Ped Doc

Ped Doc - my friend Denise Colby's short hand phrase for pedagogical documentation - is a

process for making. pedagogical (or other) work visible and subject to dialogue, interpretation, contestation and transformation.” ( Dahlberg, 2007)

The Ontario Ministry of Education put out a good monograph in their Capacity Building Series about pedagogical documentation, found at http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/CBS_Pedagogical.pdf

This past week, I took a ton of photos as different student groups from varied classes explored the Keva planks I had out in my Library Learning Commons.  These photos and videos help tell an abbreviated story about what students were doing, how their plans changed, and gives a glimpse into their thinking at the time. I promise, I *actually* do things other than build with Keva planks in the library!

Sample 1: Grade 8s After School 
On Thursday, October 4, I experienced some technical difficulties with loading Minecraft on my school Mac computers (after running it without any major problems since 2012). The club members present decided while they were waiting to build a tower that was taller than they were, and mimic one of the builds they saw on a Keva plank card that came with my new set of 200 planks.

Sample 2: Kindergartens After Teamwork Read-aloud
Aviva Dunsiger responded to last week's blog post with many great questions. I was motivated by two of them in particular.

How might the addition of another materials (e.g., LEGO or a different kind of block with the Keva blocks) change the building?

How do the reduced group sizes help with this kind of parallel play? 

I decided to read a non-fiction book about teamwork to the kindergarten classes, and then give a limited amount of planks (only 20 per pair) to build whatever they wanted. Then, after a few minutes (and inspired by someone's initial build) I gave each pair a single marble. It was neat to see how the structures morphed into different creations and how they were inspired by their classmates to alter their designs. The photos here are just a very quick peek at what happened after the marble was introduced.

2A) Room K2 - A pair built a well-supported ramp, and another pair tried using their breath to move the marble on their structure. One pair started with parallel play but then gravitated towards each other to share their planks so they'd have more.

2B) Room K1 - One team decided to use the library shelf to make a tall structure. Many kept their original structures and then explored how the marble could be incorporated into it.

2C) Room 110 - Structures changed from flat roads, to roads with walls on the side, to slanted roads with walls on the side (tilted with more planks or with other found materials like the "black border" we use to keep a safe distance from the rocking chair). Purposes other than rolling were also explored, such as balancing on the top of a structure, or propelling out of a hole like a cannon. The last picture I took was inspired by a comment by the ECE in another class, who marveled about the way students figured out how to carry many planks. I wouldn't have thought to document this had it not been for Thess Isidro's comment. These two students chose to put planks in their pockets to carry them around!

Sample 3: Grade 3s during free time
The Grade 3s finished their media task during class time very quickly and so I gave them the opportunity to build what they wanted with whom they wanted. Some went to the Lego area but many went to the Keva planks. They made many different things. They insisted I take photos of what they built, especially because they couldn't keep the structures around after the period ended.

Sample 4: Junior students sewing
I should have taken a photo of how they initially tried to pin cloth together! Some of the students were keen to make things with fabric at recess in our makerspace. After seeing how they pinned, I realized they needed a bit of direct instruction. After learning how to attach fabric together with pins, some students got a chance to stitch the material together. This is a Grade 4 boy sewing a square to make a bag.

My new (and typical post-conference-workshop) question is, "so what?" What do I do with these photos, other than share them with the classroom teachers, who will share them with the parents? Well, I was working on my Annual Learning Plan and the major project that I've been working on for 8 years has finally come to fruition (publishing my research on readers choice awards programs in a peer-reviewed academic journal). I needed a new focus, other than my ongoing one on supporting our ELL students and providing assessment feedback in a timely fashion. I'll be doing some work on mentoring, but I've also committed to reading A Guide to Documenting Learning by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano and Janet A. Hale as part of my professional learning this year. I also signed up for a TDSB online course on loose parts. I'm excited to see how my own use of "ped doc" can expand, grow, and become more effective.