I. General Information
School Name: École Les Mélèzes-dorés
School District: SD#93 Conseil scolaire francophone
Inquiry Team Members: Marie-Pascale Brown : mariepasacale_brown@csf.bc.ca
Bonnie Antoine : bonnie_lepine@csf.bc.ca
Sylvie de Grandpré : sylvie_degrandpre@csf.bc.ca
Inquiry Team Contact Email: sylvie_degrandpre@csf.bc.ca
II. Inquiry Project Information
Type of Inquiry: NOIIE Case Study
Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Primary (K-3), Intermediate (4-7)
Curricular Areas Addressed: Language Arts – Oral Language, Language Arts – Writing, Mathematics / Numeracy
Focus Addressed: Local Indigenous Knowledges, Literacy, Numeracy, Core competencies (for example, thinking, communication, personal and social)
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? Developing your “how” learning story: Drawing from Ktunaxa “how” stories (and being outdoors), to guide students in explaining their learning.
III. Spirals of Inquiry Details
Scanning: This year our older students (grade 6) guided the process and turned out to be role models for the younger students (grade 2-3-4). The key remained for the students to become more detailed in their answers while explaining their learning. Because of the presence of our older students we noticed an improvement in everyone’s responses.
Students were more inclined to share stories relating to their learning and place/time once they saw how the grade 6 students modelled making connections. This turned out to be an organic process, mainly taking place in the morning during school-wide messages (we do morning messages outdoors). This year, for younger students, we heard more stories relating to place/time (i.e. yesterday morning when we were in the forest…), thus setting their learning in a context. We made a point of referring explicitly to the Principles of Learning while listening to interactions, teaching, and resolving issues when they arose. For example, repetition became an understood process (we are all going to repeat what we learn a lot; nature repeats a lot; repeating is a good thing; hearing a story multiple times is a learning opportunity). Students started being able to notice their learning progress and express it in more details. Of all things, this came through during morning/recess/lunch games! Students started noticing changes in their own skills over time and could name these changes. We started hearing phrases like “before I couldn’t… But I practiced and now I can….” Also, some of our older students were able to highlight other students’ learning processes. Students continued to connect with Land and, because we started the year in this way, were able to name some of the ways their learning related to place (Indigenous stories; Ktunaxa language; their own experience). We were surprised by the change in student expression. We think in large part the success of this year has been due to the skills of our grade 6 students in modelling how they shared their learning and asking helpful questions to get more details from grade 2-4 students.
Focus: This was year two of our work towards encouraging students to articulate their learning in a more comprehensive manner. Last year revealed that our scope was too broad. Thus, we invited storyteller Nasuʔkin Joe Pierre Jr. earlier (in October). He shared “how stories” with the school once again – some which he repeated from last visit. As a means to scaffold the learning and anchor the stories, we intended on focusing on problem solving strategies and step by step structures present in these stories as models to explain everyday learning. Our questions centered on students’ ability to extend their vocabulary to explain learning processes.
Hunch: Last year, while emphasizing the words of the day during the morning messages (that we do mostly outside), we noticed students’ ability to respond and generate connections with the school’s learning forest. As we continued this process this school year, we noticed that highlighting a Ktunaxa word every week (instead of every day) generated a lot more interactions on the part of the students over the span of a week. This was due to a great mistake where we forgot to change the word of the day early on, and kept the same word for a week and a half. Students started scaffolding on stories/learning/experiences they shared. We knew that our students spoke French, knew many Ktunaxa words, and could speak forest… We realized this year that over time, if we opened the sharing time often (every day for our school) students were starting to scaffold over the span of 5 week days, and sometimes express connections with previous learning/words of the week. We chose to stay in these moments and get students talking, and then refer to these morning moments and tie them to other parts of their learning.
New Professional Learning: We focused on the First Peoples Principles of Learning – learning through stories, more specifically – the Core Competencies as designed and presented through a Ktunaxa lens, and First Voices (as per our learning through Ktunaxa language courses). Our guidance came from Ktunaxa guests who shared stories and modelled their own learning (of plant knowledge, of the Ktunaxa language, and of various skills they are working on). However, as we found out, the modelling our two grade 6 students provided turned out to be a rich source of learning, which caused us to consider peer learning more closely. This strengthened our explorations of Peter Liljedahl “Thinking Classroom” and extended some of the ideas to our morning outdoor routine (here, we ended up working backwards from our initial intention)! We used the performance standards for writing, and criteria building, with our older students. We continued to draw from Monique Gray Smith’s work in “Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults” and her story books which are part of our library. The goal was to focus on expressing our thinking/learning, and to further develop “how” thinking in French.
Taking Action: We worked as a school, but focused on grade 2-3-4 and 6:
We emphasized a Ktunaxa word every morning, but quickly realized that a word of the week generated a lot more learning/thinking/sharing.
Because we were inspired by the “how” stories shared by Ktunaxa guests, we invited a storyteller early in the school year as a means to anchor and relate learning to the structure/lessons of these stories. We used pictures and puppets as permanent displays to remind students of the characters in each story, and what the story teaches. We were also inspired by the way one of our guests openly talks about her processes (asks herself questions and checks) when learning about ethnobotany, and how she models learning her Ktunaxa language. She also speaks often of the skills she is working at improving and how she is doing. We felt it was important to reinforce this modeling and use stories to strengthen students’ understanding of how they are learning.
For students in grade 2-3-4 we focused on the learning and connecting to Ktunaxa words, place, time, and we also did vocabulary development in French. We established a routine during morning messages outdoors where a word of the week relating to ongoing learning/school/events/weather/etc. was featured (for example the word for bee). Since the word was shared and repeated throughout the week, students ended up with plenty of time to eventually connect their learning to this word and link it to forest/in nature, or share stories relating to other students’ learning. In this way, we could often “see” scaffolding happening in front of us and name it! We continued working on asking students “how” questions (ex. “How did you connect to this story? How did you know? What idea sparked a story for you? How is this helping us learn with bees? Etc.).
In addition, we continued our two year-long strategies with older students (in class). In language arts, we worked on having students assess their own written work and build a sequence of work samples showing their progress. They also worked on formulating plans for specific written projects as a way to improve how to structure their ideas (this was a choice). Students also worked on building criteria lists or one column rubrics for some projects and learned about executive functions as part of the learning process. The idea has been for them to continue noticing their improvements and be involved in discussions that describe their learning process (in French). Students continued to be encouraged to share how they work to improve their learning and monitor their efforts. In math, an emphasis on showing/sharing your thinking yielded some fun happenings in the class. Students started telling each other how to share their “how” responses and they realized that what’s obvious to one person may not be for someone else. Thus the need to express yourself with clarity, and to ask specific questions.
Checking: This year, we saw a noted difference in the quality of connections shared during the morning messages (outdoors) and the inquisitive questions that arose from sharing together as a school. With each new word of the week, we noticed that the number of hands going up to share could reach half of the students on occasion (8 or nine for us), and regularly 4 to 5 hands up on any given morning. The younger students continued to grow in confidence over time and this can be attributed to the repetitive presentation of the work of the week, the modelling from our grade 6 students, and the 5 day span through which they could risk sharing and find safety and support when they chose to speak up (we would include kindergarten and grade 1 in this process as they regularly participated).
We are surprised and satisfied with the mistake that was made earlier this year – where a word ended up being presented for a whole week and thus changed our approach. We were surprised by the interactions between the students, and also by the modelling/questioning that took place.
In class (often outdoors), grade 4 and 6 students increased their participation in the creation of rubrics/criteria lists for particular projects. The performance standards started becoming a guide indicating the nuances in their work (your sentences are good, you need to work on your vocabulary).
The project was fairly successful; however, it was constant work to ensure links between all the parts! We did note an improvement in the way students responded to feedback and how they noticed their own progress. An unforeseen observation was that, as a means to be environmentally friendly, students used the same writing notebook as last year (for their journaling for example). This use over two school years was an effective way for students to notice and express how learning/improving was going. The math stories were once again a fun part of the project and students challenged each other by reminding themselves and their peers to be clear. Anchoring learning in Indigenous “how” stories worked well again this year. We used photos to record student work in some cases, and we explored our notebooks with more curiosity once students noticed they had come a long way since the beginning of grade 3/5.
Reflections/Advice: Our project was again too broad, but this time it yielded some incredible turn of events which worked in our favour. In this spirit, we sure wish other schools some happy mistakes and crazy moments of realizations.
This year, we were inspired by students’ participation during morning messages along with the quality of the discussions that took place. Our morning meeting only lasts about 10 minutes daily but can be very rich. By anchoring the year with stories right at the beginning (with a guest) we were able to draw on this experience and students had a point of reference. We also put these stories on display by using puppets and images (with permission) in the library. Our goal of starting with a guest worked well. The change from a word of the day to a word of the week during morning messages transformed students, responding frequency and responses/connections. Having older students work on their own habits regarding explaining the “how” of their learning was somewhat successful but requires a more focused approach altogether. Their ability to extend their learning to a different context like morning messages was a bonus that encouraged younger students in their response.
We would like to continue working with “how” stories that guide how students can explain their learning. Simultaneously, we think we should explore peer modelling within the context of our goal to enhance the ability to explain the what and the how of learning. As we work with our older students we need to narrow the scope in class, especially in language arts. Recognizing serendipitous moments and building on those may prove a bit more streamlined than trying to attach many goals to the project. As such, revisiting the unintended outcomes of our environmental efforts, such as keeping notebooks until they are filled before getting a new one, proved quite effective with the grade 4-6 students. In short, create a fluid circle where explaining learning is featured in class, then reinvested during morning messages as a means to encourage all students to reflect.
In a nutshell, continue to refine the goals and, as we often tell the students, apply the “less is more” mantra.