Outdoor Learning Inquiry - Habibtats and Weather Changes

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

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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.