Margin Notes

Conversations About Artifacts of Learning- Inquiry Writing

Aug
15

This is a summary of this year’s final conversation about artifacts of student learning as part of our Visible Learning project with our colleagues Michelle Wuest and Shelley Hanson and their Grade 11 students at Leo Hayes High School.  You can read a description of the project here.

In order to make our own learning visible, we decided to follow a protocol based on the Project Zero See-Think-Wonder thinking routine to structure our conversations and capture our thinking and reflections.  We recorded the conversation and I have summarized our observations, wonderings, and reflections.

Description of Artifact

After brainstorming a list of their wonderings-questions they would like to know the answers to-Shelley’s students selected a question (from the list or on their own) to explore further in an inquiry writing piece.  Students were challenged to explore at least 3-4 different perspectives in their final pieces.

Shelley shared a mentor text with her students: “What Women Really Do in the Bathroom” which can be found on page 119 of Kelly Gallagher’s book, Write Like This or here. (more…)

Making Learning Visible

Feb
09

We have been working on a collaboration with our colleagues Michelle Wuest and Shelley Hanson at Leo Hayes High School.  Inspired by Making Thinking Visible and Visible Learners, we have embarked on a bit of a professional inquiry guided by these key questions:

  • How can we create the conditions for students’ learning to be visible?
  • How can we/they document this learning?
  • What can we learn about teaching and learning from this documentation?
  • How can we make our own learning from this project visible to others?

Michelle and Shelley teach multiple grades but they both have Grade 11 English (more…)