The Power of Yet and Praise

"The only person you should try to be better than, 
is the person you were yesterday."

At Frassati, the students are learning just that. Embracing the Power of Yet, we've encouraged students to take risks, fail forward and appreciate errors as opportunities for growth. In their personal reflections for their digital portfolios, students ponder not only their learning goals and achievement of success criteria, but also their learning skills and any areas of weakness that they need to work on.  The creation of student-friendly learning goals played an imperative role in student development of self-regulation skills by encouraging them to take ownership over their leaning. Moreover, by using the word "yet" in their everyday language, weaknesses become more finite, with an end point ahead. It helped students to appreciate that learning is a journey and that they were on the right path to success. Even when it's not a straight one.

In order to promote the use of "yet", we coined the expression #ICANyet. Hashtag added for Twitter curating of ideas but mostly for "coolness factor" among grade fives. In this case YET becomes an action, something that I can do-- That is use it. #ICANyet, can you?

As a teacher, one of my learning goals this year was to focus on my praise. I've made a conscious effort to attempt to praise the process in completing a task rather than a student's ability.

In French, I focused my praise on effort, determination and strategies used to  communicate and understand. With a student friendly learning goal such as "We are learning to use varied reading strategies to help us understand authentic French texts", I might provide students with feedback such as "Bon effort! J'aime que tu as regardé pour les mots-connus, les mots-amis et que tu as bien regardé les images pour faire des prédictions." In other words, praising the use of practised reading strategies and determination rather than a traditional "Bravo" or comment about the child being a good reader.

#ICANyet shift my praise! 

(Admittedly a work in progress)

#ICANyet get to know Digital Portfolios

We've been fortunate to have various opportunities to share our learning. Some more "traditional" than others, including Edcamps, webinars, Twitter chats and board break out sessions. Our main goal always to spread the word on how powerful portfolios can be in student self-reflection and growth, self-regulation and keeping the learning visible while promoting a strengthened home-school connection. 

Student driven portfolios allow students to express their voice in their journey and take on the role of "Leaders in their Own Learning". 

In our study of the like-titled book by Ron Berger and Carol Dweck's Mindset, we focused our attention on celebrating successes but also recognizing areas of weakness and planning their path to improvement. Students identified their goals and whether they achieved them or "not yet" (hence #ICANyet) with a reflection on why or why not. We embraced the Power of Yet, the idea of failing forward and shifted our praise and mindset accordingly.

Students used Google Slides to present student-led conferences to their teacher and parents, allowing them to take real ownership over their learning. Parents were thrilled to see their children as presenters, kids were nervous but excited and the teacher took on the role of facilitator.

The fact that portfolios were digital, it enabled presentation whether parents were able to attend conferences or not. In some cases, students used a voice-over application called Screecastify to create a remote presentation. 

Digital portfolios can take on many forms. There are a variety of applications available to curate, organize and present with student, teacher and parent feedback options. Since our board recently launched GAFE (Goggle Apps for Education), we explored Google Slides and provided QR codes to any parents who couldn't attend conferences. Google Slides work well as a presentation platform as well as offers security as viewing can be limited to those provided with the link and a board login. 

How do you encourage parent and student engagement? Keep learning visible? Please share your experiences!

To access links in the images pictured above, see our prezi at:

https://prezi.com/m/hwc7suafcw8r/digital-portfolios-icanyet/

TLLP sharing

Our TLLP sharing has been a journey on its own!  Although we initially envisioned your "traditional workshop", our sharing has transformed into Twitter chats, GoToMeeting webinars, EdCamps, GAFE break-out sessions and mentorship.  Multi-faceted sharing has allowed us to access educators across boards and nations, making connections and greatly multiplying the effects of the project.  #ICANyet embrace 21C sharing!  Can you?

GAFE and digital portfolios: learning and sharing

As our board recently launched #GAFE (Google apps for education), we were thrilled to be able to share our learning and work at a recent TCDSB21C Google Innovator workshop.  Our break-out session participants were awesome: fully engaged with a wide range of experiences to share.  The link to our preso is below for your reference.  We presented the basics of What is a Google app?, Explored the Chrome Store as well as a few of our favourite apps for educators.  Our TLLP sharing extended to demonstrating how to use Google docs, forms, sheets and slides in curating and presenting student-driven e-portfolios.  #ICANyet use Google apps, can you?

Here's the link to our presentation.

http://bit.ly/1YCRymS