Integrating Projects to Build a Stronger Community of Learners

Wow, it’s hard to believe we are almost at the end of the year! And yet, I feel like it’s no where near the end of my project. I am grateful for the time and opportunities to collaborate that I had with fellow Cohort members, and I look forward to continuing with my action plan in future years.

1. What question guided your inquiry and action plan? (HMW?) 

How might we better integrate projects across subjects, grades, and campuses in order to build a stronger community of learners?

2. What did you do and what impact did it have?

I realized that part of what is needed, in order to build a stronger community of learners and be able to integrate projects, is to make learning more visible. 

I have done a few things this year to help make learning visible:

• Learning Exhibits – I am helping to coordinate, set up, and take down work for display around the school. I feel like this is motivating teachers to have more of their students’ work displayed, since it is being organized for them and they don’t have to do the work on their own. Students, teachers, and parents seem to really enjoy learning about all of the amazing projects happening at KCS. Also, seeing other projects is inspiring even more projects!
• Writing Articles – I’ve written some updates for our monthly newsletters to parents, to summarize learning on display/explain projects/give parents a better understanding of project-based learning. I am hoping this is giving our community a better understanding of the deep learning that is happening through projects.
• News Crew Club – I started a new club to give students an opportunity to learn about different learning experiences and projects that are happening in different grades and share the news by giving regular learning updates during assemblies. This has been very well received! There is a waiting list for the club, several teachers have requested reporters to come and do a story about something their students are doing, and many teachers and members of administration have praised this initiative and said how much they are enjoying it. Yay!

Supporting Projects, Planning & Integration

Supporting teachers with project-based learning is also important so they feel successful and want to continue to develop their skills in this area.

This year, I helped with a Grade 2 animal project. I also supported a new winter celebrations culture project in Grade 4 French by coaching, giving feedback during the planning stages, and helping students in the classroom. My colleague said she wouldn’t have tried to do a project without me, and the students were excited to have me there, so I feel I had a positive impact. I’m hoping to help with a Grade 4 social studies project before the end of the year as well.

• Sharing Cohort Experience in May Staff Meeting – There were 3 teachers from my school involved with Cohort this year. We are going to share our experiences during an upcoming staff meeting and give any interested staff members an opportunity to meet with us for a few minutes to hear more/offer feedback/share suggestions. I am hoping this will give more of my colleagues an understanding of what I’m doing and why, and I am also looking forward to collaborating with more of my peers around my action plan.
• Leading PD Activity in June – As a first step in finding more opportunities for integration, I will be leading an activity with my colleagues at the end of this school year. What I’m thinking, at this point, is I will ask teachers to think ahead to the upcoming term (Sept.-Nov.) and write the topics and/or projects for each class they teach on a sticky note. The sticky notes will be colour-coded by subject. Teachers will then place their sticky notes on a chart paper for that grade. This will allow all teachers to see each other’s topics/projects and find opportunities for integration. Any time we have a staff meeting, these chart papers will be displayed, and teachers can continue to add notes/move sticky notes around. It may be old-school, but I’m trying to keep things as simple as possible!
• Collaborating with CoLab – After Ariella Racco spoke at one of our F2F meetings and heard about my How Might We question, she emailed me to see if I would be interested in talking with her. We have been communicating by email and Google Meet about what I am trying to do and how CoLab might be able to support me/my school in our efforts to better integrate projects. It is amazing to be involved in shaping this new collaboration platform, and I am so excited about the possibilities! I am hoping to test an early version of CoLab and give further feedback and suggestions to help improve the experience for teachers.

https://www.colab.education/

3. What did you learn in the process? (Link to any resources)

• I learned how much I enjoy making learning visible and supporting teachers and students with projects. This has lit a fire for me, and I am loving every minute of this work. Hopefully, when the time is right, I will be able to do more of this in the future.
• I also learned that running a student-driven news club is busy and loud! 😉 There have also been some technological difficulties with sound when sharing pre-recorded videos in assembly, so that is still something we are trying to figure out.
• Something else I learned is that it can be hard to find the right time/moment to offer help with projects. It would be easier if I could see what projects are on the go and be able to find specific ways of offering help to my peers and their students.
• An important thing I learned is that not everyone is going to buy into project-based learning and/or want help, and that I should start with those who are interested! Hopefully, from there, excitement about projects will spread to other teachers.

4. What is your big takeaway and what questions do you still have?

My biggest takeaway is that things take time. I am learning to be patient, both with the timeline of what I would love to see happen and with myself. I can’t do everything all at once (especially while still a full-time Grade 3 homeform teacher), even though I want to! Focusing on my sphere of influence helps to remind me to start small and take baby steps. A series of baby steps will eventually lead to bigger changes.

Questions I still have:

How do other schools make cross-subject, cross-grade, and cross-campus integration of projects happen? How do people know what other classes are working on, so they can find connections?
(e.g. specific tools/Google Docs? Collaborative planning time? Etc.)