School Name: Arden

School District: SD#71 Comox Valley

Inquiry Team Members: KatieArsenault: katie.arsenault@sd71.bc.ca, Michelle Honeysett: michelle.honeysett@sd71.bc.ca, Leah Llloyd: leah.lloyd@sd71.bc.ca, Carlene Steeves: carlene.steeves@sd71.bc.ca

Inquiry Team Contact Email: katie.arsenault@sd71.bc.ca

II. Inquiry Project Information

Type of Inquiry: NOIIE Case Study

Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Primary (K-3)

Curricular Areas Addressed: Arts Education, Language Arts – Oral Language, Physical & Health Education, Science, Social Studies, Other: Outdoor education, place based learning, and social emotional learning

Focus Addressed: Indigenous Focus (for example, Traditional Knowledge, oral history, reconciliation), Literacy, Core competencies (for example, critical thinking, communication, problem solving), Land, Nature or Place-based learning, Self-regulation

In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? How can we meet the social and emotional needs of our students and their families while transitioning to kindergarten?

III. Spirals of Inquiry Details

Scanning: Over the past 3 years, our collaborative group has been adapting our ways to support families and transitions to kindergarten. We have partnered with a Strong Start teacher from another school to develop more support for our families. We have started to provide extra opportunities to have families come to the school before gradual entry to kindergarten. We have provided extra playtimes, group singing, and forest walk opportunities to help families and and students feel more comfortable.

Focus: We have joined a professional development group about social and emotional learning that supports early learning social emotional well being. We are using the ELF, Play, The Art of Awareness, and Really Seeing Children, and the Social Emotional Learning Toolbox as resources. We as a team have joined a collaborative group about Social Emotional Transition for Early Learning. We have paired with our early learning principal, strong start teachers, and ECE’s that are in our areas to discuss and support our families and learners. We will continue to explore other avenues to explore social and emotional learning, transitions, and collaboratively problem solving with others to support students.

Hunch: We assumed that families were receiving e-mails that give a little heads up about the kindergarten year coming up. We assumed that families were cued into their children attending kindergarten before it happened. We assumed that parents and children would willingly attend welcome to K sessions. We assumed that parents have time off to join us during the day. We had a hunch that other community pre-kindergartens knew the information to pass on to future kindergarten families.

New Professional Learning: We have joined a professional development group about social and emotional learning that supports early learning social emotional well being. We are using the ELF, Play, The Art of Awareness, and Really Seeing Children, and the Social Emotional Learning Toolbox as resources. We as a team have joined a collaborative group about Social Emotional Transition for Early Learning. We have paired with an early learning principal, strong start teachers, and ECE’s that are in our areas to discuss and support our families and learners. We will continue to explore other avenues to explore social and emotional learning, transitions, and collaboratively problem solving with others to support students.

Taking Action: I teach in a very collaborative model, and we work together as a trio. All of the kids are our students and we all teach each one of them in a collaborative capacity. Over the course of the last 3 years, we have continued to make efforts to reach out in different ways to families of transitioning kindergarten children.

This year we joined with a group of educators from a variety of locations, positions, and age levels under the age of six, to problem solve and provide an objective lens to what we were doing currently, what was working and what changes needed to be made. Through conversations with a variety of these community members we were able to address some issues we were noticing. With several collaborative conversations, many helpful suggestions and trials were executed.

We had several after school meetings to discuss what we could do differently. It was suggested that we have an information session for Early Childhood Educators to demystify the understandings of what kindergarten will be like. We provided a 2 hour session open to select school district employees, principals, ECE from our community and other kindergarten teachers as well. As a collaborative team, we broke our session into facilitating independence in three distinct categories. Readiness skills, emotional transitions, and shape of the day. We broke into 3 groups and experienced each of our classrooms with a brief orientation into each of our classrooms. We had excellent feedback from these sessions and continued to move forward. As kindergarten classes, we asked our current students about what they have learned in kindergarten already. Then we took that evidence about learning in kindergarten, amalgamated these, and created posters for each attendee to take back to their sites with them. During our dinner session we also created a picture slide show of all the activities our kids experience each day.

After the session we met again as a group. We again reflected about what went well and what could be done differently. Together we brainstormed ideas that could help our future students and families feel more comfortable at school. A suggestion was made to create little videos that were sound bites that families could access as many times as they needed about what kindergarten looked like.

As the official district welcome to kindergarten date approached, we invited families to meet us once a week during our morning gathering in the outdoor classroom. Families were e-mailed and encouraged to join our land acknowledgment, our songs and stretches, and our daily forest walk. Many families joined us. We also extended this opportunity to our newly built on-site Boys and Girls club care centre. Many soon to be K’s and little littles also joined because of this.

As the year progressed, we had many opportunities to meet and greet our new to K families and by the time that the district welcome to kindergarten started, we had met almost all of our future families. The night before our Welcome to K we had a parent session to meet just with parents and give them a tour of the school, our classrooms, and to answer any questions they were curious about. We followed an abridged model of our care providers night with less information. We started in the outdoor classroom so families could get a sense of what our day begins like and then we visited all the classrooms. We ended with an open group question and answer period at the end. We also put up a sign-up poster to ask parents if there was a time that worked better for any parent sessions that may come up. We gave the opportunity to have parents either voice out loud among the group or leave a sticky note with any questions or concerns they had.

The following early evening we had our Welcome to K sessions where we provide an open centre concept to visit all the important people to meet and areas in the school they will be attending. Our staff is very supportive and we have most staff paired or independently manning a station. Parents said they felt settled and could help guide their students from one place to another and also many of the parents had face to face conversations with us already so they were more comfortable with us as the future teachers. Kids had their standard bag and then we always provide a litterless snack bag to model our garbageless lunch, we provide little treasures in each classroom that adds to their standard bag and supports the curriculum they will experience.

A month later we provided another special night for families. We had a scavenger hunt where families were given clues and then had to collect letters and then together as a family solve a word puzzle. Once families collected all letters and solved the puzzle students were given a special nature explorer bag full of our curriculum support and nature ambassador tools. There were a few outdoor/ nature scavenger hunt papers, a pencil, a notebook, a magnifying glass, and a side bag to hold all the materials and a reference book.

We continued to have our families join our Wednesday woods walk until the last week of school. We provided families an opportunity to join a K to play in the afternoon. We provided a weekly play hour in a rotation of our classrooms to have families have personal experience in all the classrooms and with all their future kindergarten teachers.

As mentioned before, it was suggested that we provide a video to share information in another way. We had a videographer meet with us. We collaboratively decided what points were important to share with families and provided a series of mini video clips to share what our everyday at Kindergarten looked like. We created a series of five videos to demonstrate this and broke the information into five categories; shape of the day, who we are, building independence, transitions in school, arrival and departures. We decided to send these video clips out in a scheduled manner so that families would have more communication from their teachers throughout the summer and be able to refer to videos as many times as needed.

The last attempt to improve the kindergarten transition process after speaking to families and getting a sense of what their concerns were. As a result, we decided to pilot starting kindergarten right away and not having a gradual entry process anymore. We have heard and experienced that this schedule is very difficult for families to manage, and was also challenging as their teachers to utilize personnel.

Checking: I believe all our efforts made a difference. We have now met everyone of our future kindergarten students that will start next year, except for one. We have used a variety of methods to communicate what can be expected for next year. We have spoken to a majority of students and their families. We have had many communications such as videos and e-mails sent out already to families. Among our trio kindergarten team we have had very positive feedback so far. Many of the families have responded already about how appreciative they are of the efforts we have gone to. A connection with community members has also been forged through this process.

Reflections/Advice: We have learned that three years ago we were on the right track about making stronger connections with families. Families were needing more support about how to approach kindergarten, what they needed to know, what was expected and what could families do to help support a better transition into kindergarten. Demystifying the idea around kindergarten expectations, that printing your name and knowing their letters is a parent’s job, it is literally in our kindergarten curriculum to teach. Through this process, the importance of connection, relationships, communication, and time together was emphasized. Parents were so appreciative of the process and how approachable we were as teachers. Parents mentioned they were truly able to chat and reassure their children about what was to come and the importance of face to face connection.

As teachers we will continue to use the videos we created to explain our program. Our district early years principal has encouraged us to share our ideas and process and so we are presenting as a team at an early years conference next year in October. Also, she wants to use the concept of our videos and how we continue to reach out to families across the district as a model or as a jumping point for other programs or kindergarten teachers.

School Name: Brooklyn Elementary School

School District: SD#71 Comox Valley

Inquiry Team Members: Naomi Radawiec: naomi.radawiec@sd71.bc.ca, Deborah Koehn: deborahkoehn@gmail.com, Kimberly Macneil: kimberley.macneil@ubc.ca

Inquiry Team Contact Email: naomi.radawiec@sd71.bc.ca

II. Inquiry Project Information

Type of Inquiry: SRL Case Study

Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Intermediate (4-7)

Curricular Areas Addressed: Other: Core Competency: Communication

Focus Addressed: Self-regulation

In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? Self Regulation – Communication (and meeting the needs of introverted learners).

III. Spirals of Inquiry Details

Scanning: We noticed that students were struggling with communication. They were very hesitant to share in class discussions, speak quietly during circle, and did not show evidence of critical thinking when they were asked deep thinking questions. They were very quiet and not comfortable with public speaking. They seem worried about saying the “wrong thing” or having others judge them. When asked to turn and talk to a peer, their discussions were superficial and ended quickly. They struggled to engage in collaborative tasks at the stand up whiteboards and work in small groups.

We also asked the four key questions. Most students said they can name two adults who believe they will be a success, however two students said they could not. For their “Weekly Question” students wrote about how it’s going with their learning and what their next steps are. They had a hard time communicating how it’s going, and struggled to describe examples of how they demonstrate the core competencies.

As we got to know the students, we reflected on the First Peoples Principle of Learning: Learning requires exploration of one’s identity. The students in our class and their unique identities really impacted this inquiry and our learning together.

Focus: Our focus originally was to develop their ability to share ideas and communicate through public speaking. Later in the year we shifted our focus to developing communication skills by giving them the opportunity to share in a variety of ways (not just speaking).

Hunch: We began to really reflect on the learners and who they are as individuals. Our hunch was…maybe we were trying too hard to change who they are, rather than adapting to meet their needs? We had a hunch that the majority of learners in our class are introverts. We created a survey with 24 questions for students to individually answer, and we found that 14/25 of them are most likely introverts. The survey was super helpful because it gave us insights into their experience as learners. We live in an extroverted, busy, fast pace world. Days at school and the learning environment often meet the needs of extroverts, and leave introverts feeling overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, misunderstood and perhaps like they are not very smart because they process things differently.

New Professional Learning: We did research into what life is like for introverts, how their brains process things, how they learn and interact with others. We read real stories written by introverts about their life experiences.

Naomi: Many of their stories resonated with me as a learner, and I discovered that I’m more introverted than I thought I was. I actually believe I’ve always been an introvert, but my love for performing arts and connecting with people made me think I was more of an extrovert. But as I age and discover more about myself, I’ve realized that I need more time alone to recharge and that busy, social environments can drain me. In school, I was always the last to finish tests, I needed extra time to process, and I’ve always preferred writing out what I want to say for presentations, rather than winging it or relying on memory.

Taking Action: In the beginning of the year when I was focused on the talking and public speaking aspect of communication, I gave them opportunities to develop their speaking skills in class. I involved our school’s performing arts teacher who focused on skill building around public speaking and risk taking through drama activities like improv, and structured debate. Despite our focus on communication and public speaking, they did not show great improvement.

As I got to know my students and learned more about meeting the needs of introverts, I tried out various strategies, shifted my teaching and expectations. These are some things that have really helped our class this year, thanks to the students being open, the connections we’ve built, and all the reflecting we’ve done together.

Provide extra time to think: Allow students to think before asking them to share with the class or contribute to a group. Introverts tend to rely more on long-term memory so retrieving information can take longer, especially under pressure, which can make speaking feel more difficult. On the survey 80% said they feel more comfortable sharing their ideas after they’ve had time to prepare and they like to think about what they want to say before speaking. Introverts’ brains often process stimuli more deeply.

Balance group work with individual tasks: Introverts gain energy from solitude. Time alone is essential for recharging, creativity, and deep thinking. Being alone allows introverts to engage their prefrontal cortex without being distracted or overstimulated.

Recognize the role of anxiety: Anxiety affects verbal expression. Stress can impair memory and concentration, adding another challenge when introverts are expected to speak. Allowing students to prepare, and giving them a heads up that they are going to share, alleviates anxiety.

Understand the influence of age and developmental stage: David Yeager explains that between the ages of 10 and 25, young people care deeply about status and respect, which means they are very sensitive to how others perceive them. This heightened concern for social evaluation can affect their motivation, behaviour, and willingness to engage in learning. This sensitivity may be heightened for introverted learners. Students this age are wondering, am I good enough? Where do I fit in? What will they think of me? This is why being asked to speak in front of their peers can seem so daunting. Many of my 11 and 12 year old students said they feel uncomfortable sharing in class because they are afraid of what their peers might think of them, that they might be laughed at, or say something “stupid.”

Value Listening: Introverts often prefer listening over speaking. They often feel more comfortable taking in information than responding quickly in conversations. 84% said they prefer listening to others’ ideas before sharing their own

Encourage students to communicate and participate in a variety of ways: Set up the learning environment so that introverts have a chance to show their thinking in different ways, not just by speaking. Examples: Written reflections, sticky notes, drawing, exit slips, vertical whiteboards, graffiti walls, mind maps, gallery walks. Thinking quietly or sharing differently is just as valid as being outspoken. For some people, writing is easier than speaking. At the same time, It’s important to continue to provide opportunities for students to build public speaking skills…

Create a Calm Environment, Quiet Times, and avoid overstimulation: Design the day so there are quiet times for introverts to process, decompress, and connect with their inner world. With careful planning and thought, you can avoid overstimulation. (I’m a highly sensitive person so I need a calm environment as well). Introverts are more sensitive to dopamine – too much stimulation can feel overwhelming, while acetylcholine (released during focus and calm) suits them better. 76% said they like having quiet times to recharge after busy activities. Be mindful of noise and sensory overload. Some people are sensitive to classroom noise, visual clutter, and lighting. They may need calm transitions.

Meeting the Needs of Introverted Learners handout – by Naomi Radawiec

Checking: I believe this inquiry made the biggest difference in the way that I teach and the way I see my students, which impacted the way that my students view themselves. I believe that they felt more understood, respected and empowered as I was open with them about communication, their strengths, and what I was discovering as a teacher (that we often value speaking more than other forms of communication).

One key thing that I learned is that I shouldn’t always assume that it’s my job to encourage students to speak up more. It’s not always a matter of self confidence like I may assume it to be. It may be a matter of personality, temperament, and their preferences for ways of communicating. I need to recognize that, rather than just seek to encourage them to be more outgoing and speak up.

There is a boy with autism in our class who is very quiet and hesitant to engage in activities, especially when there is speaking and collaborating involved. When I ask him a question (even if it’s how are you doing?), he is very slow to respond, and may just nod or use body language to reply instead of speaking. So we often communicate through hand signals or nodding. He struggles to fit into the flow of a regular classroom and demonstrate his learning in conventional ways. However, when given the opportunity to do a “Passion Project” and choose how to show his learning, he created a fantastic Stop Motion Lego video that was incredibly creative, funny, and informative, all about photography…with a voice over, and an accent that made us laugh out loud. We really got to see his brilliance shine through when we changed our expectations and allowed him to communicate in his own way.

Reflections/Advice: Instead of a student thinking “What’s wrong with me” students can instead understand that their brain just works differently. Designing learning experiences with introverts in mind enables all learners to feel seen and heard, understood, and valued for who they are. It’s important to still provide opportunities for growth in public speaking, and taking risks sharing their ideas with the class, while at the same time allowing them many opportunities to reflect deeply, process their thoughts, recharge after social activities, and communicate in different ways.

I discovered a book at the end of June that would have been perfect to read to my class this year, and I plan on reading it next school year in September! The Book is called “More than Words: So many ways to say what we mean” by Roz Maclean. Check it out!

School Name: NIDES

School District: SD#71 Comox Valley

Inquiry Team Members: Alison Kavaliunas: Alison.Kavaliunas@sd71.bc.ca, Marieke Holtkamp: Marieke.Holtkamp@sd71.bc.ca, Meghan McMillen: Meghan.McMillen@sd71.bc.ca

Inquiry Team Contact Email: gerald.fussell@sd71.bc.ca

II. Inquiry Project Information

Type of Inquiry: NOIIE Case Study

Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Primary (K-3), Intermediate (4-7), Secondary (8-12)

Curricular Areas Addressed: Applied Design, skills & Technology, Arts Education, Career Education, Language Arts – Literacy, Language Arts – Oral Language, Language Arts – Reading, Language Arts – Writing, Mathematics / Numeracy, Physical & Health Education, Science, Social Studies

Focus Addressed: Indigenous Focus (for example, Traditional Knowledge, oral history, reconciliation), Literacy, Numeracy, Core competencies (for example, critical thinking, communication, problem solving), Formative assessment, Land, Nature or Place-based learning, Self-regulation

In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? Our focus was on leveraging different tools to increase student agency in their learning program.

III. Spirals of Inquiry Details

Scanning: At the beginning of the school year we had our teachers review the Spirals of Inquiry “4 questions for learners”; the “3 questions for us as teachers”; review our values, philosophy, and description statements, the provincial Accountability and Quality Assurance (AQA) Framework; our 3-year plan for supporting Indigenous Students; and our District Strategic Plan. From that review, we had them answer three questions: what is going on for our learners? How do we know? Why does it matter? We took this data and summarized it into key themes.

Focus: We chose to do this to increase our focus on our end user, our students. Our schools are very diverse and broad reaching, but we were hoping common themes would emerge to link our work together. During the “Focus” stage we asked, “What will have the biggest impact?” and guided the responses with the Seven Principles of Learning (OECD) – what works for learners? We, again, summarized the collected data.

Hunch: The data showed that a major factor leading to our situation was the impact of connections:
– To learning, especially deep learning
– Between people
– To land and place
– With our communities and the world – local/global
– Between and within the Core Competencies
– To K – 12 Literacy and Numeracy Frameworks
– To First People’s Principles of Learning

New Professional Learning: We dedicated every staff meeting (1/month) to individual inquiry projects guided by our inquiry question: “How will actively working to make meaningful connections impact student learning?” Each teacher took on an inquiry project, following the Spirals of Inquiry Model, and shared their findings at each meeting. We also maintained a Padlet with guiding questions each month.

Taking Action: Due to the size and complexity of our programming, we knew this would be a multi-year process. Each teacher has what they learned and what their colleagues learned about improved connections. They will be taking this new learning and applying it to their practice beginning in September. Some examples include starting a book club; sharing observation journals; increasing direct correspondence with students in grades 10 – 12; updating the scope and sequence to better utilize daily routines, math talks, and digital resources to improve student engagement, learning, and parental comfort; increase use of discussion boards to support asynchronous learners; and introduce weekly Zoom meetings with families.

Checking: Depending on how one defines one’s goal will dictate these conditional questions. We did achieve our goal of having teachers focus on increasing connections in a myriad of ways. This was evidenced through conversations, reporting, and increased engagement of our teachers. We learned a lot about which connections have higher leverage potential and which do not. We also learned that we were on the right track and that our teachers want to continue this work next school year.

Reflections/Advice: I think the greatest learning I had was the importance of going slower rather than working to get the task done. The Spirals of Inquiry can be used for smaller, more finite inquiries; but they also work for larger, more broad-based inquiries. We are using this framework in all aspects of our learning community by adjusting our time and expectations. The major challenge we have, moving forward, is how to take the many disparate parts of this inquiry and glean systemic learning and value from them in a manner that can be shared and used.

School Name: Courtenay Elementary School

School District: SD#71 Comox Valley

Inquiry Team Members: Heidi Jungwirth: Heidi.jungwirth@sd71.bc.ca, Alison Walkley: Alison.walkley@sd71.bc.ca. Serina Allison: Serina.allison@sd71.bc.ca

Inquiry Team Contact Email: heidi.jungwirth@sd71.bc.ca

II. Inquiry Project Information

Type of Inquiry: Numeracy & Literacy Project

Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Intermediate (4-7)

Curricular Areas Addressed: Mathematics / Numeracy

Focus Addressed: Numeracy

In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? Our focus was how to teach problem solving in math.

III. Spirals of Inquiry Details

Scanning: At this point in our inquiry, the 4 questions are the guiding principles of our classrooms. Fortunately, because of a lot of intentional work, they extend to our school as a whole. We asked our students the 4 questions, but in all reality we know that they are engaged in their learning. The second question is a little more challenging, but most students understand what they are learning. Thinking about next steps is the most challenging question. Our emphasis on experiential learning and curiosity means that students are encouraged to ask questions about what they could learn. At our school, there is a strong sense of community, and we know that students feel supported and cared for.

Building on what we have learned in years previous, the First People’s Principles of Learning and the OECD Principles of Learning are embedded in our teaching practice. Our focus this year was to tackle a complex topic, problem solving in math. Having the principles of learning as a guide made it easier for students and teachers to confidently tackle a complex topic.

Focus: Before I talk about the area of inquiry, I will explain that this year we did things differently. Whereas before, Alison and I had both inquired in our classrooms with our own students, this year the focus was on my (gr 5) classroom. Alison and Serina played an important supporting role by listening to my debrief sessions, sometimes observing lessons, and working with me to find connections between problem solving and the other areas of math that we had inquired about. Their input was invaluable, but because it was my class that the inquiry took place in, I will write the rest of this summary as if I had the thoughts and made the decisions.

The area of inquiry this year was problem solving in math. We chose this area because it is the area in math that most students (if not all) struggle with. I (Heidi) had never figured out a way to teach it well, and my attempts over the years had mediocre (and that’s being generous) success.

Hunch: My main hunch was that problem solving is an area of struggle for many reasons. First of all, it is because students are all asked to do the same problem-solving exercises, even if the work is too difficult (or occasionally too easy). This has been our experience in all aspects of our inquiry so far. In other math topics (number sense, fluency) it has been extremely successful to have students working at their “just-right” level, and I suspected that this would also be the case for problem solving.

My second hunch was that problem solving was a complex topic (this is less of a hunch than a proven reality) and that to teach problem solving, I first needed to figure out which skills are used. After I did this, my theory was that I would teach the skills, and the students would learn how to problem solve.

My third hunch was that the work we had done in the previous years of our inquiry (number sense, fluency) would have a positive effect on our students’ ability to tackle problem solving. Of course, each year you get a new group of students, and only 6 of my students had been in my class for the year before. This meant that 6 of my students would have a “heads up” when doing the problem solving, because they had already done an intense year of number-sense and fluency work.

My fourth hunch was the importance of using hands-on materials. This has proven to be extremely important. I will talk about how we did this later in this write-up.

New Professional Learning: At the beginning of the inquiry, I was hoping to find a book called “How to Teach Problem Solving” and I would just have to follow the steps in the book and each student would be successful. Unfortunately, either that book doesn’t exist, or I couldn’t find it.

I found that many resources took the approach that I had used previously. They tried to guide teachers in teaching problem solving, but they didn’t go far enough when breaking down the skills needed. In the end, I didn’t end up using any of these resources and relied heavily on two: First Steps in Math (the operations binder) and the book “Daily Routines to Jump-start Problem-Solving K-8” by John SanGiovanni.

I also realized that being in our 4th year of inquiring about math means that Alison and I have built up a strong foundation ourselves, and that for this problem-solving inquiry we could use the skills, intuition, and pedagogy that we had developed from becoming knowledgeable about number sense and fluency. Breaking down problem solving into individual skills and teaching them in a systematic cumulative way using formative feedback proved to be as successful as it had when teaching number sense and fluency.

It is a significant step for teachers to recognize that they have built up the skills, knowledge, and experience necessary to make bold decisions regarding curriculum development and pedagogy. Participating in this 4-year supportive inquiry process has been fundamental for Alison and I to get to this point.

Taking Action: Problem Solving in Math is complex and it will take more than one year of inquiry to fully understand and implement an effective pedagogy. I will outline for you the major understandings that we have made this year. I will also outline for you the steps we are taking this summer to develop a “program” to further field test next year. The goal of this is to create a curriculum (K-5) for problem solving.

The first thing we had to figure out was what exactly are the steps involved in math problem solving? This is what we came up with:

1. Setting: What is the situation of the problem?
2. Number/Quantity: What are the numbers or quantities involved in the problem?
3. Units: What do the numbers mean? What are we talking about? How many of what?
4. Problem: What is the math problem asking? What is the story? What will the answer tell you?
5. Strategy/Operation: What mathematical strategy or operation will solve the problem?
6. Steps: What steps do you need to take to solve the problem?
7. Resolution: What is the final answer or solution to the problem?
8. Check: Does the answer make sense?
9. Reflection: What are you proud of? What would you like your teacher to notice?

Once the steps were identified, then the next thing I did was teach these skills (1 hour each Friday) in a systematic/cumulative way. This differs from traditional math instruction where problem solving would be a “unit of instruction” that might last a few weeks to a month.

Teaching in a systematic/cumulative way means that you teach:
1. Explore skill 1
2. Teach skill 1
3. Explore skill 2
4. Review skill 1, teach skill 2
5. Explore skill 3
6. Mention (briefly) skill 1, review skill 2, teach skill 3,
7. Explore skill 4
8. Assume they can do skill 1, mention skill 2, review skill 3, teach skill 4,
9. Explore skill 5
10. Continue in this way until all skills are learned.

This continues with new skills being explored, then taught, then reviewed, then mentioned. This of course does not happen quickly. It might take a few weeks at any one step. The amount of time between going on to the next step will depend on many things, and as a professional the teacher makes that judgement.

One important thing that I have learned is that after practicing a skill for an amount of time, I can expect that a student has learned it. (it’s ok to require some peer support). If, after a reasonable amount of time, a student has not learned a skill, then it is important that I take the time to figure out why. What is going on for that student? What key understanding does that student not have? What skills does that student not know how to do?

An important resource for these investigations is the First Steps in Mathematics assessments. These skill specific assessments can help you pinpoint where the gaps are in a student’s skills and understandings. You can then do the recommended interventions and help a student get back on track. In the past, I thought that students would just catch up if I repeated things enough. This rarely happens. If a student cannot do one of the problem-solving sub skills, they will most likely continue to struggle.

After spending a year teaching problem solving in a systematic/cumulative way, there are some key learnings I have made.

1. It is crucial to connect problem solving to physical objects, which helps all students make better connections. Eventually, some students choose not to use the physical objects, but I always made them available. We did this by making a problem-solving kit called “Dog Math”. Next year, I plan to use “Dog Math” plus 3 new kits for problem solving. “Road Trip Math”, “Nature Math”, and “Shopping Math”

2. Teach the sub-skills of problem solving in a systematic/cumulative way. I wrote about this earlier, so I won’t go into detail. Expect that students will learn the skills, and if they don’t learn them, make sure to find out why.

3. Think of a math problem as a story. We spent a great deal of time on this, and it was another way to connect problem solving to real-life happenings.

4. It works best to have longer problem-solving math lessons (we spent 1 hour each Friday) and to teach problem solving throughout the year, rather than teach it as a unit of instruction.

5. Using formative feedback in math is guaranteed to boost student skills and confidence. Instead of students doing their work and “handing it in for marking”, I circulate and make comments/guide student work/check that it is being done. Having a conversation about the work means that the feedback is immediate, and students love having conversations about what they are doing.

6. Students learn best when there are check-ins during the lesson. In a 1-hour lesson, I would have time to introduce and teach the skill, then have the students go back to their tables and work on it. Part way through the working time, I would bring the students back to the carpet and have students share where they were at and what they had done. After this short check-in, students went back to their tables and kept working. Having these check-ins helps those who are struggling to get ideas about where to go, and builds confidence in those who are on track.

7. Approach problems from both sides. Sometimes students read a problem and are asked to find the solution. Sometimes students are given the solution and asked to make up the problem.

8. Use units always. Always use units. Every step of every problem must have the units included. This has been a major learning for me. I didn’t realize that students will use numbers and not know what the number represents. Using units means that it is clear what is being talked about. I now require that each step of problem solving must have the units written in, and every conversation includes the units of what we are talking about. (are we talking about dogs or cups of dog food?)

9. Leaving space for exploration develops curiosity and creates engagement. For example, the first lesson with our “Dog Math Kit” went like this: the students took a kit each and tried to figure out what math they could make with it. They wrote this math in their Math Journals and then we came together and shared what we had discovered. The results were amazing. The students were 100% engaged and the math that came out of that lesson was amazing. This excitement about the dog math continued on for the entire year, and I believe that is directly tied into them first being able to explore and wonder about what they could do with the kits.

10. Take time to make sure that students understand what they are doing when they use an operation. This was another major learning for me. Students might know how to add or subtract, or even divide, but many do not understand what this means in real life, or in practical terms. If students don’t understand what they are doing, then they will struggle with problem solving. Taking time to teach this and to check-in with students at each lesson is invaluable.

Checking: This year long deep dive into problem solving has made a tremendous difference for all my students and has made a tremendous difference for me as a teacher. When we began this inquiry, there were 2 or 3 students in my class who would persevere through solving a math problem. Most students tried, but they didn’t know what to do, got stuck, and soon gave up. At the end of the year, all but 1 of my students were able to work industriously for 45 minutes to solve a math problem! Many students started to complain that the problems were too easy, so I built in ways that those students could challenge themselves.

At the end of the year, as a summative assessment, I gave my students a problem to solve (using our dog math kit). I wrote out the story problem and gave them the problem solving template that we developed. (and revised throughout the year as we learned things). Out of 22 students, 21 completed the assessment. Here is a sampling of student responses.

I have uploaded some examples of the problem-solving summative assessment problem (click to enlarge image):

Reflections/Advice: This inquiry has been overwhelmingly successful, but it has also been deeply challenging and at times frustrating. I am grateful to have had an amazing, supportive team to pick me up and dust me off when things were at their most challenging. Here is what I have learned.

1. When you are tackling a difficult subject, seek out colleagues who will support you. It’s especially important that they can listen.
2. Equally important to listening and supporting is listening and challenging. You want inquiry partners who will (gently) point out where things went wrong and offer ideas of what to try next.
3. Expect to make mistakes. Lots of them.
4. When the lesson doesn’t go well, take some time to try and figure out what went wrong. They say you learn from a mistake, but you really only learn when you reflect on a mistake.
5. In the end, my class had a lot of fun doing problem solving! This is what I had hoped for, but many times during the year I wondered if we could ever get there.
6. Students love to challenge themselves when they feel confident that they have the skills, and when they know that they are working in a supportive environment. This is the gift of formative feedback. I now teach all math using immediate formative feedback, and I am working towards teaching all subject areas in this way.

Perhaps the best summation of this year’s work is demonstrated by this (unsolicited) card that I received at the end of this year: (I can’t upload an image because I’m at my max). The card says, “Thank-you for teaching me this year. I definitely got better at problem solving this year”.

School Name: Brooklyn Elementary School

School District: SD#71 Comox Valley

Inquiry Team Members: Naomi Radawiec: naomi.radawiec@sd71.bc.ca
Mentors: Deborah Koehn: dkoehn@sd91.bc.ca, Kimberley MacNeil: kimberley.macneil@ubc.ca

Inquiry Team Contact Email: nradawiec22@gmail.com

II. Inquiry Project Information

Type of Inquiry: SRL Case Study

Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Intermediate (4-7)

Curricular Areas Addressed: Career Education, Language Arts – Literacy, Language Arts – Oral Language, Language Arts – Writing, Mathematics / Numeracy, Social Studies

Focus Addressed: Core competencies (for example, critical thinking, communication, problem solving), Self-regulation

In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? We focused on self regulation, specifically the core competency critical thinking.

III. Spirals of Inquiry Details

Scanning: In the beginning of the year, we noticed that students were not able to ask deep thinking questions, and struggled to think critically. When we asked them what critical thinking is, they had very limited responses, and many couldn’t answer the question at all. We noticed they were keen to learn, to please the teacher, to follow expectations and complete tasks, but they struggled to engage in deep thinking.

Focus: Our focus was on the cognitive domain of self regulation. We hoped to help students develop their ability to engage in critical thinking.

Hunch: For teachers, it is easy to talk too much and too often. When students are passive listeners and are not encouraged to think critically, they become disengaged and check-out. Teaching practices such as calling on students with their hands up, may lead to students feeling like they don’t need to be responsible for thinking deeply. We began taking a closer look at our teaching practices that encourage thinking or stop thinking.

New Professional Learning: Naomi: I meet online with Deb Kohen and Kimberly MacNeil several times to learn from their mentorship and talk through ideas and key learning. I also met with our NOIIE self regulation inquiry group online and in person at the symposium, and really appreciated being able to share and learn together. Last year, I read Peter Liljedhal’s (LIL-yed-hall) book “Building thinking classrooms in Mathematics” and that book impacted not only our math learning, but also my teaching practice – I learned to talk less, get students engaged in thinking the right away, keep them engaged, and work collaboratively in groups. This year, we’ve been building a thinking classroom by using a variety of tasks and strategies. I read the book Hacking Questions by Connie Hamilton and learned a lot from her book. I read parts of the book “Developing Self-Regulating Learners” by Nancy Perry and Leyton Schnellert which helped deepen my understanding of self regulation.

Taking Action: Naomi: I’ve been making sure that all students are engaged and responsible for thinking, rather than calling on a few students who often raise their hands. For example, The All Hands Up strategy, The Turn and Ask strategy, Popcorn Sharing, Put Yourself on a Line, Sticky Notes, vertical whiteboards on the walls, mini whiteboards, small groups, community circle and more. We have our desks in pods, and I often ask them to stand in the Rainbow Zone (U shape) for 3-5 minutes for quick instructions or when I’m introducing a thinking task. I try to model thinking aloud and metacognition.

We also learned about why students may say “I don’t know” when asked to think and respond, and discussed different strategies for responding, like allowing the student to “consult with a friend” before sharing their final answer. This lesson focused on empowering students to think deeply, take risks, and share their thinking with others. We’ve also been learning the language of being a risk taker. I encourage them to say things like, “right now I’m thinking..” or “I’m not 100% sure, but I think that…”

As a teacher, I’ve become much more aware of whether or not the questions I’m asking, and the tasks I’m asking students to do, encourage thinking or stop thinking.

Celebrating thinking “not right” answers and celebrating mistakes:
In our class we celebrate thinking versus correct answers, and support the belief that mistakes and challenges help us learn and grow. My students seem more open to sharing their thinking because they feel it is safe to share, and they know that I value their thoughts.

One of the most important changes I’ve made as a teacher is that I’m learning not to help too much. (I’m learning to become invisible). I became a teacher because I love learning and I love helping others learn. It’s easy for me to fall into helping too much and spoon feeding the answers. Lately I’ve been trying to pause, wait, and ask myself…do they really need me right now? I give fewer hints and help less so that students are able to take the time to work through their thinking. If I help too much, the thinking stops, the learning is not deep and not transferable to the next task. I’m working on becoming more invisible and letting students think for themselves, gain ownership, and build resiliency. For example, when we do stand up math and the students are working in groups of three, I may give them small hints if needed or explain the question, but then I become invisible, walk away and let them work to solve problems together without me. Developing thinking skills is much like developing perseverance. It takes time, space, and often a struggle.

Checking: Naomi: One of our weekly inquiry questions recently was “What is critical thinking and why is it important?” Their responses showed that they now have a much deeper understanding of critical thinking. Through this inquiry, one thing we’ve noticed is that students are beginning to shift the way they view themselves. In the beginning of the year we noticed they were keen to learn, to please the teacher, to follow expectations and complete tasks. Now they are beginning to view themselves as thinkers. We are creating a community of learners that think critically, and they are beginning to take more ownership over challenging themselves to take their thinking to the next level, as well as talking and reflecting on their thinking and learning (metacognition).

Identity: This has impacted their sense of self and identity. Giving them time and space to struggle, and overcome challenges, has helped build their confidence and allowed them to take ownership over their learning. When I allow them to hold onto the cognitive baton, this shows them that I believe in them…that they are smart and capable.

Personal life and working through frustrations to build resilience: This learning has impacted my personal life too. My 3 year old asks questions all the time and I love watching him persevere through something that’s hard for him. Watching someone struggle can be tough sometimes for people like me who like to help and make others happy. When my son is doing risky play, like climbing a tree or riding his push bike down a hill, if I help him too much, and keep helping him every time, that would stop him from learning how to do it himself. Risk taking in a classroom is similar, by taking risks in their thinking, doing the thinking themselves and not receiving too much help, this builds independent resilient learners. I love witnessing the deep learning, aha moment, when they figure something out for themselves.

Student Quotes:

Grade 5 student: “All hands up” feels better because you get to add your ideas to your class and think harder about it. You get feedback on your learning. I’m responsible for sharing my learning and thinking because not one person is always talking so we are learning from everyone. Not just the teacher or just one student.

Grade 6 student: Everyone is responsible for doing the thinking. You are responsible for thinking and not distracting anyone and trying your hardest to learn. It feels good that the students are teaching too. It makes sense that the teacher is there to help you learn but not to do the thinking for you. When I’m given the chance to think it’s giving me a chance to learn. If the teacher just gave me the answers, that won’t help me grow in my learning.

Grade 5 student: Without critical thinking, learning can be boring and not fun. To have your teacher tell you the answer to something and make you memorize it…You are not using your thinking and the point of school is for you to be the one thinking and sharing your ideas and thoughts with your classmates.

Grade 5 student: Being in our class has been different from other classes in such a good way! Because in other classes they might have just given you a sheet of paper with questions that you didn’t know a thing about so they would give you a book and say write the answers from the book and bring it home to study. Or they would just tell you the answers and say bring it home to study it. But in our class you do stand-up math so you can ask other people if you are stuck or we do mini whiteboards. Then after we do one of those things we might do an exit slip or show what you know on paper. This means we are doing more critical thinking to get the answer than someone just telling you how to do it. We also think critically for the weekly question because we have to write the answer in our words, not just look on the internet or say exactly what your parents say. My teacher believes I can think deeply, and that makes me feel smart. I can teach other people. It makes me feel like I know what I’m doing. We get to learn more from our ideas. Other people also get to learn from your ideas too, not just the teachers.

Reflections/Advice: By creating an environment where students view themselves as thinkers, where we celebrate mistakes, where students take ownership over their learning, we are cultivating independence and resilience. Prioritizing critical thinking and becoming the invisible teacher allows students to navigate challenges confidently in school and in their lives outside the classroom.

Next year I plan to go deeper in my learning about how to facilitate experiences where students are challenged to think. I learned numerous strategies and thinking tasks this year and used several of them in our class. Next year I want to try out some of the strategies that I haven’t tried yet. I want to continue helping students to gain ownership over their learning and thinking, and I hope to be even more transparent about our purpose for thinking tasks and how I value their thoughts.

School Name: Courtenay Elementary School

School District: SD#71 Comox Valley

Inquiry Team Members: Heidi Jungwirth: heidi.jungwirth@sd71.bc.ca, Alison Walkley: alison.walkley@sd71.bc.ca

Inquiry Team Contact Email: heidi.jungwirth@sd71.bc.ca

II. Inquiry Project Information

Type of Inquiry: Numeracy & Literacy Project

Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Primary (K-3), Intermediate (4-7)

Curricular Areas Addressed: Mathematics / Numeracy

Focus Addressed: Differentiated instruction, Experiential learning, First Peoples Principles of Learning, Formative assessment, Growth mindset, Inclusion and inclusive instructional strategies, Land, Nature or Place-based learning

In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? To develop and implement math routines which help students to acquire the skills for mathematics and to develop a mindset of growth, inquiry, and collaboration.

III. Spirals of Inquiry Details

Scanning: Our scanning process this year could be described as seasoned. We asked our students the 4 questions, but after 3 years of ongoing inquiry, we know that they are engaged in their learning.  We know that they understand what they are learning and they think about next steps.  There is a strong community bond and students feel supported and cared for.  3 completed years of inquiry means that the starting line has been moved ahead.

Building on what we have learned in the past, we know the importance of embedding the First People’s Principles of Learning and the OECD Principles of Learning in our teaching practice, including the scanning process.  One extension of our practice that we intentionally focused on this year was including families.

We had already included families by making class books, but at the intermediate level, we wanted the process to become more active, and therefore designed a way for students to have conversations with their families about math topics.  We had a hunch that math anxiety (which is where this inquiry began) also existed at home, passed on from generation to generation.  This meant that truly changing a student’s mindset about math must also provide the opportunity to change the parents’ mindset.  One way to do this was to create a place for conversations.

Focus: A 3 year ongoing inquiry covers a lot of ground, and it is easy to repeat the things said in years past. Rather than repeat myself, I am going to encourage those who are curious about our first 2 years of inquiry to instead read those previous years’ writeups.

2022/2023: https://noiie.ca/courtenay-elementary-school-sd71-comox-valley-4/

2021/2022: https://noiie.ca/courtenay-elementary-school-sd71-comox-valley-3/

Our word for this year is “mathematicianship”.  It may be that this word has just now come into existence, but read on. Mathematicianship is the mindset of thinking of oneself as a mathematician, combined with a solid knowledge of the skills necessary to do mathematics and the desire to inquire and collaborate with other mathematicians.

In both classes we nurtured mathematicianship in our students by using number talks, daily formative conversations about number sense, hands-on learning, and in-depth experiential mathematics inquiries.

Hunch: After year 1 of our inquiry, our hunch was that the lack of number sense was causing students to have anxiety about math.  After 3 years of working intensely with students of diverse abilities and background knowledge, I believe we can say with some authority that our hunch was correct.  In all cases, sometimes with students making almost radical gains, students who achieve a solid sense of number make remarkable progress in mathematics.

We have already written about how math anxiety disappeared in our students (year 1). We have also written about how our students grew to love math class (year 1 and 2).  In year 3, I can add that students exhibit increasing mastery of mathematicianship, which means that they are working joyfully on their math booklets, working collaboratively on their inquiry projects, and are no longer afraid or frustrated when they make mistakes.

If you look at either of our classes (Alison gr 1/2, Heidi gr 4/5) you will see students who are excited about learning math.  There is a certain energy in the room that is unmistakeable: there is intense learning going on.

New Professional Learning: We have spent a large portion of our NOIIE budget on professional books!  The authors we have been referencing for the first 2 years (Boler, Van de Waal) are still relevant and insightful.  There is a new series of books “Figuring out Fluency in Mathematics”, by Jennifer M Bay-Williams and John J.SanGiovanni which we have begun reading and are on the summer reading list.

The program “First Steps in Mathematics” continues to be a valuable resource and the Snap Assessment is an ongoing source of knowledge for us as well.

These resources have supported our professional development.  They have provided us not only with knowledge, but also confidence to take the next steps when we realized what was missing in our school.

Taking Action: This is perhaps the most exciting development from our inquiry.  Alison and I propose a completely new way of teaching mathematics.  We have developed our own pedagogy and written the first series of booklets for the students to use.

In short, we have created a pedagogy of a daily (20 min) practice focused on number sense in its various forms.  Students complete one page (and always only one page) in a leveled booklet and when they are finished, they have a short formative conversation with the teacher.  These conversations are based on the curricular competencies (which are a key component of mathematicianship) and support a growth mindset.

In addition to this foundational 20 minutes of Number Sense work, students develop their mathematicianship through number talks, family math conversations, pedagogical documentation, hands-on learning, and experiential math activities.

It would take a lot of room to explain everything that is happening in our math classes, therefore I encourage you to watch the video we made for the 2024 NOIIE conference.  This video explains in more detail the steps we have taken to improve math instruction in our classrooms.

Link to video: https://vimeo.com/934696997?share=copy 

Checking: When I try to summarize the difference that this inquiry has made for our learners, the change we have seen doesn’t quite seem possible.  Each child that we have taught is now a stronger math student than before.

When I say that each student is stronger than before, I am not only talking about the traditional math skills that they would be expected to learn.  I am talking about their mathmaticianship.  Students are excited about learning math and look forward to our time each day.  Students are engaged and feel “smart”.  They work collaboratively, they are curious, there is a different energy in the room.

The pedagogy of teaching math has spread to other classes in our school and is also spreading to other schools in our district.   We have had positive feedback from all the teachers who have worked with us this year.  We are excited and grateful that this inquiry has led us to this new place where all of our students are enthusiastic about learning math.

Reflections/Advice: This inquiry has been an unbelievably positive experience for Alison and myself, but we should be clear that there has been a lot of uncertainty and hard work to get to this point.  We have had to go way beyond our comfort zone, especially when other teachers asked us to share the materials that we have developed.  I think it is important to say that even when an inquiry is successful, it takes a great deal of courage to travel the path you are on.

We are currently in the process of creating a series of student materials that we plan to make available to other teachers.  These materials are the ones that we have been using in our classes and include instructions on how to teach them using formative feedback as a pedagogy.

The advice we would like to give other teachers, no matter the area of inquiry, is to trust your hunches and use them as a starting point to launch your inquiry.  If things aren’t working in your class, seek out answers.  Find colleagues who have similar questions.  Read the research and don’t be afraid to try new things.  Remember that you can’t change everything at once, so be patient with yourself.  Try to figure out which changes will have the biggest impact and start there.  Perhaps, most importantly, it is important to expect that this journey will be challenging, so lean into that challenge.

We have now completed year 3 of our inquiry and are busy planning for year 4.  Meaningful change takes time.  Take moments to reflect on how far you have come and use them to also plan your next steps.  In the end, we think that inquiry is one of the most powerful tools in education and encourage you to embrace it in your own practice.

School Name: NIDES

School District: SD#71 Comox Valley

Inquiry Team Members:
Kyle Timms: Kyle.Timms@sd71.bc.ca
Erica Black: Erica.Black@sd71.bc.ca
Murray McRae
Charles Schilling

Inquiry Team Contact Email: gerald.fussell@sd71.bc.ca

II. Inquiry Project Information

Type of Inquiry: NOIIE Case Study

Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Primary (K-3), Intermediate (4-7), Secondary (8-12)

Curricular Areas Addressed: Other: Online Learning

Focus Addressed: Differentiated instruction, Flexible learning, Inclusion and inclusive instructional strategies, Indigenous pedagogy, Universal design for learning

In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? How do we increase success for our Indigenous Learners?

III. Spirals of Inquiry Details

Scanning: We used the four key questions to identify areas that we could target to increase student connection and efficacy.

Focus: By having students throughout the province working in a variety of contexts anchored by online learning, we realized that there was little connection between them and our school community. We were hoping to increase the sense of community and connection experiences by our Indigenous students.

Hunch: We thought that by increasing contact, individually with our remote learners, we would be able to develop stronger connections. We also thought that by supporting our online learning platform with blended learning, we would increase student connection and efficacy. We were concerned that our students were working in isolation and not connecting meaningfully to their work: that there was a separation between what they were being asked to do and their communities.

New Professional Learning: We had leaders attend the FNESC conference. Our entire staff used our staff meetings to study Wayi Wah! by Jo Chrona. We challenged each other individually to increase knowledge and understanding, and to then put those into practice. We also began to identify ways we can assess whether we are increasing student success. Throughout, we had open and challenging conversations with each other and with our different communities.

Taking Action: We made sure to have one adult, other than the student’s teachers, reach out and make contact with our Indigenous learners a minimum of once/month. We hosted “Chew and Chat” sessions online for students around the province to participate in. We had guest presenters that were broadcasted live to our students around the province. We provided individual advocacy for families and students who requested it, or who we thought would benefit from it. We also began to identify ways that we can assess the success of our efforts.

Checking: We did not make enough of a difference because we are beginning to focus on the work and get things into place to support our work. This is a long term project that is going to take significant time to establish before we will see systemic improvement. We did see significant improvements in pockets of excellence and in some isolated situations. Until we get meaningful baseline data, we will not be able to ascertain our level of success. Having said that, we will never make ‘enough of a difference.”

Reflections/Advice: We learned that the challenge is massive and that we are at the embryonic stage of this work. Our students need this to be a primary focus of our energy and resources. This is also very complex work as each person has a different measure for success. Having said that, our goal is for each of our students to cross the stage with dignity, purpose, and options.

School Name: Brooklyn Elementary School

School District: SD#71 Comox Valley

Inquiry Team Members: Naomi Radawiec: naomi.radawiec@sd71.bc.ca

Inquiry Team Contact Email: naomi.radawiec@sd71.bc.ca

II. Inquiry Project Information

Type of Inquiry: NOIIE Case Study

Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Intermediate (4-7)

Curricular Areas Addressed: Mathematics / Numeracy

Focus Addressed: Core competencies (for example, critical thinking, communication, problem solving), Growth mindset

In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? Building a thinking classroom in math by keeping students engaged and thinking, prioritizing core competencies of collaboration and perseverance, and communicating the purpose behind math learning that values thinking rather than mimicking and memorization.

III. Spirals of Inquiry Details

Scanning: We interviewed students about math specifically, and asked the three questions: What are you learning and why is it important? How is it going with your learning? Where are you going with your learning? We noticed that students were able to explain what they were learning and give some examples of areas for improvement. Some seemed to know how they were doing with their math learning, but didn’t know how they knew.

In September, during the scanning phase, we began building a thinking classroom and doing stand up math in groups using vertical whiteboards. Instructions for collaborative thinking tasks are given in 3-5 minutes, with students standing during the instruction. Students were put into random groups of three for stand up math. They engaged in the thinking task as a group, then did “Check your understanding Questions” afterwards.

During the scanning, we noticed students were engaged and loving standup math, but when we talked about it at student-led conferences, some parents were concerned that the math wasn’t challenging enough. A few parents who experienced math instruction in different countries said that the math was “too easy in Canada,” and more challenging where they lived previously.

This got us thinking about how students are communicating their math learning to their parents. Are they understanding the purpose behind HOW we do math and why it’s vastly different from math instruction in many other places (and traditional math instruction that us teachers grew up with). What is considered challenging math? If something is fun and they are in the flow, (and it is a just-right or good-fit challenge) does it feel challenging to them?

During the scanning we were already seeing how stand up math, and building a thinking classroom, was positively impacting student learning in a huge way. But we saw the need to focus more on communicating the WHY behind how we do math…so that students could take ownership and explain how it benefits them in their learning. We wanted them to understand how it is very different from direct teacher instruction which tells them what to do and stops their thinking… which values memorization, involves many worksheets, lots of homework and busy work.

We focused on this First People Principle of Learning: Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place). This principle is foundational and deeply connected to our math learning journey this year.

The OECD Principles of Learning also helped us reflect on traditional models of math teaching (and how they don’t put learners at the center) and prioritize planning learning tasks keeping in mind what we know about the nature of learning.

Focus: We were wondering, do our students see the value in how they are learning math? Do students see thinking as learning when they are doing stand up math in a group? Do they view the thinking classroom style of learning as challenging and worthwhile/effective? We wanted to help students understand and communicate the why (purpose) behind how they are learning and what they are learning (stand-up math, random groupings, math concepts, perseverance & collaboration)?

Hunch: Thinking is important for learning, and we’ve noticed that traditional math teaching styles and learning tasks often do not get students engaged in deep thinking. Math instruction is given and then students are asked to mimic what the teacher has already shown them. We began asking ourselves, are we asking students to actually think?

After beginning to shift math learning to engage students in deep thinking, collaboration, and problem solving at the vertical whiteboards (stand-up math), we wondered if we were communicating enough with students the purpose behind this way of learning. We noticed a need to be explicit and open with students about the why behind doing math differently than the paper/pencil/worksheet math they were used to in previous years.

Of all the curricular areas, we feel that in Math it is often the easiest to slip into teaching the way we were taught. It is the hardest subject to be innovative because teachers often feel the most push to “cover” the curriculum and get through all the content. Math is often the subject that students dread, and many students have a fixed mindset about their capabilities in math. Through the research (and our observations) we’ve noticed the need to dramatically shift what math learning looks like. Change and innovation in math teaching is something we’ve been working on steadily over the past few years (and many other educators are doing amazing work in this area). This year we really wanted to focus personally on making big changes in the way we teach math, and prioritize noticing when we fall back into old ways of teaching that don’t ask students to think.

New Professional Learning: We learned about how to build a thinking classroom in math specifically by reading Peter Liljedahl’s book “Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics K-12.” We found his “Building thinking classrooms framework” and descriptions of optimal teaching practices to be incredibly helpful in making big changes to the way we teach math.

We also used Jo Boaler’s “Positive Math Norms” to establish a growth mindset culture with our community of learners.

Taking Action: Instead of using the “I do, we do, you do,” model of teaching math, we decided to dramatically shift our teaching style with the goal of keeping students engaged, thinking, collaborating and communicating in small groups.

Creating class culture and growth mindset:
We showed videos and established our math norms that promote a growth mindset and encourage students to persevere, make mistakes and prioritize deep understanding vs. speed. In the beginning of the year we set up the class culture by offering a variety of highly engaging non-curricular math tasks to solve at the whiteboards.

Random groups of three:
Instead of choosing groups, for the entire year we used either cards or popsicle sticks to randomly select the groups (usually 3 students per group). It took a while for students to get used to these random groupings. We talked about the WHY behind random groups and after a few days students were happy with it and no longer asked to change the groups. As a teacher, I loved using the cards or popsicle sticks to make random groups, and I will never go back to making groups myself again!

Defronting the room:
We kept the desks in pods instead of in rows facing the front of the room. This affected students as they were able to collaborate more and it encouraged us teachers to talk less.

Instruction and how tasks are given:
Instructions for collaborative thinking tasks were given in 3-5 minutes, with students standing during the instruction. Because we had the desks in pods, students were able to stand in the “rainbow zone” in a “u” shape facing the smart board (spaced out, not in one line, students chose where to stand).

Vertical whiteboards – Standup math:
Once students were in random groups at the vertical whiteboards they began working on the thinking task. Non-permanent boards promoted more risk-taking and standing up helped them stay engaged and focused.

Thinking tasks:
We focused on giving tasks that would get students thinking, and keep them engaged for longer periods of time. After setting up the class culture by doing only highly engaging non-curricular tasks, we then started to focus more on infusing curricular content into the tasks.

Answering and asking Keep Thinking questions:
Instead of giving students “stop thinking” questions/answers, our goal was to be intentional about what we were saying to the groups while they were persevering through a challenging task. Were our questions/answers helpful for stretching their thinking? Or, did they stop their thinking by giving them answers? This was not easy to do!

Hints and Extensions – Maintaining Flow:
We tried to keep students in the flow by providing hints if they needed support, and extensions if they needed more of a challenge.

Note taking:
We learned about how traditional styles of note taking (copying things that the teacher has written) are not effective for students actually learning what we intend for them to learn. Many students do not look back on their notes, and the note taking process doesn’t engage them in thinking! So we stopped requiring students to copy any notes, and focused on quick instruction (standing) before stand-up math and learning through thinking tasks, then “check-your understanding” questions. Having students take their own notes (deciding what they will need) is a next step for us and we did not get to that point with our learners this year.

Check-your understanding questions and Assessment of learning:
After solving problems collaboratively at the stand-up whiteboards, students sometimes did “Check your understanding” questions at their desks. We communicated that the purpose of doing this work was to check their understanding of the concepts. By doing this, we could assess who was struggling with certain concepts and needed more direct support while others completed the questions independently. We also assessed where students were at frequently by asking them to place their name magnets on the learning board (learning continuum), showing 1, 2, or 3 with their fingers, doing exit slips, and completing more cumulative “show what you know” assessments.

Self Assessment of Core competencies – Collaboration and Perseverance:
We focused on talking explicitly about and co-creating criteria for two very important competencies in math: collaboration and perseverance. After creating rubrics for each (focusing on one at a time), students were asked to self-assess how they were doing with those competencies. This boosted their ability to collaborate and persevere! Risk-taking is another important math competency (based on the research done by Liljedahl) and our next step is to try to focus on that one more next year.

Checking: We asked the four key questions to students at the end of the year. They also reflected on their math learning and on stand-up math. We noticed that they had a good understanding of what they were learning and most knew how they were doing (similar to the scanning phase).

Where we noticed the most change was in students’ perspective on how we learn math. During the scanning phase, students and parents were not aware of the purpose behind stand up math and why it is more effective than traditional approaches. Below are some quotes from students, and you can see from their rich reflections that this style of math learning impacted them positively, and they saw the value in it.

Student Reflections during Checking stage (June):
“I’m doing way better in math. I think it is important because at my old school my teachers had very traditional ways of teaching. They would stand at the front of the class and talk while the students memorized. Here, we have very interactive ways of teaching math, and that has helped a lot.”

“Standup math is more effective because if you just sit there and try to memorize a sheet that the teacher gave you well…it’s boring for most of the people. Why? Because we’re not using our super creative minds and discovering ways to solve our math task or sheet (whatever you want to call it). What I like about standup math is that you get turns and you can see how other people think and how they solve it differently than you.”

“Stand up math has helped me so much this year. It is more effective than memorizing because you are actually interacting with people and thinking for yourself. Stand up math helps develop all four competencies, especially thinking and collaboration. What I like about standup math is that you get to work with other people and solve problems.”

“I think that standup math helps students by keeping them engaged in their math. It helps us get less distracted. It keeps us free thinking and being more open-minded. Standup math helps us think more clearly. I like stand up because it helps my back!”

“I think stand up math helps with learning because we are more focused and engaged when we are standing. It is better than memorizing a bunch of facts and the teachers just telling you the answer. It is good for yourself to figure it out.”

“Stand up math helps by focusing more on what to do and having people to help you. It helps with collaboration.”

“I think standup math has helped me learn better this year. With more than one person in a group, it helps for the others to learn. In the past years, I have just gotten instruction and then we would get a sheet and work on our own.”

“Because you are standing up and your friends are helping you do the math together. Standing helps you listen more because you are doing something instead of sitting down.”

“It’s better to stand up and think than just the teacher giving you the answers. It makes you free think. It’s almost like Minecraft, you have to figure out what to do, you have to think.”

“Stand-up math is good because students are collaborating with one another and using their thinking skills. I like that you work with some of your classmates during stand-up math.”

“…you have to think rather than memorize stuff. Thinking is better. I like stand up math…you get to work in groups. You develop thinking competencies.”

“Standup math is a good way to learn stuff without the teacher saying it. Standup math is good with perseverance. It is active and it can help you in math. Standing is better than sitting at a desk. It’s better than a piece of paper.”

“Stand up math has made math fun and more exciting when you finally solve a problem with your classmates and it’s helped me with being more collaborative and part of a team this year. I think it helps with developing collaboration.”

“Standup math helps me. It is easier to think while you do standup math and it is a good way to do math. It makes you focus more with my math and it makes it a lot easier to do your thinking.”

“Standup math is good because we can learn from each other. It helps improve social skills. It helped me with my collaboration in math.”

“Standing helps you focus more because when you’re sitting you may feel you can just stay there until it’s over.”

“Standup math is better than sitting in a desk and memorizing everything. This way you actually need to think and solve problems, not just have the teacher tell you everything.”

“It will get you thinking and understanding the math better. It is good to learn collaboration.”

Collaboration in math is important because…
“If you don’t collaborate with other people, you won’t develop good social skills and it makes math more fun for the kids.”
“It makes you learn better because you can get help.”
“When we are doing standup math it is important to collaborate with the other classmates.”
“It helps with social skills and their peers may teach them as well.”
“It brings us closer.”
“You can do stuff with other people.”
“It helps you critical think and it helps you do math.”
“If you learn to collaborate in math, you can help others and work out problems in a group.”
“It can help you in the future.”
“It helps you develop team working skills and makes it more fun.”
“It is good to work in partners so you both think and you both learn.”
“It teaches you how to communicate or how to work with other people to build your communicating strength.”
“We can learn from each other.”
“Math in real life is going to be with a lot of people.”
“If there’s something you can’t do in math you can learn from others.”
“You need to work together because if you help someone with math, they will help you back.”
“If you don’t know something that others do you can talk to them to understand.”
“You have to work with others.”
“It is important so you know how to work well with others.”
“If you don’t know how to collaborate it will be hard.”

Perseverance is important in math because…
“You really won’t learn anything without working really hard and keep going even when it is different.”
“You should always try your best, and ask for help when you need it. Persevere. It’s important because you learn more when you do.”
“It is important to persevere no matter how hard the math question is.”
“If you don’t persevere then you might not learn as much.”
“You don’t give up and you keep working when it’s hard.”
“If you give up you stop trying and you won’t know it because you stopped doing it.”
“You don’t give up. You could talk to your group and think in different ways. You work hard and don’t give up.”
“Learn and actually work on math instead of giving up immediately.”
“Is good for math and not giving up.”
“You can get more accomplished that way.”
“It is important because you need to persevere when you are confused. I use it.”
“It is good not to give up on yourself and to try all the time.”
“Because giving up is not good for your mind and you have to keep learning to get better.”
“If we did not persevere we would not learn anything.”
“You need to persevere in math or else you can’t do it!”
“Even when it gets tough you need to keep going and not give up.”
“You can’t give up in math because if you do you won’t get it done.”
“If something is hard, you can not give up.”
“You have to persevere through the hard stuff.”
“So you don’t give up.”
“If you give up you won’t learn at all.”

Reflections/Advice: After reading student reflections on their math learning this year, it is evident that they understand the purpose behind stand-up math! Thinking and collaboration were core themes that emerged from the data. Students seemed very aware of how standup math has helped them learn math this year.

Stand-up math connects in many ways to the OECD principles of learning. Learners are at the center, engaging thinking tasks focus on their cognition and growth, and they are actively engaged in their learning. Students “construct their learning through engagement and active exploration.” Stand-up math is collaborative and connects to OECD principle number two about the social nature of learning and co-operative group work specifically. Stand-up math helps push learners of all abilities because they are learning from and with each other. They are engaged and having fun during stand-up math so they experience more positive emotions. Individual differences are recognized as students with a variety of skills/background knowledge and strengths are put in random groups so that they can learn together. Stand-up math stretches learners as the teacher checks in with groups, providing “keep thinking questions” rather than giving feedback that stops student thinking.

Through this inquiry we learned about the importance of prioritizing building a thinking classroom, and noticing when we might slip into older styles of teaching that we may have grown up with. It is easy to get lost in focusing on the wrong thing in math (covering curricular content) rather than focusing on getting students thinking and engaged. Making changes to the way we do math with our students has not only made the math learning more deep and meaningful for students, but also made it more fun for us as teachers!

School Name: Courtenay Elementary School

School District: SD#71 Comox Valley

Inquiry Team Members: Heidi Jungwirth: Heidi.jungwirth@sd71.bc.ca, Alison Walkley: Alison.walkely@sd71.bc.ca

Inquiry Team Contact Email: heidi.jungwirth@sd71.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: Mathematics / Numeracy

Focus Addressed: Differentiated instruction, First Peoples Principles of Learning, Growth mindset, Indigenous pedagogy, Self-regulation

In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? Our inquiry evolved from focusing on math anxiety in the first year, to focusing on growth mindset in mathematics in the second year.

III. Spirals of Inquiry Details

Scanning: Before you start reading the details of our inquiry, I will explain how we have written it up. Most of the writing comes from my (Heidi, intermediate teacher) perspective. In a few places, Alison (primary teacher) has added her thoughts. Since it might get confusing to know who is talking, I have put either (primary) or (intermediate) in brackets so that you can know whose perspective you are reading.

From our work in the first year, we knew that the children were doing much better. Using the 4 key questions on an ongoing basis develops a climate of retrospection and inquiry in your classroom. This opens up the possibility of non-judgmental conversations about how a child is really doing. When a teacher and a student can sit beside each other and work on a challenge together, it creates a culture of collaboration and shared joy. Interestingly, when we changed our pedagogy to an inquiry-based model, the students took the lead. Differentiation came naturally, as students felt safe in challenging themselves and each other. Students wanted to learn and took joy in (finally) closing the gaps in knowledge that they had struggled with for so long. Our learning journey in mathematics became our story.

Focus: In year 1, this inquiry came about because of my (intermediate teacher) frustration with the lack of math learning going on in my classroom and my inability to do anything about the math anxiety that was prevalent amongst my students. I sought the collaboration of a colleague (primary teacher) who was knowledgeable about math pedagogy. Together we worked on figuring out the reasons that this was happening.

In year 2, we wanted to go deeper and figure out why we had been so successful in the first year, so that we could permanently make changes to our math programs. Sometimes you can be successful and not really know why. It is only by taking the time to reflect and have conversations that you can understand the reasons for the positive changes that have taken place. When we understood why the journey had been so successful, we were able to build on what we had learned in the first year.

Hunch: We had more than a few hunches about why students were flailing in mathematics. A societal norm of believing “I’m just not good at math” was probably the most prevalent. How many people have you encountered that have this belief? Maybe you have it yourself. What we realized in our second year is that the prevalent attitude (perhaps even societal attitude) about mathematics was very fixed. You either were smart at math or not. You either found math easy or you struggled. There was no way to climb out of the pit when you didn’t understand what was going on, so you had better just give up. This alone could explain why so many people just give up.

Until I began this inquiry, I relied a lot on the spiral nature of the mathematics curriculum. If students didn’t understand a concept, then it didn’t really matter because they would review in the next grade. Maybe they would catch on then. In the meantime we needed to move on because there was a lot of material to cover. No wonder there were tears.

My main frustration through all these years of struggling with teaching math was that I knew that students didn’t understand what we were doing, but I didn’t have tools to figure out where their learning deficits lay. I didn’t know what they didn’t know and I didn’t have a way to figure it out.

Having Alison as my inquiry partner was invaluable because she had already figured a bunch of this out. She is an avid reader of research and was familiar with the advances in math pedagogy. She was able to guide me through my frustration and shared ways that she had created an attitude of curiosity towards learning math in her class.

New Professional Learning: The inquiry built on the learning that we had done in the previous year. We continued to use the”First Steps in Mathematics” assessments and learning activities. We continued using the SNAP Assessments (from SD 33). We explored the use of Pedagogical Documentation in Math, which turned our mathematics learning into a story. We explored First People’s Principles of Learning and sought out ways to apply this to mathematics. We partnered with our Indigenous Education department and had a number of “Indigenous Explorations” as part of our math curriculum. We read some professional books and ordered many more! The two books we have found the most helpful so far are: “Mathematical Mindsets” by Jo Boaler and “Teaching Student Centered Mathematics” by John Van de Walle et al.

Less expected and most exciting was the professional learning that we embarked on together to create materials that we couldn’t find. Based on the professional reading we were doing and the assessments we were using, Alison and I created a number of curricular and hands-on materials for the students to use. We used these with our students and revised them as needed.

Taking Action: The most significant action I took (intermediate) this year was putting aside the expected pace and depth of math learning (work quickly through a large number of concepts which only gives time to learn algorithms and develop tricks to get the right answers) and focusing instead on correcting the learning deficits that my students had. I realized that I could use tools (SNAP Assessment, First Steps) to pinpoint what they didn’t know and provide remediation. Time needed to be taken, so that the students could deeply learn.

I think I can confidently say that if a student (early intermediate) is struggling with mathematics, they need remediation in their understanding of number (number sense). It’s a lot like expecting students to read and understand text when they don’t know their phonics. They might struggle along and figure out some things, but there is no deep understanding and no ability to take learning to a higher level. I think that this just might be the cause of math anxiety.

In this inquiry, we were able to find assessments and activities through SNAP and First Steps, but things really took off when we had the confidence to develop our own materials. Alison (primary) had been doing this for years and she used this expertise to expand her materials into the intermediate curriculum. She created a series of booklets based on the SNAP assessment to give students daily practice in working with numbers. I (intermediate) used these for the second half of the school year and the progress that the children made was incredible.

Once again following Alison’s lead, I learned how to create “Class Books” about my class’ math learning. Alison’s class book was so popular, she had to make a second copy so that the children didn’t have to wait so long before they could have another turn. In both classes, the class books were read every day during read-to-self time. This not only turned their math learning into a story, it also (unknowingly to them) provided reinforcement of their math learning.

Alison and I worked together to create a math journal that was used as the main “math book” for the year. We used the math journals for both standard curricular work and for math explorations. Students looked forward to challenging themselves with their math learning, and it was inspiring to see their confidence grow as they worked in their journals.

Once we figured out what the students didn’t know, we were able to create hands-on learning materials for students to use to support their learning. We also created remediation activities that were done with an educational assistant.

This is what Alison (primary) wrote:
Early in the year I  used First Steps to assess my students’ understanding of counting principles and subitizing. I used these assessments to inform my teaching around these concepts and to provide individualized support to students who needed it.  These assessments allowed me to identify the specific skills or concepts my students needed help with. By addressing these needs early in the year, we were able to come together as a group and make fantastic progress as a class. In the spring my students did the SNAP assessment. They were excited to show what they could do…every student felt confident!

Photo descriptions: (top) student work on fractions in their math journal, (middle) student work doing remediation about number sense, (bottom) a group of students doing work in their math journal about multiplication.

Checking: Before I share this story with you, I think that it is important for you to know that Alison had been teaching math this way for years. Her role in this inquiry (in many ways) was to be a mentor and provocateur. Math learning in her class (primary) has been refined through this inquiry; math learning in my class (intermediate) has undergone a seismic shift.

I can best illustrate the change in my (intermediate) students by giving some examples of what I am seeing. Keep in mind how things used to be in math class. Students would cry. Students would sneak out of class. There was all sorts of negative behaviour. I described teaching math as a nightmare.

This year, students skip down the hallway, spontaneously singing “I love math”. Students beg to stay in at recess and work in their math journals. We have discussions about complex math topics. The math books I purchased for our class library are always being read. Students play math games during free choice time. Math is consistently chosen as a favourite subject (and this is by students who I would consider as struggling).

It is also important to show growth through the use of assessments. At the end of the year, I re-assessed my students using both a SNAP assessment and a First Steps assessment. In my class (intermediate) there was improvement in every student. The most improvement came from the students who struggled the most. In one case, a student went from not being able to name a number (1 234 is one two three four) to being able to name numbers in the ten thousands (12 345 is twelve thousand three hundred forty-five).

In Alison’s (primary) class, students are doing math work way beyond what would be expected at their grade level. There has been a discussion about the differences/similarities between infinity and negative infinity.

Here is what Alison (primary) wrote:

One student who did not yet have one to one correspondence and could only count to 10 at the beginning of the year went on to work with numbers to one hundred. Perhaps more importantly, she moved from needing help to contributing ideas in our class math talks. She often told me how much she loved math and would generate a whole page of math in her journal in the morning.

In the second half of the year, students started the day working in their math journals. They used this time to record their own math ideas, often making patterns in their work. We also spent time sharing these ideas as a class and students were inspired by one another’s work. One student remarked, “I love patterns!” There was a chorus of me too from the nearby students. I love the beauty of numbers, especially the patterns. I’m glad my students got to feel this too.

Our class math books grew to two volumes this year. Documenting our learning in our class math books literally made our learning visible. Students were able to see the connections between the hands on materials and the mathematical numbers and symbols we use to communicate math ideas. They learned to read math and to see how math can be represented in materials, pictures, words, and numbers. Students poured over these books during free time and at read to self. They also enjoyed taking them home to share with their families. These books made a significant impact on student learning.

Reflections/Advice: Alison and I have been working on this inquiry for two years now, and for a lot of the time I (intermediate) was struggling. I described it as swimming around in the mud. Changing the way I taught math was really hard. I made changes before I really understood what I was doing. I trusted Alison and was grateful for her mentorship and expertise, but a lot of the time I really didn’t know what I was doing.

It was part way through the second year that things began to get clear. I had established routines. The materials that we had developed were successful. The students were loving math class.

It was late in the year, when Alison and I were discussing our inquiry that I had one of those moments when everything becomes clear. I realized that this whole inquiry was about changing mindset.

I wrote earlier about changing my mindset as a teacher. Through this inquiry, I realized that math anxiety was caused by the students having a fixed mindset about learning math. It makes sense. If a student doesn’t have a working understanding and confidence about number, then it must seem like math is impossible to learn.

By using math assessments to pinpoint where the deficits lay in the students’ math learning, we were able to use tools and remediation to change those misunderstandings. The students can now see that numbers make sense. I believe that this has been the reason for the dramatic shift in the students’ attitude and accomplishment in math learning.

Here is what Alison (primary) wrote:

This year I felt more confident using hands on materials, math journals, math talks, and our class books. I can see how these elements weave together to support students in developing competencies in math … and how they can support students in coming together in a community where all students feel confident as mathematicians.

Advice:

The second part of this section is called advice, so here it goes: If you are struggling with teaching math (or anything, really) it takes courage to seek out the answers to why things are not going well. It took me years to get to the point where I was willing to tackle the challenge of math anxiety, and I still can’t believe the change I have seen in my students, or how quickly it has come about. I had to lean into the discomfort of changing the way I was doing things.

I sought out the help and mentorship of someone who was doing things well. I spent more than a year “swimming around in the mud” before things became clear. In the end, I had to trust my inquiry partner, Alison, and I had to trust in the process of inquiry.

Interestingly, both Alison and I have seen the benefit of working with an inquiry partner that teaches at a different grade level. For Alison, (primary) it was beneficial to see where the children were headed with her learning, and it helped her to see the reasons for what she was doing. For me (intermediate) it was beneficial to learn about the pedagogy of early learning.

Most importantly, perhaps, there was safety in learning with a teacher who wasn’t working at the same grade level. There is sometimes the temptation to compare how your class is doing against the other class when you are working with a same grade teacher. Working with a teacher from a different grade level removes this challenge.

School Name: Arden Elementary

School District: SD#71 Comox Valley

Inquiry Team Members: Katie.arsenault@sd71.bc.ca, jacquie.anderson@sd71.bc.ca, krista.manson@sd71.bc.ca,
Nicholas.Glomb@sd71.bc.ca (student teacher)

Inquiry Team Contact Email: Katie.arsenault@sd71.bc.ca

II. Inquiry Project Information

Type of Inquiry: NOIIE

Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Primary (K-3)

Curricular Areas Addressed: Language Arts – Oral Language, Language Arts – Writing

Focus Addressed: Community-based learning, Core competencies (for example, critical thinking, communication, problem solving), Differentiated instruction, Experiential learning, Flexible learning, Inclusion and inclusive instructional strategies, Inquiry-based learning, Self-regulation, Social and emotional learning

In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? To connect students socially and build community, while developing literacy skills through story workshop and writers workshop.

III. Spirals of Inquiry Details

Scanning: We wondered what was going on for our learners? Through observation at story reading time, classroom discussions and book making sessions, students have challenges encouraging one another, actively listening to others share determining parts of a story, and perspective taking. Students were hesitant to share ideas and more hesitant to write.

Focus: We noticed that we needed to build the scaffold for learning with community building, connecting socially, oral language, and perspective taking. We wondered if students we currently work with are socially impacted by Covid-19. Would providing a rich oral language environment and opportunity to socially interact through play and story workshop improve students’ social interactions as well as literacy skills in oracy, reading and writing?

Hunch: Our hunch was that students were limited in socially interacting with others in school and outside of home, that active communication needed to be explicitly modeled for our learners. We wondered if providing an environment created for children to play, build stories together, and communicate with one another would improve relationships, confidence and literacy skills
both orally and with written work. Students were exposed to technology for long periods of time and hesitant to interact in person with others. We thought students would benefit greatly from increased focus and social interactions. Students who currently felt disengaged would find connection through playful learning, while also building literacy and communication skills.

New Professional Learning: We used Story Workshop and the Story Grammar Marker program. Neither of these programs I had used before. We also explored creating stories with the use of loose parts. I enrolled in district professional development sessions about Story Workshop, that took place over a longer period of time. Our Speech and Language pathologist was involved and introduced Story Grammar Marker to our class. Our Early Learning teacher itinerant supported story workshop through 6 sessions of in-class support. It was an opportunity to try something new with support and enthusiasm for both the students and our team.

Taking Action: We decided to start in November. First, as a team, we researched what kind of loose parts were suggested to use. We then created 7 trays to encourage small groups to work together and support one another. We needed to explicitly teach how to manage and take care of our loose parts, and what to do with them. We had our early learning itinerant come visit and model what story workshop with loose parts looked like. The kids were very engaged in listening to the story that was introduced. It was an oral story about a bird in a tree with her nest, and her dogs reaction was represented with loose parts. The kids listened to the story intently and then were encouraged to think of story that they might like to create. I noticed that many came up with their own stories; some students with more delayed language development copied the story, but created a story using different loose parts. Students were able to use a similar story and make it their own.

Each week in place of our usual Response to Instruction/Intervention instruction time, we set aside a non-negotiable time to work on story workshop and build community within our classroom. For the first two weeks we continued to model a story and then have students create a story on their own using loose parts.

In the third week, we introduced the Story Grammar Marker program so that parts of the story could be developed more thoroughly in their story workshop creations. Along with the program, there is a visual braid that breaks a story into parts using visual pieces as visual reminders. Kids were working together in groups of 4 at each loose parts tray. Students would create a story and then share their story with other tray partners. Students referred to the visual while creating their stories.

In week four, we reviewed what are all parts of the story as reviewed by Story Grammar Marker. This week we gave each student a mini braid to check if their partner had all the components of a story. The children were encouraged to work with a partner to tell their story to. Each child would take turns creating and then telling their story. The mini braid was used as a visual checker, and each child loved having the opportunity to check that each story part was covered.

It was at this point where students were starting to confidently share their stories with others. We invited other adults to listen to stories of children. We then had our Indigenous school elder join our group and listen to the stories of the children. Momentum of excitement was growing. One student asked if we could invite the principal to listen to stories too. We asked big buddies to listen to stories, as well as older students in upper elementary, too. They were excited to share their stories with other students and also with adults.

In week five, we worked on creating and telling our stories, but this time we had an 11×17 sheet of paper divided into four parts, to offer to those who wanted to draw their story down. Most students chose to draw the story they created. We took pictures of each story sheet, and throughout the following week we had students who were comfortable sharing their story with the class. A space was created to take risks, make mistakes, and try again.

Our session with our early learning itinerant was only for six weeks, but we had the skills and the excitement to continue. Every Friday we had a 1 hour and 15 minute block set aside for story workshop. The students requested that we offer loose parts as part of our discovery centres. I would often see students choose to work on story workshop, and then story writing, during centre time. As the year progressed we brought in our knowledge of letters and sounds and began to develop written stories. I would give students a choice – they could create their story and then represent in a variety of ways. The students started creating books. We would place them in duotangs and kids would enjoy the pictures and stories created. We used our Heggerty understanding to help with word development.

Checking: At first we started our session with about 45 mins. We gradually increased our time for story workshop creation to 1:15. I was surprised they could attend to a task and be cooperative for such a stretch of time. All the students were engaged in the process. I noticed with two particular students that story workshop was so impactful for. One student showed incredible artistic talent; his creativity evolved and was made obvious when they had loose parts to work with. They discovered their love of art from story workshop loose parts play. Another student who has regulation challenges was able to attend to a task for an extended period of time. They shared orally, using loose parts, on paper with a graphic organizer, or using book making. This process of sharing provided more people who took interest in them. When asked at the end of the year, in our end of the year interview, students felt connected not only to myself but to a variety of adults and kids within our school community. They would often list two to four people in our school who cared about them. Students were able to explain to others what we were learning and why. Students were able to provide constructive feedback about story writing and were often thinking what will be my next step (or story).

Reflections/Advice: I was impressed at the learning that developed! The students created relationships, used playful learning, and improved their communication and literacy skills. I think the freedom to choose what loose parts, how to create, and having a visual reminder about parts of a story made a huge difference for our learners. Having structure within a flexible learning environment allowed for success with all abilities in my classroom. All seemed engaged and excited to be creative. I am excited to implement this with my next class and see where their learning takes us.