I. General Information
School Name: Ellendale Elementary
School District: SD#36 Surrey
Inquiry Team Members:
Katie Vincent: vincent_k@surreyschools.ca
Tasia Wurtz: wurtz_t@surreyschools.ca
Debbie Easton: easton_deborah@surreyschools.ca
Inquiry Team Contact Email: easton_deborah@surreyschools.ca
II. Inquiry Project Information
Type of Inquiry: NOIIE Case Study
Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Primary (K-3)
Curricular Areas Addressed: Language Arts – Literacy, Language Arts – Oral Language
Focus Addressed: Experiential learning, Flexible learning, Growth mindset, Land, Nature or Place-based learning
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? Our focus was on outdoor and place-based learning for our 3 classes.
III. Spirals of Inquiry Details
Scanning: Students were asked about things they would like to learn about over the school year. We discovered the majority of students were very interested in plant & animal life cycles and habitats. Students were then asked where they would like to do their learning about the ideas proposed. We quickly discovered that the outdoors and forest areas near our school had not been considered a place to learn in or about, and we wondered why this area had been omitted from their ideas?
Focus: It would seem that traditional, westernized schools do not include the outdoors as an important area for learning opportunities. We discovered that our students were very, very excited about exploring and learning while outdoors. Students are often disconnected from nature due to lack of adult supervision, along with limited financial resources to provide proper outdoor clothing for all the seasons. We were hoping by purchasing one-piece rain suits for each child, their curiosity and hunger for a connection to nature would grow and they would become more engaged with learning from and taking care of the Earth.
Hunch: All three of us are new to this school this year. We noticed our new school is very small, with only 8 divisions, and tended towards whole-school activities due to their small size. We also noticed there weren’t any grade-groups as there is only one teacher per grade, and we wanted to create colleague support along with student-to-student connections & support. Katie & Debbie volunteered to share our Indigenous Lead teacher position, while Tasia assisted in coordinating the First Peoples in Residence Week. All three of us joined the Surrey Schools placed-based math workshop series, as well as Joyful Encounters workshop series, to gain further insights into our inquiry.
New Professional Learning: This was the first time for many years that a group of teachers worked together with 3 classes to explore place-based learning. Long-term planning needs to be undertaken for more consistent progress. Our school is an inner-city school with very high needs, so there can be interruptions to plans and extra support that we need to have in place to continue this focus. We need extra parent volunteers to come with our groups in the forest area, along with known-to-the-students IESWs, so their break & lunch schedules must be taken into account as well. The grant funds to acquire one-piece rain suits for each student to wear was a tremendous help in encouraging children to go outside, along with their families as they too were wondering what we were doing and wanted to learn alongside the children. We focused on exploring the area around us and making curricular connections each time we explored.
Taking Action: Every Wednesday for our classes is “Wilderness Wednesday” where a learning focus is discussed and students head out, along with families and their teacher, to the forest. While exploring, students discover and share their ideas. Teachers nudge student thinking with open-ended questions and everyone is welcome and encouraged to engage with whatever the learning focus is. We noticed that often, multiple connections are made to other curriculum areas, which then sparks even more questions and discoveries. We hope that our next school year has the same team working together (Katie, Tasia & Debbie), so we may continue our Wilderness Wednesdays together and expand it by encouraging our intermediate classes to join us. While we hope to be together, we are discussing how we can stay connected and engaged in this project while also working at a different school.
Checking: We asked students during our outdoor learning time what they were learning about, why they thought it was important and how they thought their learning was going. The majority of the students were able to explain their learning and they very much looked forward to our outdoor experiences. Some students were even able to discuss how being outdoors helped them learn about different things along with helping their bodies be ‘happy’ as well.
Reflections/Advice:
a. Students were exceedingly engaged while outdoors.
b. Students seem to be instinctively driven to learn and explore their environment.
c. When removed from the 4-walls of the classroom, students became far chattier and enjoyed sharing their discoveries along with asking more questions about things.
d. Katie was able to invite an Indigenous Helping teacher to come along with her and her class while out learning in the forest. We would highly recommend having multiple Indigenous peoples come out multiple times to share their knowledge and learn alongside us too.