Documentation
I wanted to share a brief view into some of the documentation that has guided our inquiries, solved some of our questions, or was there to help communicate our ideas during play projects. A brief summary is located below each sample of some recent co-created documentation with other team members and students.
The ideas represented below help to make our thinking visible so can find the links between knowledge, understandings, concepts, skills and much more. While I could go on for days about how much fun and meaningful it is to communicate the power of documentation I will save that for a time we can share a cup of tea together :)
A piece of our word inquiry wall where we looked at how we can inquire into words in Year 1. We identified a word's meaning, what other words are in its family, what its structure is (are there any affixes), some photos of them identifying how many phonemes they hear and how they can tap out its spelling. (not picture) was there word matrixes that helped them to see common affixes which showed great benefit to their writing times.
My goal: We inquire into words and students are able to come to conclusions about how our English language works. Rather than give them spellings, this word inquiry wall was a common place to check during units of inquiry, reading, and writing times.
A few highlights from a MUCH larger piece of documentation regarding some of our main concepts and skills in Year 1. I've always loved how students love seeing themselves learning. Our goal was to see how interdisciplinary our learning is. We give feedback while creating games outside, while building, etc. We plan our ideas EVERYWHERE, by highlighting this planning process students were more in tune to their thinking processes. We shared how we plan before and while writing, about what kind of tower they will build, about today's rules for their game of tag, etc.
Teacher goal: build students metacognition skills and see how skills/concepts transfer between different parts of their day.
This a play project that worked in so perfectly with our current math inquiry. While in a team meeting a coworker said "How can your curriculum leverage your students' play, what are we teaching them so they can connect the two?" I have not forgotten that quote since. I heard students talking about if the ramps would work or not. My assistant and I took more time to listen and inquire into their thoughts and ideas. We came up with predictions, found ways to test our theories, and found out which ramp they believed worked the best. We ended with a few great thinking routines. We talked about how what might we need to be able to document our thinking, so added mini-lessons around how to use checkmarks, greater than and less than, and some ideas around probability.
My goal: link the way we think about our mini-lessons, how can we use our students' play to help empower their voices and bring that into our core subject mini-lessons.
Listening to a child's questions and interests: Our problem - Why do our towers keep falling down. Identifying schema, doing research, creating and testing, with lots of reflection along the way.
My goal: highlight student voice.
How can we communicate with others about out discoveries, how can we teach others? While creating a marble run students added problems they had, and others could then work on finding solutions.
My goal: how can we foster agency and problem solving while improving communication skills.
Outdoor learning is a HUGE part of our day at NIST. It not only allows time to develop holistically through social interactions, and build gross motor muscles but it gives us a chance to inquire into students' interests and questions. At the start of the year, we always have a lot of insects around which is always very exciting to the little ones. We collaborate with the library to bring resources outside and understand how valuable research can be to our learning and questions. We focused on: "What do we already know?" "What do we want to know?" "What do I see?" "What do I notice?"
My goal: give students a chance to build their own documentation that highlights our idea that all children are young theorists.
A mini peek into our interdisciplinary play where we link our core subject mini-lessons into our students' play projects. Students are creating a zoo and we were discussing how we can use texts to improve our play and gain new understandings. They had an empty panda area, so we went to the library to get books so we could create a more natural habitat for their animals. "What do we notice and see?" were then taught in our readers' workshop.
My goal: how can I use our students' play to inform and improve my core subject mini lessons. What skills can we teach to enhance students' play.