Cycle 2 - Focus on Citizenship

Today, we met as a group to consolidate our first cycle (data) and begin brainstorming our second cycle for NPDL. Some of our thoughts about our first experience We are already feeling a lot more confident with the terminology and the concepts expressed in the framework as we were able to brainstorm several ideas, finally zeroing in on the inquiry question of "What does school look like?". We want our students to move towards a global perspective by connecting with other students from locations outside of Canada, specifically in India. India was chosen due to the connection between St. Gregory and the Sarada Vidyalayam School (find more info HERE about the school and the story behind the school).

We thought a focus on connecting the schools would be a great way to expose the students to global perspectives. We wanted to ensure that the focus was not on making on students feeling guilty for been born into a life of (relative) privilege but rather to understand that there are marked differences and similarity between them and students from other locations around the world.

The first step is to translate the Citizenship dimensions into child-friendly language. We would like to have the students be able to self assess pre- and post to gauge their own movement through the progressions. Also, by co-construction the progression, we hope to gain greater insight into the criteria so that we will be able to be better able to determine at which point along the progression each students may be at.

Some of our brainstorming notes from our session

We are also looking to use technology to connect our classes through padlets, hangouts and forms. We have our question: "What is school like?"

From here we are going to start by having our students brainstorm what questions could be asked to the school in India in order for us to look for similarities and differences. The primary classes plan to complete a shared Padlet to brainstorm "What is school like?". The junior classes will link up via Google Hangout in order to brainstorm questions. 

Once we have a list of questions, we will compose a Google form that will be filled out by the school in India. We are also hoping that we will be able to start a slow video chat, where the schools pose questions via video to each other. We would pose a question (e.g. What sort of games do you play at your school?") and the India school would create a video response to our question and then pose a question to us. 

Since St. Gregory has been involved in fundraising for this school for some time now, we are hoping that a greater connection with 

We are MUCH more aware of the progressions than in the first cycle. The first time around, there was a lot of quiet time and a bit of "deer in the headlights" but this time we were all excited to get started. Ideas were flying out, all through the lens of the progressions. 

Co-constructing the citizenship progressions

We are looking forward to connecting and getting started on this project!