We've shuffled the order of our Units of Inquiry this year to accommodate for a change in Exhibition theme, so the transdisciplinary theme of Who We Are is up first. This is one of my favourite units of inquiry in Grade 7 because of the abundance of opportunities for learners to apply their acquired knowledge to real-life contexts. (For unit details, click here)

We have not one, but TWO! provocations for Who We Are, and both get the learners super jazzed to dive into this inquiry. Provocation one is a field trip downtown to look at food trucks. We take the Seabus over to downtown Vancouver and walk up to the Vancouver Art Gallery, where food trucks populate most street corners. Students have 3 tasks:

1. Check out the trucks - the logos, the design, the theme, the colours. What attracts your attention? How are they bringing in their customers?
2. Sample the food - what do you want to eat and why? What types of things are on the menu? What does it say about the values of the truck owners or their target market?
3. Interview the owners - ask questions. Where did they get the idea for their food truck? Was it hard to start their own business? What advice would they give someone wanting to open their own food truck?

The day is filled with incredible learning opportunities, fresh air and delicious food, and students return to school curious and excited to begin creating their own food trucks.

Provocation two helps learners begin to unpack our Central Idea, "Personal and cultural values influence consumption choices". Each student is asked to contribute to our community breakfast by bringing a shareable food item. The item can be a traditional breakfast food from their culture of origin, or something they enjoy eating for personal reasons. Students are encourage to be open-minded and risk-takers by trying new foods! At  the end of the feast, students are invited to share why they brought the item they brought, and the stories that emerge are insightful glimpses into the factors that influence what we eat. Each year this provocation gets larger and more fascinating as the array of food contributed expands, and other adults in the building pop in to experience our multicultural feast. The sense of community it strengthens makes it one of the highlights of the year.

Continuing with the development of student agency, we spent the early part of week 2 creating our classroom Essential Agreements. Each year when we do this, I am more and more impressed with the students' ability to create meaningful agreements with less and less teacher instruction. Many of my current group of students are in their sixth year at an IB school, so they have acquired a relatively strong base of knowledge of PYP language and pedagogy. They're familiar with the processes, collaborate well, and our open and forthcoming with their ideas. 

Some of our preliminary work had been done on the second day of school, and the evidence still hung on the walls. Students had already responded with sticky notes to the following three prompts, and we had discussed, at length, whether our classroom design from day 1 met our needs. 

• What helps me learn?
• What prevents me from learning?
• What actions can I take to be a successful learner?

We briefly revisited our responses to the prompts as a reminder of what elements are  important to our classroom before moving the discussion to one on values (which is also a related concept in our first unit of inquiry...yay!). What is a value? And what values do we have around learning and our learning space? They communicated in their table groups and brainstormed ideas onto a "placemat", then shared out to the larger group, while I documented their ideas on the whiteboard. As a group, we transformed the brainstorm of values into a list of 6 that we all agreed encompassed everything we had discussed. 

From there I put it back on them, challenging them to create a statement for each value beginning with the phrase, "we agree to..." They flipped over the placemats and got to work, collaboratively crafting statements for each value. Again we shared back to the larger group, edited their statements to incorporate all voices in the room, and ta-da! This group of learners is AMAZING!!!

Developing student agency is both a Queen Mary school goal, and a professional goal of mine, for the 2018-2019 school year. As per the Enhanced PYP, students with agency:

• have voice, choice, and ownership; and a propensity to take action
• influence and direct learning
• contribute to and participate in the learning community

To begin developing agency within our learning community, students arrived Wednesday in their new classroom to discover all of the furniture in a pile in the centre of the room. They were given 4 sticky notes and a pencil, and instructed to respond to each of the 4 prompts located around the room. One of the prompts read, "suggestions for setting up our earning space" and student responses ranged from choosing their own seats every day, to the addition of nature/plants to the room, to the creation of a cozy area where they could curl up with a book or work on a quiet activity. After reading all of the stickies aloud, I asked the students to design the classroom themselves, incorporating as many of the suggestions as possible. 
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At first, they looked shocked, and a flurry of questions and concerns were shared. How could they design the space without teacher instruction? Where should they begin? It might be  chaotic? What if they couldn't agree on a design? This was exactly what i had hoped for, so I challenged them to solve their own questions. One student suggested making a "plan" on the whiteboard, by drawing different birds-eye view designs for the furniture, then voting as a group on the one that best me their needs. We began with the carpet, a brand new 8x12 foot grey rug. After a few options,  we settled on the north west corner, then built the seating in the space remaining. Students then decided to divide themselves into 3 small crews for set up:  one for the carpet area, one for seating, one for accessory furniture. They got to work and after a session of noisy collaboration, communication, and negotiation, our classroom was ready for us to use.

Looking around, I think we were all amazed by how well our hard work had paid off. We had 3 large collaborative work spaces which each seat 8, as well as a smaller group of desks that seats 3, for those who want/need to be in a smaller group or work with a partner. We had storage tubs at the front of the room, community school supplies on the back bookshelves, and the "cozy corner" complete with couch, carpet, pillows, and a window nook.
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As we kick off the 2018/2019 school year this week, I want to give a big welcome to our grade 7 students in Division 1. We have an exciting school year ahead, packed with opportunities for inquiry, collaboration, cooperation, and challenge! 

My teaching schedule for this year is Monday-Thursday mornings (8:40am-12:10pm) and all day Fridays. My teaching partner will be in the classroom Monday-Thursday afternoons. Our library block is Thursdays 1:00-1:30pm and we have PE twice per week in the afternoons (exact gym schedule not determined yet). 

Please read our grade 7 parent welcome letter for more information, and feel free to email me anytime should you have questions or comments about your child's learning. I look forward to working with your child this year!

Last week all of the Grade 7s hiked from MEC up to the Lynn Canyon Suspension bridge. It was a glorious 8.5km hike, mostly uphill, through some beautiful forest and riverbank terrain.

The hike is an annual event, and part of our How We Express Ourselves Unit of Inquiry, in which we're inquiring into role of the natural world in facilitating discovery and self-expression. The students used their acquired knowledge of elements of photography to capture moments on the hike that they found inspiring and/or beautiful. A few pics are below.