I am a teacher who wants to create relevant learning experiences for my students.

Kids are naturally curious and I want to respond to their natural curiosity as often as I can and as best I can. When I began planning my unit on ‘Materials and Structures’, I looked for ways to make the learning come alive for my students. My goal was to create hands on learning activities and I wanted them to be involved and engaged in the learning experience. I wanted them to connect their learning to their own communities and homes to make it relevant and meaningful. I remembered a project that two highly innovative teachers at Churchill High School did with their grade 7 Flexible Learning students. The project was called ‘Sustainable City’ and it was based on research that was focused on ways a city can integrate sustainability into communities.

I knew that my grade 3 / 4 students could handle this type of project and decided to integrate sustainability into the ‘Materials and Structures’ unit as well. We would create our own ‘Futuristic Sustainable City’ – we could do this! We learned about renewable and non-renewable resources. I had a guest speaker come in and talk about urban gardening and structures and houses that were made out of recyclable materials such as tires, bottles, etc. After the research was finished we planned our city and went to work. The kids, for the most part, worked in pairs and each pair built a section of our futuristic sustainable city. Students built skyscrapers, houses, a hospital, bank, police station, airport, school, McDonalds, theater and many other buildings you would find in a city.

The finished product was awesome and the students were extremely proud of their accomplishments! We displayed our city for parents during Student Lead Conferences and students were able to share what they learned throughout the project. When students are highly engaged in the learning process amazing things happen for them. They were excited about their learning every day of the month and a half that we worked together. Every day new ideas emerged and were incorporated into projects. Every day my students couldn’t wait to build their structures. I tweeted my ‘Sustainable City’ project so other teachers might be inspired to build their own city with their students.

Erin Dahin
Wellington School
Cluster 1965

 

 

Innovation in the classroom is not always comfortable. Taking educational risks requires us to justify doing things differently. We need to assess the learning and how it fits with provincial curriculum, divisional and administration’s expectations for learning.

My class this year has embarked on an exploration of coding and computer programming. We have spent time playing coding games on code.org and tynker.com.  I have encouraged them to do coding at home as well.  They are learning the value of using the technology available to them to create rather than consume. Why play a video game if you could create one for others to play?

We were lucky enough to have Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) lead a workshop in block coding where students were able to code Dash drones. This experience demonstrated some really powerful learning moments. They were collaborating, problem solving, and reading and writing code.  It challenged their logic and communication skills.

As an educator I feel a need to justify why I am doing things different in the classroom.  I need to explain how coding and drones have led to numerous writing prompts, developing research skills, working on logic and collaboration.

As an educator innovating and attempting to do things differently often is uncomfortable.  My administrators and support teachers have been supportive of this coding journey of learning in my classroom but I still feel a need to prove that what we are doing is worthwhile.

Recently, through discussions with my Inquiry Support Teacher Cheryl Zubrack, I have come to realize that this feeling of a need to justify the ‘why’ of what we are doing in the classroom has actually served me well.  Being a little uncomfortable doing this innovative journey with my students has forced me, at every step of the way, to consider students’ learning, making it less about what we are doing but more importantly how we are learning how to learn.

Derek Turnbull
Wellington School
Cluster 1965