kindergarten classroom and what was different, I brought them back to the carpet to ask them what they wondered about what they saw. Did they have any questions?  No, questions, but lots of excited discussion about new pencil cases and markers that were in their back pack just waiting to be opened!

Day 2 of the first week I decided to try the activity again but without  the talk of similarities and differences from Kindergarten. I just wanted them to look at all the things that we have in…

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Beginning with INQUIRY in mind…

Beginning with INQUIRY in Mind

I’ve been playing with the idea of mapping out my units for the year, integrating subject areas and of course planning with inquiry in mind.  I’ve developed the first draft of a timeline to be connected to my long-range plans that breaks down my year into integrated inquiries.

Each unit of study is broken down and then connected to an inquiry question or key question.  In my unit plans the questions will be further broken down into guiding questions.

This is a first draft and I’d love to get feedback and thoughts.  My ultimate goal is to build these question in student friendly language so that students have more ownership of the learning and as we move through the learning process we co-develop learning targets and success criteria which will help them in completing the culminating pieces for each unit.  Before I can do that, I need to have an…

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