As we prepare to end the 2021 calendar year and take a hopefully short hiatus from the 2021-22 school year, I wanted to reflect on some of the collaborative units I've helped plan, teach, and assess with other classes and educators. I'm really pleased with how some of them turned out.
Community Helpers with Connie Chan and Jennifer Cadavez - Virtual Kindergarten
Connie and Jen already had some fantastic things happening for their community helper inquiry but they let me join in. Our goal was to expand some of the typically gender-rigid and upper-class notions around community helpers and jobs. Another goal was to try and provide even more small group time with students for conversations and activities. The library contribution was to find great read-aloud resources that celebrated work that Mike Rowe often champions. With three adults present, we were able to create much smaller groups. The final product is a pattern book that students insert themselves into with different careers / jobs.
Technology Integration and Guided Reading with Kerri Commisso - In-Person Grade 1-2
I can hear Kerri's voice in my head saying "I didn't really use you as best as I could ...", but there are times where we can do shiny WOW projects and times where we can get the nitty-gritty work accomplished, and our most recent collaborative work has been more of the latter this term. To be honest, I feel bad that she carried all of the planning responsibilities for our work together. Kerri organized all the guided reading groups and during our periods, we'd divide ourselves up among the various guided reading groups. Our goal was to ensure students knew how to log onto the school Chromebooks semi-independently so they could use the TDSB Virtual Library resources for language and social studies learning.
Communities in Canada, Past and Present with Brenda Kim - Virtual Grade 6
I had a slight advantage entering this partnership, as last year I taught Grade 6 social studies with my own classroom. Brenda's hopes for this partnership was to use engaging and effective methods to deliver what can be dry content to her large class of very mixed abilities. I think we did an excellent job of using both educators in the space, especially when we had a note-taking session; I provided the "lecture" and Brenda monitored the students' progress in creating dot-jot notes using a tool that was new to me: Whiteboard. We used memes, short- and long-games to understand the concepts of immigration and community evolution. We played Gather Town and will have a quiz before we all leave for our winter holiday.
Changing Traditions and Celebration - In-Person Grade 2-3
This teacher prefers that I not mention her by name on my blog. She and I co-planned and co-assessed both the Grade 2 project (a stop-motion animated mini-film) and the Grade 3 project (an I-Spy page), while she taught the Grade 3s and I took the Grade 2s. As you can imagine, it was a HUGE undertaking and quite impressive that we completed it on time, considering we only met for two periods (80 minutes) a week. The Grade 3s have already been clamoring for *their* turns to make movies.
Media with Maha Ngo - Virtual Grade 1
Maha and I are still finding our footing with this collaboration. Our current eclectic approach (playing charades, reviewing the definition, looking at FlipGrid) demonstrates that media is much wider than students might have originally anticipated. We hope to connect some work to her read-aloud book in some way.
Honourable Mention: Land Auction of Nadcaa with Shanu Thiyagalingam - In-Person Grade 4-5
Technically, this partnership was completed a while ago, but it was such an enjoyable collaboration. I wrote about it in late September, when I revised part of an old unit for reuse. I have to tell you that the final task, an auction, was an absolute blast! We had so much fun. What I loved seeing was the "growing of the groups" from pairs, to trios, and so on, until for the most popular property, everyone in the class combined their money together to make the purchase! I still have not posted the final reflection questions in their Google Classroom, but I may still do it to see if, months later, they remember the experience.
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