I. General Information
School Name: Nakusp Elementary School
School District: SD#10 Arrow Lakes
Inquiry Team Members: Elizabeth Tupper elizabeth.tupper@sd10.bc.ca
Anita Vibe avibe@sd10.bc.ca
Inquiry Team Contact Email: elizabeth.tupper@sd10.bc.ca
II. Inquiry Project Information
Type of Inquiry: NOIIE Case Study
Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Intermediate (4-7)
Focus Addressed: Numeracy, Core competencies (for example, critical thinking, communication, problem solving)
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? Our focus was developing ADST skills and financial literacy while making intergenerational connections and giving back to the community by running a Winter Market.
III. Spirals of Inquiry Details
Scanning: When Biz asked her students what they wanted to learn this year, many of the students identified craft skills (knitting, sewing, cooking etc.) as an area of interest. Additionally, financial literacy (budgeting, making change, etc.) is something that we struggle to do in an authentic way. Also, a family that is an integral part of our school community has been dealing with a medical situation that requires them to be at Children’s Hospital. Many of the students want to help, but do not have an outlet to do so. When we look at our MDI data, we see that students generally feel very connected at school, but not in the community at large. Getting more community connections into the school, and helping the students see that there are many adults in the community that care about them, is a top priority. A lot of students and families are struggling right now, and this is a chance for the students to feel surrounded by care.
Focus: In the past, the big winter project that our students engaged in was a winter concert. Most of the intermediate students did not enjoy taking part in the concert, leading to a stressful and unpleasant end to the first term. We were looking to make a change. Finding a project that allowed students to make intergenerational connections, bring community members into the school, give students a chance to give back to their community in authentic ways, and learn new skills were priorities for us.
Hunch: We were very stuck in the tradition of a winter concert, even though it was not something that the intermediate teachers or students enjoyed. We have also had difficulty rebuilding community connections that were lost during the Covid shutdowns. Getting folks back into the schools has been a challenge.
New Professional Learning: We learned how to run a market and coordinate a large group of volunteers. We learned how to talk to our students about how to conduct themselves as employees. Some of us learned new skills, or how to scale up a hobby so that a group of students can make the product. We used shared documents and collaboration time to support each other as colleagues. The resources provided by BC Children’s Hospital Foundation were fantastic. They were very supportive and informative.
Taking Action: Our students are familiar with working in groups composed of students from across the intermediate grades. They are also used to taking part in surveys about their preferences. This allowed us to find out what they wanted to learn and put them into effective learning groups. As a staff team we are also used to working on large projects together. This experience allowed us to focus our energy on the project, rather than on figuring each others’ styles and strengths out. We meet together as a team regularly and use shared documents as a way of sharing information when we cannot meet in person.
Checking: This project was wonderful. We had the students do a core competency self-reflection after the project. All of the students felt like they have made a meaningful contribution. All of them want to do it again next year, with most of the students being very enthusiastic about the idea. Overall, we are very satisfied with how the project went.
Reflections/Advice: The students would like this to be an annual event. They loved learning new skills, learning with different groups of students and volunteers and working on the evening of the event. Everyone, however, found it exhausting. The groups met for two afternoons over two weeks. They were yawning and almost falling asleep from the intensity of the learning that they were doing. The adults were all exhausted as well. We have discussed trying to spread things out more, or having fewer work days, but we are not sure if that would help. Learning new skills is hard work, but spreading the sessions out more would make it difficult for them to remember the skills from the previous session. Having community volunteers was wonderful and allowed us to have smaller group sizes. This made learning more enjoyable for everyone. It also made it difficult to find enough work spaces for everyone. We had high school volunteers come over as well, and that made a big difference. It was a great chance for the older and younger students to mingle over a longer period of time than they usually would.