Welcome Days!

Having received some inquiries about what our Welcome Days entail, I thought it might be nice to dedicate a blog post to this topic.

Last year my teaching partner (Kathryn) and I decided to incorporate what we call "Welcome Days" into our classroom environment. We were looking for a way to give families a glimpse into an aspect of their child's learning through play while also trying to encourage families to engage and learn alongside their child with an active hands-on approach. 

We wanted to give as much time as possible for the children to get to know each other, feel comfortable with one another and the classroom environment, and allow for as much time as possible for building community, therefore we decided that starting Welcome Days at the beginning of April and running them until the end of June would work out well. Welcome Days visits happen once per week and last for one hour during Exploration Time. 

As our classroom is quite small we have found that having a total of four adults per visit works out really well. We are fortunate to have some wonderful parent volunteers and they greatly supported us by creating an online sign up through VolunteerSighup (https://www.volunteersignup.org/) where families could view the dates that work best for them and sign up. The site also shows when spots are full so that families can select other dates that are available. 

We discuss Welcome Days with the children in advance and use this opportunity to go over "My Best Work" expectations (e.g., think of an idea, add detail, explain your work) and growing our learning criteria! 

All children self select where they would like to work and have the opportunity to share their creations alongside their family to their peers at the end of Exploration Time. The sharing piece is very valuable as it gives families another insight into just how much knowledge and learning can be gained from the many questions and comments asked by their peers. Every time we have families visit it's so nice to observe their interactions with their child. The children are equally proud and love to showcase their knowledge to their family.

Below are some photos of Welcome Days from last year and the current year. 

Last Year

Current Year

Some testimonials from families:

"I loved it! It was so nice to see P and his friends in action. We built a town based on a book and got to show it off to the class. Unfortunately P (father) couldn't attend that day as he was shooting but luckily he goes in for reading and pizza days so he gets to experience the wonders of 109 often." L

"Recently I had the rare opportunity to spend an hour with my daughter L, participating in her regular school day, and learning as she does. I got to build a structure with her, measure it, and share strategies and learnings with her classmates. It was such an enriching experience to see how she and the other children in her class interact and develop through various activities. Thank you Ms. Ralph for giving us the chance to see the amazing things our children do each and every day while away from us in your class." G

"Love it! Great fun and invaluable insights into the learning process in room 109." J

"I love the Welcome Days! My son A was so happy that mommy can attend his class and let him showcase what he did. I learned so much about my son in about a few hours on how he interacts with other kids and how he performs at school. It's a personal and valuable experience and I definitely highly recommend it to other parents." J

"It's always a treat when your child's teacher opens their classroom up to you for a visit. This is especially relevant here, where I was able to have a guided tour through exploration time with my daughter. It's wonderful to be able to see the focus and love of learning so much. I truly feel that Welcome Days are one of the best ways for me to see and experience first-hand the life of a JK student in Mrs. Ralph's class." S

"Thank you so much for having T and I in the class room yesterday. It was so lovely to have a window into M's world. Seeing her present to the class was making my heart explode with pride. And it's so great to see the things she's doing in class come home with her - like surveys! We are doing surveys all the time - calling grandparents and taking their votes too. And bees! How exciting! She's about to teach us about pollen right now. :)
It was honestly such a wonderful experience! I also really liked how the parents were just incorporated into the daily routine - it wasn't a special event/concert/show and tell type thing, which was actually great." K

"I am a fan.

It helped me see how Mrs Ralph runs her classroom and understand why she has it running so smoothly.

It was good to see the kids in action, see their exploration stations and be a part of it.  It was interesting to see the kids interact with one another and watch their thought process.  I enjoyed 'presenting' to the kids along with my light table partners D and C and having them ask clarifying questions and give us their feedback.

I am hopeful the Welcome Days will be part of next year's classroom participation for parents as well." T

"I loved it.    The Welcome day allowed me to see the teaching style in action.  It’s one thing to hear about how the class works but to actually see/participate first hand just re-enforced how much I believe in what Mrs. Ralph and Mrs. Powell are doing.  There is a real structure, process and results.  C is very happy and looks forward to school and I could see first hand why.  He knows what is expected of him, there is a process (i.e.: getting the clipboard, doing the picture/explanation/activity) and positive re-enforcement.  They are excited to share their results with the class (honing their presentation skills) and the feedback from their peers was so positive, it left the kids feeling so proud.  I really appreciated the opportunity to actually participate in the class rather than just watching.  It was such a positive experience, I was a little disappointed that we only got to do it once.  Also, I took away ideas used in the class concerning how to work with my child at home.  You don’t have to have the latest toys, you take what is there and use your imagination.  Also, just using everyday occurrences as teaching experiences." L

"We wanted to thank you for us being able to come visit the class for Welcome Days today. What a great opportunity to experience the classroom through the eyes of M. He loved it, as did we. Thanks" P & B

Thank you to everyone for making Welcome Days so special for all of us! ~Anamaria Ralph

The importance of formative assessment in mathematical problem solving

"When the cook tastes the soup, that's formative; when the guests taste the soup, that's summative."

-Robert Stake

From the presentation by Lynda Watters and Jill Sanderson, 2016

Our grade 1/2 teacher (Jill Sanderson) and our grade 4 teacher (Lynda Watters) were gracious enough to put together a power point presentation of their learning from the CAFLN (Canadian Assessment for Learning Network) conference they attended. In their presentation they mentioned that Formative Assessment doesn't have to involve a lot of paper work but rather just taking the time to observe and communicate (ask questions rather than giving answers), with students about their work.  

During the presentation, Jill (grade 1/2 teacher) passed out a copy of a math problem question that she decided to try with her class having seen it at the conference. She asked us to look at the child's representation and ponder what this child knew? What questions would we ask her? How could we support her learning further?

Sometimes we feel the need to steer children towards correct answers rather than taking the time to observe their work and answer questions with further questions to support learning and understanding. 

According to the Natural Curiosity resource, Assessment for Learning is outlined as the following:

• the process of gathering and analyzing evidence for use by students and their teacher to determine where students are in their learning, where they need to go, and how best to get there.
• helps teachers differentiate and focus how to approach the learning of individual students 

(Natural Curiosity: Building Children's Understanding of the World through Environmental Inquiry/A Resource for Teachers, page 30).

I decided to take this question and ask it to my kindergarten students. I was interested in learning if they understood the question, the different strategies they may choose to use to solve it, and how they would demonstrate their answers.

Take a look at the pictures below. What do you deduce from each of their representations? What do each of them tell you about their knowledge and understanding of the question? How can these representations aid in supporting student learning further? 

"Feedback can be the vital link between the teachers' assessment of a child and the action following that assessment, which then has a formative effect on the child's learning." -Hargreaves et al. (2000)

From the presentation by Lynda Watters and Jill Sanderson, 2016

The students enjoyed the challenge question. After sharing their work with their peers I decided to try a few more questions with them.

A cube representation of twenty bees each with four wings. 

D attempted to use cubes to depict twenty bees each with four wings. This was a good start but he asked Z if he would help him with his counting as he kept getting stuck. Notice the way they used the cubes to represent the details in the question. 

This time I shared a question that required paying attention to two characteristics, number of legs and number of trunks. I again asked the students how we could figure this out?

When I viewed E's representation, I was proud that he understood to draw ten elephants. He also added one trunk and four legs for each elephant. He became tired and did not finish solving the problem. But this drawing alone is full of information about his understanding of the question and his number sense. 

  

At first she made ten pieces of wire with beads on them. She told me she was done. I then asked her to explain to me what the different coloured beads represented? How many elephants do we need? She told me that the four beads represented the legs and the green bead represented the trunk for each elephant. In telling me this she started to count the elephants and realized she made too many.

With this question I decided not to discuss as a group as I wanted to see if any of the students took some of their learning strategies from the previous questions and related them to solving this question. 

There are 15 flowers in my vase. Each flower has 5 petals. How many petals altogether?

M chose to use cubes to represent the flowers and petals. M told me he placed these in rows of five though he still chose to count the flowers and petals by one's. 

In her drawing representation, M knew to draw fifteen flowers. She told me she had to scratch some out as she realized she made a mistake and drew too many. Her telling me this information was very important as it told me a lot about her counting ability and her ability to identify when things did not add up correctly. You can see that she knew to draw five petals per flower but again she told me she drew too many on some and she had to go back and scratch them out. Checking over one's work is an important skill to have and I noticed that M was able to do this independently. She became a bit tired so she did not finish figuring out the answer. But this is not always the most important aspect as there is so much that is gained from even attempting. 

A created a lovely representation using poker chips. He made fifteen flowers each with five petals. He used jewels for the centre of each flower which he did not count as a petal. I observed him counting the petals and noticed he was counting by one's. Though we have done some work on counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's. It seems this method of counting is the the most reassuring for him.

As a fun math challenge I showed the video below to the children. I received the link to this math problem from Lynda Watters (grade 4 teacher) who received it from Lynn Strangway (TDSB Principal) and Dianne Riehl (TDSB Vice Principal). She informed me the math problem was explored by a grade 1/2 class. I wanted to know what some of the kindergarten students thought after viewing it a few times and having access to the use of materials.

Thoughts after first viewing:

"He sorted by half and split them." K. C.

"He said one for him and one for his best friend to make it equal." L. B.

"All of his friends and him go the same amount." D. F.

"But not his sister, she only got five." B. P.

"He split in half for this friends." C. T.

Thought after second viewing:

"I noticed that how many he got looks just like ten." J. K.

"When he divided with his friends they got the same amount but not his baby sister or him." C. C.

"I noticed he shared." E. B.

"Every time he split he had some left and the leftovers he kept splitting so his friends get the same amount." Z. G.

"He did a pattern, one for you and one for me." C. D.

"He split with four people." F. D.

After viewing the video a few times, I asked the students if anyone wanted to use the lids to explore this math problem further? Below is C. C. and Z. G.'s experience.

They decided to re-enact the video. They labeled three bags with the names of a few friends in the class that like gumballs. Then they proceeded to dump out all the lids on the table and split them the way they saw Charlie do in the video. They thought everyone would get the same amount of gumballs but as they kept splitting Z. G. said that there wouldn't be enough for him to split with the other bag. 

"We used to have so much gumballs but now we have less because we're sharing them with all of our friends." C. C.

"Do they all have the same amount of gumballs?" Mrs. Ralph

"No because we had a lot but when we splitted them but then they became less and less amount because I had a lot at first and I split them with A. F. but then it got less and less to share with everyone." C. C.

I asked them if there was a way that they can make it fair?

"So we gave one to everyone and keep splitting them. I think everyone will have the same amount." Z. G.

"Charlie kept splitting the gumballs but every time he did his pile got smaller and smaller so not everyone go the same amount." C. C.

I kept the bags and thought why not place them at a table with the lids and see if it would entice anyone to go and explore in their own way.  L. S. and A. R. decided to give it a try. 

"We made Charlie's gumballs. We counted by ten. We figured how many Charlie had. We put one by one. Each bag has forty gumballs. Four gumballs for Charlie. Five gumballs for his little sister." L. S. and A. R.

The video below was from the morning exploration. The photos above are from the same day but during the afternoon. In the afternoon the girls found more lids and decided to split the "gumballs" again.

What math language knowledge are they using? What do the two students understand about this math problem? What would be a possible next step to extend their learning?

A timely question as it was pizza lunch day! We were curious as to how many pieces of pizza everyone ate. I asked the kids to remember how many slices they ate. We recorded the information and got a whole bunch of numbers! I then asked them, "What are some different strategies you could use to try and figure out how many pieces of pizza we ate altogether?".

C. C. and E. B. decided to use a ten frame to help them add up all the numbers. They check off each time they added chips onto the ten frame that coincided with the information on the chart paper.

Both C. C. and E. B. did their own counting using ten frames. What do you notice in the way they represented their data? 

F. D. said that she wanted to count by two's then count the one's and add the two numbers together. I offered her the number chart to support her in adding the two numbers she got together. 


C. D. and S. T. wanted to draw pizza slices to represent the data on the chart stand. After they drew all the pizza slices they counted the slices to get the total slices.

What information can you take away from the three different strategies used? What further supports can be offered to the students? How can their thinking and learning be extended? I find myself asking these questions often. They are a good guide for me to reflect on the thinking and learning of each student.

It's important that we place just as much value on making student thinking and learning visible rather than focusing on the final product so we can better differentiate the support and guidance needed by every child.     

"What if we started from a place where learning was viewed as an interaction in which two or more individuals work together in an intellectual way to solve a problem, clarify a concept, reflect, extend a narrative, etc. Both parties must contribute to the thinking and it must develop and extend, in other words, negotiated learning." 

(Sylvia, K., Melhuish, E.C., Sammons, P., Siraj-Blatchford, I. & Taggart, B. (eds), 2010)