#seaspen Parent Engagement Night

Our school staff wanted to engage our parent community in learning more about a number of initiatives connected to our SIP and TLLP goals that promote the social emotional learning of students. Our Parent Engagement Night was held on November 29, 2017 and offered parents 4 sessions. We promoted our event using Twitter, Synervoice, a hardcopy pamphlet and a Google sign up form.

The sessions included Zones of Regulation, Flexible Seating and Community Circles, Exploring Math in Today’s Classroom and Hapara Workspace. The sessions were offered by school staff with support from school administration and the School Board Leading and Learning team.

Zones of Regulation explained the relationship of self-regulation to stress response, brain function, stressors and calming strategies. Up regulating and down regulating activities were explored.

Flexible Seating and Community Circles focussed on the research and rationale behind both flexible seating and community circles, and their link to creating a climate and culture of collaboration, connectedness and empathy. 

Exploring Math in Today's Classroom allowed parents an opportunity to more fully understand math in the K-6 classroom and participate in some math games and puzzles that enhance numeracy, logical thinking and spatial awareness. 

Hapara Workspace introduced parents to an online secure platform used to create a personalized learning experience for students that deepens collaboration and differentiation.

The parents arrived excited to learn and were able to visit two sessions. The feedback from parents was very positive. A second session is planned for the spring with hopes to showcase our school makerspace and demonstrate how makerpsace activities provide positive social emotional learning opportunities that link to the curriculum. 

~Laura 

Our Makerspace is on the Move!

A gathering of our school professional learning community (PLC) was organized by our school administration (working closely with the TLLP team, with TLLP and SIP goals in mind) for early December, 2017. We were fortunate to have the coordinator of the OCSB’s ‘Leading and Learning’ department as our workshop leader, with input and resources from other members of the Leading and Learning team. The focus of the day was Makerspace, which was an exciting moment for our TLLP project as it marked an important next step in the evolution of our school’s learning environment changes.

Our TLLP team had completed some work on learning environment changes earlier that same week, repurposing carts and school materials while also incorporating items from our TLLP budget. You can read about this process further in a separate blog post to come! The creation of four Makerspace station carts, as well as curating and creating activities is a process that necessitates a whole-school approach. While some teachers already feel comfortable using design thinking with their students and supporting other teachers in this journey, others may be engaging with the process for the first time - trying out or designing their own Makerspace activities. This process was facilitated by our workshop presenter’s creation of a slidedeck that included multi-disciplinary Makerspace tasks to try out collaboratively. We were given the opportunity to rotate through tasks at each of four stations (Invention / Construction Zone, Audio-Visual, Lego, and Robotics). At the end of the rotations, teachers had time to think about curriculum links and the types of activities they might like to use with our own students. These ideas have been added to the slidedeck and this growing document will be a testament to our growth as educators as our school community engages more deeply with a maker mindset shift.

As a next step, our TLLP team hopes to further investigate the idea of SEL-centered makerspace tasks that prompt students to think more deeply and critically about their emotional regulation as they express their creativity. One specific example of such an activity asks students to reflect on their SEL knowledge and create a house structure that reflects one of the zones. For example, if the student group chooses the red zone,they must consider what a ‘red’ structure would look like. Students must think about the feelings that fit with that zone, and how those feelings mesh with the big ideas of strength and stability of structure. Social-emotional learning may also be integrated into future Makerspace activities with the use of student self-assessment in terms of their feelings surrounding collaboration, creating, and goal-setting. As we continue our book study of Launch (Spencer, Juliani, 2016) our engagement with the “Launch Cycle” (page 54) will hopefully appeal to our colleagues who are moving along on their own Makerspace and SEL journeys.

~Katie

We have narrowed our Focus!

  Our first meeting in September was a success! We started off leading by example with discussing our thoughts and highlights of the first couple of weeks in an informal community circle, as we do in our classrooms. We had many stories to share especially the success of the 5 in 10 school wide initiative. This initiate is explained more in another post .

  What we accomplished from this meeting was a lengthy discussion about our large topic, Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and how it connects to Deep Learning (DL). Below you can see the visual (spiral) we as a team derived based on all the important aspects we were going to focus on such as collaboration (one of the 6 C's), our community (staff and students), self-regulation learning skill, partnerships, leveraging digital and classroom environments.
  We knew that SEL is the foundation of our project and it should be the foundation for any students' journey into deep learning. This is why it is at the centre, the core of our spiral. Through SEL, a student is able to self-regulate appropriately in order for deep learning to happen. However there are other conditions that have to be met along the way. As a team, we are going to focus on and collect data about collaboration as one of the 6C's of the global competencies. We understand that having most or all the 6C's is necessary to achieve deep learning. While most C's will be achieved through many of our classroom or school-wide activities, projects, units etc. Only collaboration will be getting a closer look through the New Pedagogies for Deep Learning progression chart.
  There are three dimensions within the progression chart that we believe are an integral part of connecting SEL and DL. This is why it belongs within the spiral. Leveraging digital (technology - innovative practices), partnerships (students, teachers, parents) and environments (classroom, school, digital) are factors that will influence how students learn. Each of us will be looking at these "dimensions" and apply them within our classrooms to enhance and foster SEL so that students can learn on a deeper level.

~Yolanta