Following Our Students' Voices: A Yearlong Inquiry Sparked By Our Visits to Chichester Park

We are a team of educators who, last year, felt very lucky to learn with each other and with 42 grade 2/3 students.

At the beginning of the year, we decided that we really wanted to come together to learn in community. Our goal was to immerse ourselves in learning and support each other as we tested out some of our ideas. We were especially interested in digging into connecting to our community through inquiry-based learning.

We had been thinking a lot about our beliefs about teaching and learning, and knew that we wanted to keep our students at the very center of their learning.

We used the 7 OECD Principles of Learning from the Nature of Learning document to anchor us as we decided what to do with the children each day. See some of our thinking about our beliefs here.

As a team, we were really clear that we wanted to take on the perspective of teachers as learners and researchers, and had a goal to learn alongside our students as we followed where they wanted to go with their learning.

It was such a great experience for us all. Together, we were all learners, we were all teachers, and we were all researchers. We learned so much that we wanted to share our story with you.

Here are two videos that will make some of our thinking and learning visible:

We wanted to think deeply about our big questions all year and it acted as an anchor for us. We were exploring: How can we explore our uniqueness as we form connections with each other and with nature? How can we encourage all learners to flourish in our community?

Throughout the school year we had to learn to 'un'plan. We didn't want to come to our students with fully formed ideas about how we would fill our days. Instead, we co-created our learning environment and our learning intentions with our learners. We filled our spaces with their thinking and ideas.

Throughout the year, we documented our learners' thinking, questions, and ideas as a way of co-planning our days together. They felt so proud when their wonders were shared and we investigated them. It went beyond agency. It felt empowering. By following our students' voices and acting as guides throughout the learning journey, our students were able to share their passions with us and with each other. This seemed to ignite within them a drive to dig deeper as they continuued to build their understanding.

This was particularly clear to us when we were in nature. We noticed that our students were always excited and seemed to flourish when they were outside in the fresh air. Because we felt uninhibited by space or subjects, we gave each other the permission to just be curious together. When we were outside, we often found tiny, perfect things that we wanted to bring back with us to our classroom, and we always returned to school excited to share what were were noticing and wondering about the what we had experienced during our adventures.

Integrated studies is one of our favourite ways of exploring an idea or interest shared within our learning community through the lenses of the different content areas.

Community and Identity

As we explored nature, we discovered that we already knew a lot! And, as we listened to, connected to, and built on each other's thinking, we grew our collective understanding. We also sparked each others' curiosities and this led to some really fun inquiries into the the natural world that surrounds our school.

So, how did we begin?

Initially, we connected to nature through the story I am Human: A Book of Empathy by Susan Verde.

We were exploring the question “Who are we as humans and what is human nature?”

In one of our first outdoor field experiences, our learners collected natural building materials to construct words based on connections or ideas that resonated with them. Then used the materials to construct their own word.

As our students moved through Chichester Park, a local park that we visit often, we noticed how intentional they were with the materials they selected. They were naturally making connections to math, fine arts, and science, through shape, colour, patterns, and their wonders and noticings. We had not anticipated the students integrating content independently, and our role was to encourage them and to listen.

Here are the words they created that day:

During some of our early adventures, we recognized that we needed to slow down and take the time to inquire into how we wanted to be as a community of learners.

We began our exploration with a read aloud of The Good Egg by Jory John and Pete Oswald as a way of exploring our emotions and the personal and social core competencies.

Our students loved it. They immediately connected the eggs to our community, so we explored different attributes of story, math, and fine arts that we discovered in the book.

This led us to read a second book by the same authors, The Bad Seed. We were able to compare the stories and make even deeper connections.

Our learners were really connected to these stories, and so we invited them to create the most detailed plasticine characters of themselves as good eggs and bad seeds.

We created posters of our seed and egg community and we shared these with Pete Oswald, the illustrator of both books. Our learners were so invested in these books and their message and it made them feel proud to share it with him. He replied and they were blown away!

Pete Oswald: "I love this so much! Thank you for reading our books. What an amazing workshop. This warmed my heart. I'd love to send a signed copy of THE COUCH POTATO to you and your students. Thank you!"

So, how did we follow our students voices as we inquired? Maybe we can share best through story. Here we will share with you some of the things from nature that our students wanted to explore. Among other things, we inquired about wolves, mushrooms, owls, and beavers.

Wolves

During one of our morning gatherings, there was talk of a wolf sighting. This sparked a lot of wonders and curiosities about wolves. We began our exploration into wolves by investigating Indigenous perspectives. We asked our Indigenous advocate, Miss Jackie, to come and share local knowledge about wolves with us.

As we continued to explore, we learned from a Cree elder that:

• Wolf will not show himself unless he wants to tell you something.

• Wolves are intelligent, loyal, and family oriented.

• Wolves are 'keepers of the balance' in nature

• Like all things in nature, wolves are our relatives - our brothers - and we should treat them as such.

Ultimately, our learners decided that they wanted to name our learning community 'The Wolfpack.'

They were curious how to say our name in the local Syilx Okanagan language, so we researched how it was spelled and pronounced and created a community sign that included both languages.

Then, we watched a documentary called Call Of The Coastal Wolves.