Kindergarten in the Time of Covid-19

Posted on September 13, 2020 by msmcdonell

Here we are at the start of another school year, but this one feels like no other. When I blog, it’s usually because I have an idea I want to share, or an experience I want to reflect on. But at the moment, I don’t really feel like I know what I’m doing. Due to many parents selecting online learning for their children, my school is redeploying several teachers. I happen to be one of those teachers – but only part time. Half-time redeployed. Yikes! Lucky for me, I will be doing the other half of my day at school in my most favourite role: Kindergarten.

Like many of you, our team has been working hard getting our room set up for our new students this week. We didn’t get a lot of guidance on exactly how Kindergarten should look during a pandemic. I’ll be honest – I have struggled with advice like “keep the children socially distanced but also make sure they play together.” What does that even mean? What does that look like in a practical sense?

Instead of getting myself overwhelmed with everything that will be new and different, I am centering myself on what things I think will be the same. As soon as I started thinking about our program in this way – what we do that is of high value that does not need a lot of tweaking to meet covid-19 safety regulations – I immediately calmed down. Here is a list of things I envision continuing mostly as they did before. You can click on the links for each one to visit past posts where I explain how these work in our class. Remember, those posts were written pre-covid and our processes will change slightly to address additional safety protocols this year.

Reflection Time: Our daily time to meet and reflect on what we’ve learned and discovered throughout the discovery block will continue. We won’t be sitting cozily together on the carpet as we did before (all carpets have been removed from the classroom), but we still have space to meet together and share our thinking. You can read more about how reflection time works here and why it’s such an important part of our day: https://thecuriouskindergarten.blog/2016/04/09/noticing-and-naming-our-learning-the-reflective-process-in-fdk/

Writer’s Workshop: The main difference this year is that each student will sit at their table spot for the mini lesson and will have their own kit of writing and drawing materials to use instead of sharing. We already have our writing notebooks prepped for our new students and I can’t wait to see them filled with the children’s stories. If you want to read more about how we run Writer’s Workshop in our class, you can click here: https://thecuriouskindergarten.blog/2016/12/30/writers-workshop/ (A pdf for the notebook cover is also available in that post).

Math and Science Investigations (M.S.I./S.T.E.M.): The great thing about M.S.I is that the children already work from an individual bin, at their own spot. This is a perfectly covid-appropriate activity that can continue essentially as it normally would. Right now, our M.S.I. shelf (a large rolling cart with bins of building materials) is covered in a tablecloth. When it is time for M.S.I, we will open the shelf for children to choose a personal bin to build with for the lesson. Afterwards, bins will be returned to the shelf and covered until our lesson the following week. Because the materials will be sitting covered and unused for 7 days (“quarantined”), we do not have to disinfect each bin after the M.S.I. block is over. For more information on what we do during our building block, click here: https://thecuriouskindergarten.blog/2014/03/29/math-and-science-investigations-m-s-i/

Art and Fine Motor Instruction: Like Writer’s Workshop and M.S.I, this is another program that already operates with students using personal materials. For each lesson, students receive a whiteboard, white board marker, and piece of cloth for erasing. Each of these items has already been assigned to our students as part of their individual school supply kits. Rather than sit together on the carpet for the drawing lesson, children will sit at their personal spots at our classroom tables. Otherwise, the lessons will carry on as they did before. To read more about what we do during Art and Fine Motor Instruction, click here: https://thecuriouskindergarten.blog/2014/01/16/art-and-fine-motor-instruction-snowflakes/

Outdoor Learning: Outdoor learning will continue to be a big part of what we do at school this year. Our morning and afternoon meetings will be continuing out of doors in our special meeting spot (this year, arranged to accommodate some social distancing). This is where we will sing, read, and have discussions. We will also continue to use the outdoors to drive our inquiry process. There are so many things to discover in the garden, on a walk, or in the sand box. For a list of books you can use to spark inquiry outside, click here: https://thecuriouskindergarten.blog/2016/10/20/read-alouds-for-outdoor-learning/

To read more about how we’ve used the outdoor classroom in the past, click here: https://thecuriouskindergarten.blog/2013/09/22/learning-in-the-outdoor-classroom/

This is what I have to get myself started. As the week goes on, our team will be reflecting on what is working and what isn’t and making changes accordingly. As things become more clear, I hope I can share some of what we find to be successful. This is a time when as educators, we need to work together to share our best practices and our successes. We are all in this together!

The Super Hero Inquiry Project

Posted on February 6, 2018 by msmcdonell

Last year my class was absolutely OBSESSED with Super Heroes. They were everywhere in the children’s play, indoors and out, but most especially at the small building centre. It really all started with two boys who began creating super heroes out of linking cubes. After sharing their creations with the class, more and more children began turning up at the small building centre to make and play super hero games.

Can you guess who these Super Heroes are??

At the same time all this was going on, one of my favourite bloggers was also experiencing some Super Hero mayhem in her class. Mrs Meyers began posting some amazing STEM ideas based off the characteristics of Super Hero stories (along with many other super hero related questions, which she wrote about in her blog here: http://mrsmyerskindergarten.blogspot.ca/2017/03/what-we-learned-by-investigating.html)

All of the ideas we tried were hugely popular and led to a lot of experimentation and conversation in our class. We added some of our own provocations based on the children’s overall interest in certain materials (e.g., Plasticine, Lego). Here is a gallery of some of our work:

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This STEM flying challenge was VERY popular and led to a lot of collaboration and teamwork. In fact, many children challenged themselves to come up with multiple ways of making these Duplo characters fly. One group of boys was ecstatic when they figured out how to make a catapult. For days, Duplo Super Heroes were flying across the classroom!

Another gem from Mrs Meyers! Our students loved making their own spider webs and looking in the non fiction books to learn more about them.

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By far the most popular provocation was this one which gave the children an opportunity to create a Super Hero out of Plasticine (modelling clay). Most students came here often to make a number of different Super Heroes. We loved sharing these at reflection time and talking about the aspects of the costumes that helped us identify each Super Hero’s identity. I was amazed at how detailed these creations were! We had a collection of Super Hero readers which I gathered from the library that the children were intent on consulting as they worked to make sure they got everything just right.

A few of the super hero readers we had out in the classroom. These were SO popular – even the most reluctant readers were eager to look at these.

One of the thinking routines we relied on heavily for this project was “Can…Have…Are…” This unique take on a concept web really helps focus the children’s thinking on a specific topic. We used it to organize our thinking about villains, specific superheroes like Spiderman, and about Superheroes in general. Each time we used it, the children got more skilled at communicating their ideas.

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What Superhero inquiry would be complete without some creative costume making? The more we talked about superheroes, the more interested the children were in developing their own superhero personas. We used small cardstock cards to make masks and plastic table cloths to make capes.

We wrapped up our learning with a “superhero day” where everyone came to school dressed as their favourite superhero.

In addition to celebrating our learning with a Super Hero day, we also celebrated by creating a display of our work. The children were so incredibly proud to see their work on display and could often be found admiring their work with classmates and friends.

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A BIG thank you again to Mrs Meyers for sharing her class’s learning online and continuing to inspire me and my students!

The Mystery Object Inquiry Project

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Posted on March 28, 2016 by msmcdonell

Don’t you love a good mystery? I know whenever I’m reading a book or watching a film with an element of the unknown, I am always SO curious to see how things will turn out in the end. This year, I decided to spark some interest in a new inquiry by adding in an element of surprise: a “mystery object.” I started with an amaryllis bulb. You can really use anything for this project, but a plant was a great option because of the fact that a plant is always growing and changing. I knew the focus of this inquiry was going to be on building the children’s capacity for making good observations and predictions, and I wanted them to be able to revisit their predictions as the plant grew and changed. An amaryllis blooms in about 6-8 weeks from the time of planting so the children had plenty of time to practice their inquiry skills!

I introduced this project with a game that our music itinerant taught us: “What’s in the box?” I placed the bulb, pot, and bag of soil in a box marked with question marks. We passed the box around the circle asking each child in a sing-song voice, “What’s in the box?” and the children sang back their guesses in turn. After everyone had had a guess, we opened the box to reveal what was inside. I passed around the bulb and each child tried to guess what it was. I recorded their predictions in my notebook. After we had all had a turn at guessing, I asked the class what they thought we should do next. Since there were no instructions with our mystery object, we would have to figure out for ourselves what to do. Right away, many of the children suggested putting the object in the pot with the soil. One child suggested that we need to put water in it too…because that’s what you do when you put something in a pot of dirt.

Our Mystery Object in its bed of dirt. One student suggested we leave it on the windowsill at the science table so it could catch some sunshine!

We placed our mystery object at the science table. It was the first place most children visited when they entered the classroom each day! Every time there was a change in the mystery object, we took time to discuss our observations as a group. The children had access to our See Think Wonder and “My Prediction” recording sheets throughout the project. It was interesting for me to see which children changed their predictions based on new information and observations as the mystery object grew (and which children held fast to their original ideas).

A.R. records her thinking about the Mystery Object on a “See, Think, Wonder” recording sheet.

Some of the children’s predictions about what the Mystery Object might be/grow into: beans, a blueberry, a beanstalk, onions, an apple, salad.

Our object changes! The students were excited to see these “sprouts” emerge – first one, then two, then three, then four!

One of the interesting questions that arose from one of our reflection discussions was “Is our mystery object a living thing?” This was a question that divided the class! We decided to do some further research to find out. Our librarian gave us a book called “What is a living thing?” which we read in hopes of answering the question once and for all. Again, some children could see right away evidence that our object was indeed living (it was growing, changing, requiring our care and attention) while other children had difficulty connecting the information from the book to their observations of the mystery object.

The discussion this day revolved around the growth coming from our object. Many children noticed that the new “sprout” looked different than the previous growth. I was encouraging the children to be specific with their observations and descriptions. The leaves were described as “smooth,” “flat,” “pointy” and the new growth as “fat,” “curvy,” and “round.” Many children felt there might be a surprise inside the new growth which caused them to rethink their original predictions.

The children measure the mystery object to keep track of its growth. J.T. visited the science table every day to measure the mystery object and update the class on how much it had grown!

The day our mystery object bloomed was incredibly exciting! We decided to google “bulb plant that blooms after 8 weeks” and found a matching image for our flower in our search! Giving our plant a name (Amaryllis) was quite satisfying to the children. Every visitor to our classroom was immediately shown to the science table and told about our mystery object – “Do you wanna see our mystery object? It’s an AMARYLLIS!”

Our beautiful amaryllis bloom. We were shocked to discover that each pod (we ended up with two) held not one, but 4 blooms inside! Amazing!

Taking a closer look with the magnifiers…

Counting the blooms…and wondering what might be inside this little pod??

Overall, I feel like the mysterious element to this inquiry was an asset to piquing the children’s initial interest and keeping it sustained throughout the project. My goal from the beginning was to provide an opportunity for the children to practice their inquiry skills – and in that, the mystery object inquiry was very successful!

Documenting our work

We thought we’d add a little element of mystery to our hallway display…

Have you ever tried teaching with a mystery object? I’d love to hear what you used as the spark for your learning!

The Wonder Window

Posted on December 30, 2015 by msmcdonell

Do you have a wonder window in your classroom? Perhaps you call it something else – an observation window or a nature window? I first read about the idea of an “Observation Window” in A Place for Wonder: Reading and Writing in the Primary Grades by Georgia Heard and Jennifer McDonough. It’s one of my favourite resources for ideas about developing an inquiry based program in the primary grades, in part because the ideas are so practical (as you read about them you can instantly picture how they could work in your classroom) but also because the strategies so clearly create opportunities for rich dialogue and deep learning.

I created a Wonder Window in my classroom because I wanted to give my students a dedicated space for scientific thinking…for looking out into the world, for noticing, for theorizing, for questioning. Our wonder window is located beside our Science and Nature Centre in the classroom, which gives me an opportunity to extend the children’s discoveries at the window into provocations nearby – or take provocations and extend them to the window.

I love writing poems, so to spark some curiosity about our window, I wrote the following poem. I copied it onto chart paper (to work on during our Shared Reading time) and placed this printout at the window (to help the children remember what it is I wanted them to do there):

I originally started with blank paper at the window, to allow the children some free space to record their observations, drawings, questions, or theories. As I introduced the “See Think Wonder” thinking routine, I placed the recording sheets I had modeled during group time there as well.

At first, I only had one student eager to visit the Wonder Window. However, this student made an interesting discovery – nests! Once we shared her thinking with the class, many other students were keen to go to the wonder window to record their own observations and ideas.

Here are a few samples of the children’s work from the Wonder Window (I added the sticky notes for the purpose of sharing with parents):

“I see a nest. I think it’s made of leaves. I wonder if a bird is inside.”

“I see a nest. I think a bird lives there. I wonder if there’s a baby.”

“I see a tree. I think it is so tall – taller than me! I wonder how it got so BIG.”

“I see leaves in the tree. I think it’s a nest. I wonder when it will be Winter.”

Some children are totally independent about their work at the wonder window – visiting of their own accord, documenting their own thinking. Others seek me out when they want to visit the Wonder Window. Some simply want to look out the window and discuss what they see with me, some want to take pictures of what they notice, still others want to write or record their thinking on paper. There is something to learn from each of these learning moments and all are just as important and valuable as the other. I often get interesting ideas/questions to talk about with the class from these small group or individual conversations at the Wonder Window. It really has proven to be a source of awesome learning and inspiration!

After spotting nests in the trees outside our window, the children were interested in seeing how many nests we could find in our neighbourhood. Here, one student keeps a tally of how many nests we spotted.

Many students were inspired to make binoculars at the Art Studio for observing at the Wonder Window…

The Butterfly Inquiry

Posted on March 8, 2015 by msmcdonell

Have you ever had live creatures in your classroom? There is something quite magical about having a living, breathing part of nature in the classroom to inspire some deep thinking. Beyond the obvious scientific connections, having live creatures in the classroom also provides opportunities for social development around respect, responsibility, care-giving, and self-regulation. Over the years I’ve had many insects, amphibians, and animals come through my door but butterflies are definitely my favourite. The whole process of watching and waiting for metamorphosis to occur provides endless opportunities for observations, predictions, hypotheses, and of course, lots of excitement!

This inquiry project turned out to be quite all-encompassing and there is a lot I want to share here. This post will be mainly photo based, with some captions for the photos to describe what we were doing. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!

Our caterpillars on the day of their arrival. We ordered our live caterpillars from Boreal Science.

Our caterpillars on the day of their arrival. We ordered our live caterpillars (Painted Lady Butterflies) from Boreal Science.

E.A. thought our caterpillars should have names – here, she made name tags for two: “Zigzag” and “Stripey.”

Our literacy connection for the start of this inquiry was The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Here, a student records a shadow-puppet retelling of the story on the iPad.

Our literacy connection for the start of this inquiry was The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Here, F.S. records a shadow-puppet retelling of the story on the iPad.

The children take time to record their observations of the caterpillars in their science notebooks.

A closer look at the science notebook.

We represented each phase of the butterfly life cycle through an art piece. Here is our collaborative art piece for the caterpillar, based on Eric Carle’s famous story.

Racing caterpillars at the math centre. The children negotiated the length of the course and recorded the results of their races.

Our caterpillars inspired so much writing at the writing table!

Writing letters to our butterflies while we wait for them to emerge from their chrysalises.

We found this idea on Pinterest – recording the growth and change of our butterflies. We kept this record on the SMARTBoard.

Art and Fine Motor Instruction: learning how to draw a butterfly. Much of this lesson was dedicated to symmetry.

Our See, Think, Wonder graphic organizers were available throughout the entire inquiry. This one says, “I see the butterfly has spots. I think it is camouflage. I wonder how the butterflies get their designs.”

One of our main questions was “how can we care for our caterpillars/butterflies?” This led us to think about how to create a habitat for the butterflies where they could thrive while we had them indoors. The children recorded their ideas on butterfly habitat planning sheets and gathered their materials in our outdoor classroom.

Our representation of the chrysalis stage: creating a chrysalis out of papier mache. The children added finer details with permanent markers when their work was dry.

You can see how excited the children are to catch a glimpse of our first butterfly!

Representing our butterflies with beautiful watercolour paintings. The children worked very hard to create symmetrical designs on the butterfly wings.

Documentation of our learning. We layered the children's work in a display that captured not only the growth and change of the caterpillars but of our own learning and understanding.

Documentation of our learning. We layered the children’s work in a display that captured not only the growth and change of the caterpillars but the growth and change of our own learning and understanding.

Snap Cube Workshop: The Spinner Project

Posted on February 8, 2015 by msmcdonell

If you are a regular follower of the blog, you will know that the students in my class LOVE snap cubes. They love them so much, we dedicated an entire centre in my classroom to them (you can read about our journey to embrace the the snap cube craze here: https://thecuriouskindergarten.wordpress.com/2014/03/10/snap-cube-workshop/ and here: https://thecuriouskindergarten.wordpress.com/2014/03/10/snap-cube-workshop-inspiring-young-authors/).

The Spinner Project evolved out of a popular way the students used the snap cubes at the snap cube workshop: they spun them. Constantly. At least once a day someone took a cube and tried to spin it. With some investigation, we learned that the children were trying to recreate “Beyblades,” a popular toy many of them had at home. (This isn’t the first time I had heard about Beyblades. In fact, for the last 5 years or so, I have been wondering what to do with the children’s interest in these toys.) The trick to coming up with an engaging and meaningful inquiry I find is coming up with just the right problem/question. It was during one of our reflection discussions that the question jumped out at us. Two boys were talking about spinning the cubes and each had made a spinner that was slightly different. We were trying to figure out if one spinner worked better than the other, and why. And viola!

The next day, we posed the following question: Can you build the best spinner? The children were so excited about this question! Before discovery time, we spent some time talking about what the word “best” would mean. The children came up with three criteria which we posted at the snap cube centre:

In addition to creating our criteria, we talked about the tools the children could use to assess the success of their spinners. For “spinning super duper fast,” the children decided capturing the spinner on video would be a good way to measure this. For design, we would take pictures of our spinners and/or save them to show at reflection time. And for “spins a long time” we showed the children how to time their spinning spinners using the timer on the iPad.

There were so many interesting discoveries made during this project! Here are some images and ideas we captured of the children’s experimentation:

The spinners got more and more elaborate as design became the focus of the children’s attention. We learned that, generally, the more elaborate the design, the slower the spinner spun.

The students were fascinated to explore the paths and patterns of a spinner’s movement.

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Many children worked collaboratively: K: “We attached our spinners together and made it so BIG! It spins so much faster when they are together.”

In a large group discussion, we brainstormed a list of things that spin.

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J.K.: “Mine is a square, but when it spins it looks like a blade, sharp. I was just experimenting to see if I can make the best one.”

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Problem solving and experimentation were evident: S: “Mine is flat and I can still spin it. What if I add another cube on top and then I can use that to spin it – like a handle? [He tries it.] Hmm…that slows it down. So that is a bad idea.”

J: “My spinner is the best because it spins the fastest and for 29 seconds. Also, if you put a red block beside a while block it turns pink when it spins because white and red make pink.”

M: “I discovered you can make a spinner with just one cube. It’s small and it’s good to just use one cube because it won’t break and you can fit it in your pocket!”

Have you explored a spinning inquiry with your students? What questions/ideas did you explore?

See, Think, Wonder: Developing Thinking Routines in the Classroom

Posted on October 8, 2014 by msmcdonell

Today I thought I’d share a strategy I use to help my students communicate their thinking during the inquiry process. See, Think, Wonder is a thinking routine I use with my students to help them think critically about an object or idea and express their ideas with others. See, Think, Wonder is a strategy that developed out of Harvard’s Project Zero. It was originally developed with a view to help children think critically about art and artwork, though I use it across my program and have found it particularly effective during inquiry projects. If you haven’t checked out the Project Zero website, I highly recommend it! There are a number of amazing strategies and projects there which anyone working with early learners might find useful.

See, Think, Wonder falls under one of Project Zero’s “Thinking Routines.” Basically, the idea of a thinking routine is that you approach it the way you do any other routine you want to establish in your class, with lots of modelling, practice, and a gradual release of responsibility. As a kindergarten teacher, the idea of establishing routines is a familiar one. We have routines for entry, snack time, carpet time, etc. Why not have routines for thinking as well?

When I was thinking about how I would introduce this routine to the class, I knew I wanted to create a visual element to accompany the language prompts as I thought it might help my students connect to what I was talking about. I created the following template using both words and images. For “I See…,” I included an image of a magnifying glass (not just a picture of eyes, as I had originally thought, because I wanted to impart the idea of looking deeply at something); for “I think…,” I included a picture of a brain; for “I wonder…,” I put a picture of a thought cloud (this is specific to my class because I have a bunch of thought clouds on sticks that we use to communicate our “wonderings,” so I knew my students would connect to that and know what I wanted them to express). Here is the finished template I created – you can click on it for a pdf version:

To begin, I use an electronic version of the template on the SmartBoard to model my own thinking. This year, I started by using a photograph from a recent nature walk we went on as a class so that the children would have their own schema for the event that I was talking about. However, you can just as easily use a new image or object. Over the coming days and weeks, I repeat the routine but gradually involve the children’s ideas. I always record our thinking on the same template.

When I feel that the children are comfortable with the template and the language, I place copies of the template at our discovery centre. Here, the children are given an opportunity to communicate their own ideas. Some children draw pictures to show their thinking, and others attempt to write their own ideas down with a combination of letters and familiar words.

Here are a couple examples from our butterfly inquiry last year:

I see the caterpillars eating. I think the caterpillars are ready to turn into a butterfly. I wonder why they turn into a butterfly.

I see it fell. I think it is frozen. I wonder why it is not moving.

What do you think about using See, Think, Wonder as a thinking routine for your class? Are you using any other strategies for encouraging deep thinking with your students?

The Curious Kindergarten

Category Archives: Inquiry