School Name: Savory School
School District: SD#62 Sooke
Inquiry Team Members: Bonnie O’Neill boneill@sd62.bc.ca
Jenni Shipway jshipway@sd62.bc.ca
Inquiry Team Contact Email: boneill@sd62.bc.ca
Type of Inquiry: NOIIE
Grade Levels: Primary (K-3)
Curricular Area(s): Language Arts – Literacy
Focus Addressed: Community-based learning, Core competencies (for example, critical thinking, communication, problem solving), Differentiated instruction, Experiential learning, First Peoples Principles of Learning, Flexible learning, Growth mindset, Inclusion and inclusive instructional strategies, Inquiry-based learning, Land, Nature or Place-based learning, Self-regulation, Social and emotional learning
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? How does providing children with Indigenous materials during story workshop help the students to make connections to the First Peoples Principles of Learning that are taught throughout the year?
Scanning: How can we facilitate open-ended creative play through story workshop while also educating and providing the tools to bring in the First Peoples Principles of Learning? We purchased materials such as wooden animals, rivers, mountains, and mushrooms that the children can use during story workshop. It is going well and they are making connections to the lessons they are learning about the Indigenous animals and what they represent within ourselves. Our learners are also able to make connections between the materials and the Core Competencies.
Focus: We focused on this area to weave the goal of expanding students’ oral and written language with the culture of oral language in First Nations’ traditions.
Hunch: We have an amazing variety of Indigenous literature within our classroom and school library and limited hands-on material to accompany imaginative play. Enriching our classroom with these materials has helped the students and encouraged us to keep building up our classroom resources.
New Professional Learning: We have been reading Indigenous literature in our classroom prior to story workshop and brainstorming new ideas of setting and people/animals to incorporate into the stories that we create and document in our books. We have been reading materials that encourage Inquiry Mindset and Intentional Play.
Taking Action: We brought in new materials and resources to help build our choices for the students and it worked out really well. The children’s stories have expanded and become more detailed. We will continue to do the same moving forward.
Checking: By bringing in more materials we have moved in a positive direction and we are happy with our results. The baseline would have been no connections between the First Peoples Principles of Learning and story workshop, so it was straight forward to document improvement. They are more capable of recognizing individual differences, stretching their learning and building horizontal connections.
Reflections/Advice: We learned that although story workshop is an open-ended literature activity, it is beneficial to incorporate the right materials that will expand and facilitate the children’s creativity and imagination while making connections. The children were also creating stories together and collaboratively creating.