Equity in Education

Our Board recently had a PD about Equity, educators engaged in deep discussions about our school's approach to equity, what we already know, what we want to learn and what could be our future goals to making sure our school is up-to-date with board initiatives in regards to equity.

Below is the definition that was submitted on behalf of our school based on everyone's input:

Equity means everyone gets what they need and treated with fairness, respect, and equal representation regardless of age, gender, race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, cultural background, family, abilities, languages, social, economic, or any other social difference.

What is your goal to promote EQUITY in your program?
Is there differentiated instruction in your daily planning?
Does your literacy program support diversity and is it balanced? Do your students feel connected, represented in the literature that is available to them?

Stay tuned for more about equity..

Outdoor Learning Inquiry - Habibtats and Weather Changes

When students are outside, there is so much to learn and explore...

https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/287245282454065429/

A learning story in our class..

Rokaya and the Tree. 

I enjoyed every picture, painting, representation, craft that you created of our kindergarten tree in the courtyard outside. The first picture that you drew at school this year was of you and your friends under that tree. Your drawings have grown in detail because your observations and connections with the tree have grown as well. When we talk about weather changes during our learning circles, you mention the changes you have noticed about our tree. In the beginning of the year, you made a bird feeder using a bagel, margarine, and bird seeds, because you said the tree is lonely and wants the birds to come make a nest on its branches. You said, “the birds like to come sing in our tree so I will put them a snack when they come and they will go in the hole in the bagel too” just like the hole in the bird feeder house you have in your backyard. When we go outside you bring your toys and shovel, paper and clipboard and you play under the tree. When we are inside, you look out of the window to draw your next beautiful picture of the tree. When the Fall season came, you noticed that the leaves changed colour and you said, “the leaves are red, that’s my favourite colour.” Then you were sad when they fell down. But you asked your friends to collect them all with you and your pictures of the tree started having red leaves glued on the paper just like our tree looked like. You sorted the leaves into groups of fall colours, yellow, brown, orange and red. Your connections grew when you noticed that the leaves you collected look like the red leaf on our Canada flag that is beside the window in our class. You asked me, “Why is it the same leaf?” We brought in books from the library about the different trees found in our area, and we watched videos of “maple trees” and more questions were asked by your friends about “maple syrup”. 

Next Steps:

We will go for a walk to see if all the trees lost their leaves or if there are trees that keep them when the weather gets colder. Your wonder journal included pictures of a tree in the summer, in the fall and then you wondered what would happen in the winter and spring… I asked you if you remember what happened last winter? 

We will go on a field trip to John R Park Homestead Conservation Area in the spring to harvest sap from maple trees.

Life cycle of a tree.

Treehouses, animals that live in or around trees, etc..

We learned about changes in weather where we live, you noticed that our kinder court is changing, the colours, the animals, the plants and trees, us ...

And then you collected leaves, sorted them, made leaf people, collected the last vegetables from our garden...

And you wanted to make a habitat for the snails you found outside because it was getting cold...

You noticed the birds flying together, we learned about migrating to a warmer place, the weather getting colder and the snow started coming..

 We learned about properties of snow, built a snowman...

Then Spring came and you were interested in butterflies, you learned about flowers that attract them and planted wild flowers, we raised butterflies and then let them go into their own habitat...

You noticed that the plants and the grass was growing again, we planted seeds to make our outdoor area more attractive to snails and butterflies..

Assessment and Documentation in Kindergarten

Making Learning Visible 

Keeping students' ideas and questions physically present in the classroom by posting quotes and speech bubbles helps connect student learning to what they are curious about and provides a place for them to return to throughout the inquiry.

It used to be that the teacher will post the students' products up on a bulletin board with a title... Now through documentation and the way that teachers assess students' learning process through videos and pictures and voice recordings, and then make it visible to families and other adults by making more meaningful behind what the children are learning about at different times during the learning experience. 

I believe that documentation is a powerful way to celebrate successful moments or advances in learning and the best way to do it is posting documentation on a bulletin board as a way to share the learning community. Another way to document is through technology using apps like Seesaw, Edsby, PicCollage, etc..

Bulletin Boards:

These can be a powerful tool to make learning visible. In our class, we usually ask the students what they want to share about their learning. We show them pictures that we have taken of them showing learning and then ask what they were doing in those pictures. We add titles to the pictures and then scribe their connections and conversations. We also add our own perspective to the board by adding a learning story or a summary about what we have noticed from our students' work and collaboration. We include students' thoughts about their work, what was hard, surprising, or exciting. We ask for feedback from the students and other adults, parents, staff, or community visitors about the board. Asking the students to document can show us the students' perspective about what's worth paying attention to and foster a greater sense of student ownership.

Technology:

We find it very useful to include assessment information and share documentation through apps on iPads and/or phones. We are most active in documenting on Edsby (a board initiative) to share with parents and on Twitter (social media) to share with community partners, colleagues, etc.. 
First we identify the focus of the documentation, we select the right tool, collect the information, shape it, share it with colleagues, type up any important conversations and use the documentation to inform next steps or share back with the students.
Sharing photographs: to communicate information about the learning (like who was there, what were they doing...) They can focus our attention to the learning moment. 
Videos: captures visual and audio of an experience (body language, dialogue)
Typed up notes/observations: simple way to capture student thinking via quotes and parts of conversation or what we've observed. 
Sometimes we combine pictures and quotes or observations into PicCollages and post them around the room. Speech bubbles are awesome at making individual thinking visible and easy to implement. They can be posted on the walls, bulletin boards, stick notes, poster, panels, or cubbies. They can be included in a classroom newsletter, attached to the contents of a portfolio, or shared online. 
Note: Sharing Information with parents who are not active with technology or are not regular visitors to the class...

• Send pictures and quotes of students home with report cards or newsletters or even on a regular basis
• share their portfolios at interviews, parent engagement sessions, or other events
• not every child might be included in a documentation board so make sure you have pictures in binders of previous bulletin boards so parents can see or send home photocopies of the boards.
  
  
  

Cultivating Learning in Diverse Learners

"Coming together as a community to create a truly inclusive system of early childhood care and education requires commitment and a willingness to strive to be ready to teach and support every child in the community." (Including Children with Special Needs, by Amy Watson and Rebecca McCathren)

Our program at the school is one of its kind in the province. I currently work in an Arabic Transition Program which is a program established in 2007 at FW Begley School to respond to its community's needs and strengths. The program is available for ELL learners that have Arabic as a home language from grades K-3.  The program underwent many changes and progress in the last 5 years because of the changes of the school community. There was a lot of communication and parent engagement to introduce the program in its early piloting and throughout. There was a study that was done by OISE to see the benefits of having dual language instruction and vocabulary throughout the classroom and it was found that the students excelled in their first language as well as acquiring the English Language at a higher level. This website mentions this program among others as well that account for diverse learners throughout Canada:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312053148_Bilingual_Education_in_Canada

Research suggests, for example, that effective instruction acknowledges students' gender differences and reaffirms their cultural, ethnic, and linguistic heritages. Many effective instructional approaches build on students' backgrounds to further the development of their abilities. Critically important is recognizing that the use of effective instructional practices as demonstrated by research will improve achievement for all children, including those who are not minorities or children of poverty. The implementation of sound, research-based strategies that recognize the benefits of diversity can build a better future for all of us.
Amazing Resource:
Diverse Teaching Strategies for Diverse Learners

by Marietta Saravia-Shore

(http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/107003/chapters/Diverse-Teaching-Strategies-for-Diverse-Learners.aspx)

Zeichner (1992) has summarized the extensive literature that describes successful teaching approaches for diverse populations. From his review, he distilled 12 key elements for effective teaching for ethnic- and language-minority students.

1. Teachers have a clear sense of their own ethnic and cultural identities.
2. Teachers communicate high expectations for the success of all students and a belief that all students can succeed.
3. Teachers are personally committed to achieving equity for all students and believe that they are capable of making a difference in their students' learning.
4. Teachers have developed a bond with their students and cease seeing their students as "the other."
5. Schools provide an academically challenging curriculum that includes attention to the development of higher-level cognitive skills.
6. Instruction focuses on students' creation of meaning about content in an interactive and collaborative learning environment.
7. Teachers help students see learning tasks as meaningful.
8. Curricula include the contributions and perspectives of the different ethnocultural groups that compose the society.
9. Teachers provide a "scaffolding" that links the academically challenging curriculum to the cultural resources that students bring to school.
10. Teachers explicitly teach students the culture of the school and seek to maintain students' sense of ethnocultural pride and identity.
11. Community members and parents or guardians are encouraged to become involved in students' education and are given a significant voice in making important school decisions related to programs (such as resources and staffing).
12. Teachers are involved in political struggles outside the classroom that are aimed at achieving a more just and humane society.

Example of Educating Students with Special Needs

http://www.familyconnect.org/info/education/1

We have a student who is partially visually impaired. She has an vision itinerant teacher that works with her for the first part of the day. She engages her in the learning through tools like an ipad, magnifying camera and screen, and magnified visual pictures. When she's not there, we usually have her sit up close to the easel and bring the picture book closer to her so we use proximity and the students know why we are doing that and respect the time she takes to look closer to the details in the pictures. It seems to be giving  sense of community for the rest of the class and being an inclusive classroom to all.

Start to the school year

Ensuring a well-planned and organized start to the school year is critical for children with special education needs. Schools keep families informed about the requirements and procedures necessary for September enrolment. A sample school checklist that identifies some of the requirements is included below:

School checklist for entry of students with special education needs in Kindergarten

• Register in January to allow for a well-planned transition
• Complete the registration form,  and the Kindergarten Parent Questionnaire​ 
• With parental consent, an observation visit to the preschool setting is arranged for school staff and appropriate support staff

Kindergarten is such a memorable experience for children and their family members, and it is the beginning of a child's formal educational career. Kindergarten provides opportunities for children to grow and develop physically, emotionally, socially and academically, and for many families it is an exciting and sometimes challenging time. It is a new experience for both the child and the parents, and change can be somewhat challenging at first. By planning ahead and thinking about the ways you can support your child in this new adventure, you can make the transition to kindergarten a smooth one for your child and your family. This is especially important for families of children with special needs. 
 https://www.shastacoe.org/uploaded/Dept/selpa/CAC/Countdown_to_Kindergarten_Final_Eng.pdf

https://globaldigitalcitizen.org/11-simple-ways-to-start-using-technology-in-your-classroom

http://www.achildwithneeds.com/parenting/learning-websites-for-kids/

Cultivating Learners Through Literacy

An inspirational Quote...

COMPETENCIES FOR A DIGITAL AGE

“What is clear is that education – deeper, broader and more universal – has a significant part to play in enabling humanity to succeed in the next half century. We need to ensure that students everywhere leave school ready to continue to learn and adapt, ready to take responsibility for their own future learning and careers, ready to innovate with and for others .... We need perhaps the first truly global generation; a generation of individuals rooted in their own cultures but open to
the world and confident of their ability to shape it.”

Paying Attention to K-12 Literacy (http://www.edugains.ca/resourcesLIT/PayingAttentiontoLiteracy.pdf)

Literacy involves the capacity to:

• access, manage, create and evaluate information
• think imaginatively and analytically
• communicate thoughts and ideas effectively
• apply metacognitive knowledge and skills
• develop a sense of self-efficacy and an interest in life-long learning

It is interesting to think about how us as Kindergarten teachers, we are setting the foundational learning for our 21st century students that will go along with them into their post-secondary education and careers, and their adulthood. Sometimes thinking about that makes me refocus and treat the learning happening by looking at the whole-child..

Am I taking into account their interests..

Am I considering their background and cultural perspectives..

Would the parents be collaborators with my program..

Will my teaching be an significance in this students' learning because of where he/she comes from, how much literacy has been exposed to him/her already...

Our last Parent Engagement made me think of how it is very important to have the parent always involved in their child's learning journey especially in our community, and to also have choice in what they are learning about..

Evidence From Research...

Research Monograph #4 Supporting Families as Collaborators in Children’s Literacy Development

by Dr. Michelann Parr Nipissing University

(http://thelearningexchange.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/WW_Familes_Literacy_AODA.pdf)

"Many families are unaware of the valuable role they play in apprenticing their children into literacy. When asked what they do to support their children’s literacy development, they often think in terms of school-based tasks, rather than the things they do each day: singing a lullaby, playing card games, talking at the dinner table or checking email. Because there is no evident academic or school connection, families undervalue what they do that fosters literacy. It is essential, then, that educators help parents understand the important role they play in their children’s education. As the Ministry of Education points out, “When parents are engaged and involved, everyone – students, parents, and families, teachers, schools, and communities – benefits, and our schools become increasingly rich and positive places to teach, learn and grow.”

Supporting families as collaborators in children’s literacy development requires:

• helping parents and caregivers recognize the many ways literacy is fostered on a day-by-day basis at home
• working collaboratively with families– talking with them, not at or over them –and building on their strengths
• engaging in ongoing dialogue that respects cultural, linguistic and familial identities
• planning family literacy activities that are fun, meaningful and engaging

Into Our Classroom...

We like to think about ourselves as co-creators of a responsive literacy learning environment in the classroom and the school, like in the hallways. Together we engage in inquiry, reflection, dialogue and the sharing of ideas in all the frames across the day. Our classroom has an effective literacy learning environment which is responsive to learners’ interests, preferences and strengths and provides opportunities for learners to express their thinking in many different ways.

Tips...

Tips to Support Students’ Vocabulary Development

• Teachers can support vocabulary develop-ment by participating in children’s play using new vocabulary appropriate to the play context.
• During play, teachers can make connections to children’s prior knowledge and add content to children’s play scenarios in ways that expand children’s understandings.
• As teachers observe, listen, and respond to what children are doing and saying, they extend and build on children’s language and learning.

(http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/ww_vocabulary.pdf)