Reflections: Advocating for Student Voice - How do we teach students to advocate from themselves?

While doing course work to enhance my knowledge in the area of Special Education, I came across a fantastic article titled, "Why is This Cake on Fire?" by Jamie L. Van Dycke, James E. Martin and David L. Lovett, that really made me reflect on my own teaching practice and Special Education.

These authors use the analogy of planning a birthday party for a child who never actually part of the planning to display the importance of student advocating for themselves in Special Education. The child grows up and ends up not caring about the birthday party anymore, because they were never involved in the process to begin with. Why should the child care, if everything has always been talked around them or taken care of?

We talk about the importance of student voice in our classrooms all the time, but I think student voice in Special Education or IEP process is definitely lacking. The birthday party analogy made me reflect on meetings I have had in past about student progress. Honestly, not many times did I consider active participation or leading the meeting by the student in the meetings with family. I always consult students to discuss their progress and strategies that work for them; but not often do I have the student explain/present their strengths and needs to their families. It is so so important for students to learn the skill of advocating for themselves and their needs.

Furthermore, I think it's easy to say that student's need to advocate for themselves, but as educators we need to be able to support students to acquire the language to communicate what their needs are and how they feel.

How do you teach the skill of advocation? What can we do improve student's participating in IEP, growth plan, student progress areas?

Full Article can be accessed at this link:
http://www.nssed.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Why-is-this-cake-on-fire.pdf

Space Persuasive Letters

Should Space Programs continue be funded by the Canadian Government? 

Students evaluated the Pros and Cons of Space Exploration and how it impacts Canadian society and citizens. 

They were then asked to write a persuasive letter to the Canadian Space Agency expressing their opinion on the issue. 

This was a very engaging task, as it allowed for student voice and an authentic audience. We are sending out letters off to the Space Agency and hoping for a response back!! 

Reflections on Blogging Lunch and Learn Sessions

I have been hosting Blog Lunch and Learn sessions for colleagues at my new school this year and it has been a great success! Helping teachers set up a blog and sharing how a blog could be a useful platform and tool in the classroom has been an enriching experience for myself.

From these sessions, my gracious colleagues’ learning about blogs and blogging has allowed me to have the following reflections: 

• Life long learning truly is lifelong and ageless 
• Working with adults and seeing their excitement and spark at new ideas and concepts is very rewarding and just as rewarding as when I am teaching/helping students 
• Those that call themselves not “tech savvy” are able to setup a live blog and navigate through the settings (Growth Mindset!)
• Sharing knowledge and information allows for deeper thinking and strengthens my own practice
• Though I have been using the Blogger platform for a while, technology is always changing and within the session I get to learn a few new tidbits as well! 
• Being OK with discovering new things as the session is running - the idea of being a co-learner as well as a facilitator

Student Inquiry on the Right's of Indigenous People's

Grade 6 students were asked to read and pick out important key words from the UN declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. We discovered the importance of having accords that protect their rights and why it is necessary to have these pieces in place. 

We began as a class discussion/brainstorm on what we knew about indigenous people and rights. Then students were to read and determine key words from the UN declaration. Groups shared as a class and we came up with a list of key words. From the key words, students were able to see the powerful language used and were able to articulate why indigenous rights need to be protected. 

Reflections: 

• students were engaged
• students were able to pull in background knowledge about what they know about indigenous people and Canada 
• students were able to see that the key words pulled as partners, resonated with others in the room as well
• provided opportunity for students to talk about the rights in the declaration 
• students were able to understand why certain groups of people in the world need protection

MApp Fair - Math App Proposals

At the beginning of this school year, my colleague who teaches Grade 1 and I wanted our students to collaborate together. We thought a great way to build cross divisional relationships was through a Learning Buddies program. The teaching outcomes were such a great success!

We worked on media projects throughout the school year. We created e-books in Term 1 and made posters to try to advertise our e-books for readers to buy! In Term 2, we came
across an inspirational article about students who created a Math App to help their friend with Autism. My colleague and I thought it was such an innovative and fun task, we decided to design our task around this inspirational story.

Our learning goal for the task was for Grade 1s and Grade 4s to collaborate and design a Math App Proposal that would target the Grade 1 audience to build a growth mindset in Math. We thought it would be neat for students to design an App for an audience both grade students would be familiar with and we could get authentic feedback from.

Flash forward a couple of months of hard work and scaffolded learning... students designed Math App Proposals that were presented in a form of a showcase. Not only did Grade 1 students provide feedback, but we had cross panel guests from our board come to visit and give feedback as well. Students were motivated, engaged and were thinking critically throughout this entire project! I am so proud of all my students and their passion into this project!

This project showed me how designing an authentic critical thinking tasks lends itself easily for students to be engaged, motivated and being creative, innovative thinkers!

We hope to continue to explore App creation and are so excited to see what is store for us next in this journey!

Student Growth found in a Teachable Moment

At the beginning of the school year, Grade 4s were asked to think about what makes a person a "hero"? We had just read a book on Terry Fox and I asked students a big question to see if students would consider Terry Fox a "Hero". We brainstormed criteria for makes a Hero together on chart paper. Students then wrote an opinion piece of whether they would consider Terry Fox a Hero. Of course, all of us agreed that Terry Fox IS a Hero.

Flash forward to 9 months later, we are wrapping up our social justice unit about finding peace within ourselves and the community. We read "Our Heroes" By Janet Wilson this week and I asked students to reflect on what a Hero means to them. We brainstormed as a class what a Hero meant to us. Then, I brought back the anchor chart from September where we brainstormed criteria for a Hero and it turned out to be a great teachable moment. Students were so surprised to see the anchor chart again and it helped that the marker ink was fading on the paper :) !! Their excitement and expression on their faces were priceless.

We reviewed the criteria we co-created from September and then compared it to the anchor chart we just brainstormed. I asked students, "What do you notice about the two sets of criteria ?". Students expressed the following:

• "the one we created today has big ideas"
• "we now know that a hero can be anybody"
• "ideas are stronger in the anchor chart we created today than yesterday"
• "lots of big ideas with details in the one we created today

I was SO impressed with students responses. Students clearly were able to see how their critical thinking skills have grown as a learner in the past 9 months. It also showed me that the Social Justice unit made a huge impact on my students learning and having them being able to communicate that growth orally was an amazing moment to witness!

Dear Ms. Chung - Reflection of Term 1 Activity

Since we just wrapped up Term 1, I asked my students recently to reflect on how they felt Grade 4 is going, their strengths, next steps and any questions they may have for me or anything they felt they wanted me to know about them. The result of this activity was eye-opening! 

Here are some sentence prompts... 

1) How do you feel Grade 4 is going so far? How do you feel Term 1 went? 

2) What are your strengths? What are your next steps?

3) How are you doing socially and behaviour in the classroom? 

4) Questions you have for Ms. Chung / Anything you want me to know 

The letters were honest, raw and sincere. I learned so much about my students and have a great touch point to conference with students. I responded to each student, tailored to their goals and their questions. They were able to set effective goals for themselves and I able to communicate to me their feelings that I may not have otherwise in a large group setting. 

Many students wanted to know how they could improve in their studies, 

This was an effective reflection activity that has provided me great insight into my teaching practice and the wellness of my students.