School Library or Learning Commons: What's in a Name?

-by Donna Alden, Teacher-Librarian

What’s the difference between a school library and a school learning commons, and does the name make a difference? The Alberta School Library Association, which is informed by a larger Canadian and American field of school library studies, offers this:

Traditional school libraries are seen as quiet places full of printed books, people reading and librarians ‘shushing’. A Learning Commons takes school libraries into the 21st century. Yes, we still have printed text, and there are still people reading, and there is still a librarian, however the Learning Commons has so much more! There is a hum of activity with students talking, learning, searching for information on a variety of devices, focusing on content creation and synthesizing of information. The Learning Commons becomes the hub and the heart of the school; a place for teachers and teacher-librarians to collaborate to build inquiry learning and critical thinking skills in students; a place for technology integration and experimentation; a place that is ‘owned’ by students and staff alike. 

Google just keeps killing it.

by Deirdre Bailey,

I work at an innovative and creative institution. Perhaps it is because of the freedom we have to explore possibilities that we are often unaware of the depth to many of the simplest resources that are available. It is also without a doubt hard to be constantly adapting one's practice to ever-updating technology applications. Certainly, in this day and age, the sheer volume of resources available in education can be overwhelming. Navigating options and rating their relative value is always intimidating, particularly on the heels of a full 7 hours in front of students. But google docs is so worth it. In the last 9 months, it has become one of the most valuable learning tools for me as I continue to inquire into teaching and learning and I am constantly excited by the facility with which google docs allows me to guide student collaboration, research and writing while tracking their progress, providing feedback and involving parents. And while my presence on twitter often gives me the impression that all educators are connected, deeply familiar with technological resources and employing them in their every day practice; it occurred to me, after a conversation I had today that this might not be representative of all cases.

E-Books or "Real" Books?

-by Donna Alden, Teacher Librarian

It seems to me there is no one answer.

For nonfiction, research activities, if given the choice, hands down I'll choose an online search for information, as opposed to searching through books. Is that an exclusive choice? Do I always recommend that to students? No, and no. But as a preference, an online search for information just makes sense, for a number of reasons.

Big Numbers and Sky Science: Grade 6 Math/Science Integration

-by Candice Shaw, Grade 6 Math/Science

In the Grade 6 curricula, there are many opportunities for meaningful integration between subjects. The Sky Science unit and Large Number topics fit harmoniously together.

With a focus on problem solving, students first went about solving a variety of astronomy themed problems, such as “How many times further is Saturn’s distance from the Sun than Earth’s distance from the Sun?” These problems had students working with numbers in the millions and billions, as well as estimating, rounding, using appropriate units and converting distances.

This problem solving was culminated with a major group problem: “How can we build a proportional model showing the distance of the planets from the Sun? How far are each of the planets from the Sun, in Astronomical Units?” 

UCreate Elective: Developing Entreprenuerial Spirit at CSS

-by Jody Pereverzoff

Elective Description: “From the fashion industry to the sports and electronic gaming industry, there is money to be made. But how to these ideas turn into money??? Well, if any of these thoughts have ever crossed your mind, then this elective is for you! In this elective, you will have the opportunity to create a product, business, and/or app from the ground up. You will start with an idea, and work your way to a finished product that you will market to potential investors. If you enjoy thinking outside the box and have ever wondered how ideas are shaped into successful business ventures, then sign up today!"

A Different Kind of Test

-by Margaret Leland, Grade 8 Humanities

Over the Spring break I was reading Seth Godin’s “Stop Stealing Dreams (what is school for?)” and began to question how best I could develop the unit final for my students to finish off our Worldviews in Conflict: The Spanish 
and the Aztecs.

I was mulling over the following quotes by Seth Godin:

“The obligation of the new school is to teach reasonable doubt. Not the unreasonable doubt of the wild-eyed heckler, but the evidence-based doubt of the questioning scientist and the reason-based doubt of the skilled debater.” 

“Unfortunately, the things we desperately need (and the things that make us happy) aren’t the same things that are easy to test.”

The Winding Road to Exemplary Instructional Leadership

-by Phil Butterfield, Assistant Principal

As you may know from visiting the Connect! Blog or the Calgary Science School website, we have developed frameworks for exemplary teaching and exemplary learning. Together these two documents form the guiding principles by which we believe students can enjoy rewarding educational and social experiences that will equip them for success beyond CSS. But what mention is made of the role of school administrators within those frameworks? Certainly leadership as a desirable attribute of teachers and students is a key element but there is no specific reference to the nebulous and hard-to-define capacity of instructional leadership. Our Superintendent, Dr. Garry McKinnon, has very clearly articulated the need for a rethinking of the role school administrators play in the teaching and learning process, but to truly operationalize an instructional leadership model that is aligned with the exemplary teaching and learning frameworks is a challenging task that will pay huge dividends for
student learning when we get it right.

Thoughts and Viruses Interdisciplinary Inquiry Unit

-by Dave Scott, Grade 8 Humanities

This year one of the goals of the Grade 8 team was to undertake an interdisciplinary unit that brought together the four core subject areas of math, science, language arts, and social studies. With the aid of Erin Couillard, PD and outreach coordinator, after an afternoon planning session seeking an inquiry topic and question that was generous enough to engage all these domains, the team settled on a unit exploring the similarities between how viruses spread, and how ideas, social movements, and trends can become contagious in similar ways. Here we saw a question that could help us simultaneously explore the topic of cells and systems in the science curriculum, exponential growth in the area of math, how the Renaissance sparked the growth and exchange of ideas and knowledge across Europe in the social studies program, and a myriad of outcomes in language arts including revising understandings and ideas by connecting new and prior knowledge and experiences.

Connecting with an Expert: Grade 4 Humanities Picture Book Project

-By Heather Fawcett, Grade 4 Humanities

Through the Learning Through the Arts (LTTA) initiative, Grade 4 students at CSS had the opportunity to work with local artist, Val Lawton, to develop professional grade picture books. LTTA partners local artists with schools to facilitate rich integration of Fine Arts and the core curriculum.

The picture book project had students working in groups to write short stories set in one of Alberta’s natural regions. Magic in the Mountains, a picture book by Carol McTavish, Lori Nunn, and Linden Wentzloff, was used as a model for the project. Students were provided with graphic organizers and a checklist to guide the group development of their story. Our partner artist, Val Lawton, visited each class once a week to deliver art instruction and to assist in creating the illustrations for the books.

Video Assessment in Phys. Ed - A Reflection

-by Dean Schmeichel, Phys. Ed Teacher

This is my final blog for the Research project – Video Assessment in PE. This was an extremely worthwhile project and it has shaped the future course of assessment for me in my career. From past experience, I know that I will continue to develop, adapt and modify this process. What works one year, might need to be overhauled the next, depending on the group of students, parents, teachers and my own level of commitment and excitement.

There was an 86% response rate to the survey that I asked the Grade 9 students to complete. I targeted the Grade 9 class specifically because they were given written comments in Term 1. Both the Grade 5 and 7 classes were given recorded (verbal) assessments in Term 1. The survey that Tammy (my teaching partner and co-researcher in this project) and I designed was done collaboratively with Dave Scott (colleague and Ph.D. student) and Dr. Pam Adams from the University of Lethbridge.

Using ShowMe in the Humanities Classroom

-Jody Pereverzoff grade 7 Humanities

After reading Lisa Nelson’s blog on using ShowMe in the Math class, I thought it would be a successful tool for students to demonstrate their understanding of editorial cartoons. Students first read the short story “Back to our Roots” by Fernando Sorrentino (translated from Spanish by Iris Maria Mielonen) and brainstormed the main themes of the text.

Verbal Assessment in PE – Part 2

 By Tammy Berry, CSS Phys. Ed teacher

 For more information on this project, please read the first blog post here.

I have now completed 100 grade 6 Garage Band (converted into iTunes) audio recordings. These audio recordings were placed on the desktops of students’ personal computers. Students received a mark on their written report card and then had an audio recording to replace the written comment for PE Term Two. These recording were about 3-4 minutes long in length.

Why did I do these recordings?

Action Strategies for Fostering Effective Relationships

-by Garry McKinnon, Superintendent 

In my last blog highlighting the first of the seven school leadership competencies, fostering effective relationships, I presented three scenarios which represented real life experiences I have encountered. It is helpful to consider the school leadership competencies in the context of realities which those in formal school leadership roles (principal, assistant/vice principal) may encounter. In this blog, I will present two more scenarios and will offer what I would describe as action strategies for school leaders to foster effective relationships.

Parent Engagement: Where to from here?

-by Tanya Stogre, Grade 5 Humanities

In the preceding three blogs, I have outlined the research behind why parental and community engagement is important; the differences between ‘involvement’ and ‘engagement’, as well as specific examples of each at the Calgary Science School. In the final blog of the series, I want to look at the question “where do we go from here?”

To answer this question, I look specifically to a document written by Dr. Garry McKinnon & Mr. Lyle Lorenz (2005) from the College of Alberta School Superintendents Module Building Effective Partnerships for School Improvement: A Principal’s Guide for Promoting Meaningful Parent and Community Involvement through the School Council and Beyond

The Cat Food Problem

-by Val Barnes (Grade 5 Math Teacher) and Kevin Sonico (Math Learning Coach)

The Grade 5 students were posed with the task of determining which store, Petland or PetSmart, gave a better deal on the same brand and same size of cat food (Figure 1). Before proceeding with their solutions, students must hypothesize through estimation and rounding which of the two would be the better deal. Students then worked in groups to solve this problem. Each group was also assigned a Grade 8 student who facilitated the discussion. The facilitators’ responsibilities did not include providing hints or strategies, rather to ask questions such as “How do you know this is true?” or “How do we prove this?” and make statements such as “Let’s show proof of this.”

Video Assessment in PE, Part II

-by Dean Schmeichel, Phys. Ed. Teacher

(For more information on this project, read the first blog post here)

I have now completed all of the video recordings for 300 students. There is a clip of the students participating in PE class (approximately one minute) and a conversation between each student and myself that lasts for an average of three minutes. This process was a lot of work and at times I questioned my own intelligence in taking it on.

Benefits:

1. The four minutes of total video each student receives, is far superior in multiple ways to a traditional written comment in my view: content; authentic assessment; student voice; long term student understanding and growth; students using the “language” of assessment.
2. As opposed to written comments, these interviews are done in class and actually take up less of your preparation time than a written comment. 
3. Talking to the students gives each student a chance to explain, defend and advocate for him or herself during the assessment. A surprising number of students will challenge my assessment, opinions or presumptions. 
4. I feel that I have a better understanding of each of the students who I teach after this process. It is especially valuable with the more introverted students who might not speak up during class. 
5. The action video combined with the interview gives a fairly complete “picture” of each student’s progress in PE. 

 Lessons Learned:

1. I should have followed my original plan and videotaped two students each class, each day. Due to my procrastination, I ended up having to take a bunch of video and do a bunch of interviews on multiple days, leading up to the report card deadline. It caused me unnecessary stress and probably resulted in lower quality conversations. 
2. I also should have named the videos after I uploaded them onto my computer. Such a small oversight meant that I had to spend Sunday night naming all of the files on my computer. 
3. Make sure, before beginning, that there are various ways to distribute the videos confidentially to each of the students and store the videos for record keeping. 
4. Keep in mind that although it might be the 245th conversation that I (the teacher) has had this term, it is the first conversation that particular student has had with me. I tried to keep this at the fore-front of my thinking when I was feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of interviews I had left to do. 
5. Administration and colleague support is not only key, it is crucial to the success of this project. Without buy-in from the school, there is very little chance for success.

Grade 8 Magazine Project

-by Dave Scott, Grade 8 Humanities

Recently grade 8 Humanities students finished an inquiry unit that brought together an independent novel study with the creation of their own magazine. For this project students were asked to select a novel of their choice and work through a series of four writing assignments listed below. Each writing piece was given a two page spread in their magazine. This along with a cover, quote page, table of content and ad page, resulted in a 12 page magazine. An outline of each of the four writing assignments can be found at these links on the class blog:

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The Scorpion Project: Novel Inquiry in Progress

By Ivy Waite, grade 9 Humanities

This novel inquiry is housed online at The Scorpion Project. As students are sharing their work through blogger, building the project there as well allows us to model the use of technology that we expect to see. 

Novel studies are supposed to be about connecting with literature. They are intended to give readers an opportunity to look deeper into themselves and their surroundings through another set of experiences, whether real or fictional. The Scorpion Project is more than a novel study however, it is a novel inquiry. 

Aurasma: Augmented Reality in the Classroom

Dan McWilliam - Grade 7 Humanities

Augmented Reality is the digital layering of information overtop of, or in front of, the real world. This content is viewable through a digital device that places it realtime over the real world through the camera. Imagine a pair of eye glasses that could show the Facebook status or most recent Twitter above a person’s head. Augmented Reality browsers are working to make this possible. Some advances have been made in this with browsers such as Wikitude, Layar, Junaio, Acrossair and others. These make it possible to view YouTube videos in the places they were created, or to see a Wikipedia entry for a location at that location.

Implementing iPads (Part 2)

In the last posting I looked at the technical setup of our iPad initiative, but never really touched on our rational for the project and some of our initial realizations. That will be the focus of this posting.

VISION

Our interest in iPads was two-fold. We wanted to find a product that encouraged content creation with the freedom a mobile device permits.