I. General Information
School Name: Island ConnectEd
School District: SD#68 Nanaimo-Ladysmith
Inquiry Team Members: Cindy Isabel
cisabel@sd68.bc.ca – please use this one for the website
silvernstone@shaw.ca
Inquiry Team Contact Email: cisabel@sd68.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: Applied Design, skills & Technology, Arts Education, Language Arts – Literacy, Language Arts – Oral Language, Language Arts – Reading, Language Arts – Writing, Mathematics / Numeracy, Science, Social Studies
Focus Addressed: Local Indigenous Knowledges, Land, Nature or Place-based learning
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? Developing multi-grade, K-5 science lessons from both a traditional and Indigenous Principles of Learning lens. These lessons are posted online for parents to access as I work at a distributed learning school using the Canvas LMS. Many of our families have multiple children across the grades, and I wanted to create something that families could do together at the same time.
III. Spirals of Inquiry Details
Scanning: Over the last few years through a variety of communications to and from parents, many expressed to me that they find it difficult to teach more than one young learner at home, especially when students were in a variety of grades. I also sent home one question for each grade, essentially asking parents how they would like to see science content taught, with attention being paid to both Indigenous content and the types of activities available. My own knowledge in science was very low around Indigenous content.
Focus: My goal was to have learning opportunities focused on the science curriculum (as well as touching on other subject areas) be presented so that:
– Families K-5 could do a series of activities together for Earth and Space
– Gave equal attention to Indigenous and traditional ways of knowing: Two Ways of Knowing
– Were as cross-curricular as possible so that students could demonstrate learning in a number of subjects
– The content inspired young scientists
Lessons will be accessible to all of my families next year online. This year, I asked several families to provide feedback on the draft.
Hunch: Covid changed everything. We needed to get all of our lessons accessible online, while maintaining enough flexibility for parents to have choices in their child’s learning. Families need lessons and activities that are interesting and do-able, and many of our families love to learn together. I also knew that my knowledge base was very low around Indigenous content.
New Professional Learning: I explored all of the K-5 Indigenous science content that I could find online. I learned and grew more of an appreciation for what the Indigenous Principles of Learning represent and how pairing both the traditional way of teaching and learning science with Indigenous Principles of Learning and knowledge makes science learning more powerful.
I was able to explore resources from my district more purposefully than I had done before, and I found many resources and materials that I did not know existed.
In terms of design, I created lessons on Canvas for each grade from K-5. I am currently working on copying the lessons over to Google to share with families as well. I am not sure which version is more accessible yet, however, my intention is to have a shortened, printed option for families if needed.
Taking Action: A big part of this project was how to form it for parent access online. I bundled up each lesson with one core family activity, and then grade-level learning for each grade from K-5 based on the BC Science curriculum.
I need to ‘advertise’ this science unit in the fall to highlight it for parents. The title is, ‘Earth and Space: 2 Ways of Knowing’.
Checking: I can better answer this next year as I plan to implement it/make it available starting in September.
Reflections/Advice: I learned that there is a wealth of science out there for Indigenous learning that fit beautifully into what I already know about the science curriculum.
Next, I plan to work closely with my families as they move through the lessons, and take their feedback regarding content and form to make the unit high-interest and accessible.
My advice would be to collaborate with every learning partner that you can while you are building your project. And, leave lots of time as there really is so much information out there!
In conjunction with the Two Ways of Knowing Inquiry Project, I developed 9 early literacy books using Indigenous stories from across Canada to use with my K/1 class. I tested several books in the spring with my young learners and they responded well to the variety of story-telling activities that accompanied each book. Each book has elements of science learning content and/or competencies for each grade K and 1. Activities include story-telling using stones, reading activities such as matching sounds, identifying feelings, noticing nature, creating stories using a variety of materials like pom poms, sticks, wooden people shapes, plastic animals, and more, identifying textures, identifying natural and human-made objects, oral story retelling and creation, and more.
Next year, while I do not yet have a firm plan, I am contemplating appropriate grade-level book bins for grades 4 and 5 and/or sensory literacy bins for either K and 1 or 4 and 5.