The Pigeon at the Farm by Connor Rapley

Today, we are sharing Connor's story.   It has a great ending, especially if you know what some of the pigeon's favorite things are! You can watch below or flip through the pages here.  Read how the #pigeonproject began in this post.

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The Pigeon Wants a Hot Dog Party by Kylynn Kasto

 We are also sharing Kylynn's story today.  You can watch her story below or flip through the pages here.  Read how the #pigeonproject began in this post.

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The Pigeon Wants a Pig by Peyton Tolton

We are sharing Peyton's story today.  You can watch below or flip through the pages here.  Read how the #pigeonproject began in this post. 

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Assessment: key ideas from today's professional development

Our first Park West School Division professional development day focused on assessment.  Our guest speaker was Tom Schimmer, an independent education author, speaker, and consultant from British Columbia. 

Key ideas from his session included: 

A good coach is always assessing his or her players

Likewise, a good teacher is always assessing his or her students.  This doesn’t mean a good coach/teacher is always giving tests or assignments, but rather he or she is always considering: What skills and knowledge does this student/player have?  What skills and knowledge do they need to develop?  How can we help him or her improve?

Different does not always mean worse

One of the most dangerous ideas is “this is the way we’ve always done it”.  We need to change, adapt and improve.  There’s always something new in education and in society. 

Accuracy and confidence matter the most

Students need to feel confident that they can succeed. 

Schimmer shared two quotes from the book “Confidence” by Rosabeth Moss Kanter:

“Expectations about the likelihood of eventual success determine the amount of effort people are willing to put in.  Those who are convinced they can be successful in carrying out the actions required for a successful outcome – who have the self-efficacy- are likely to try harder and persist longer when they face obstacles.” 

“It’s not mistakes that cause winners to lose, it’s panic” 

Educators need to consider: Do our classroom practices increase anxiety or do they increase confidence? 

Think about a good coach – would they want to generate anxiety in their players before a game?  No.  They’d rather have relaxed, confident players and that’s what teachers should aim for too. 

Teachers should gather accurate information about their students considering:

Why are we assessing students? 

What are we assessing? 

How are we effectively going to assess students (based on our why and what)?

Don’t distort – grades should reflect learning, not behavior 

Teachers should strive to include ONLY information about learning in their scores/grades/marks.  For example, if you lower a student’s grade because they hand work in late, you are indicating that they know less about the subject area.  Does a student know less about math because they did the assignment two days later?  Or is the lateness a separate issue unrelated to their skills and knowledge?

Balance is important

The best approach to assessment includes different types of assessments:

-         both formative (practice/rehearsal) and summative (final performances)

-         different forms of assessment (a variety of assignments, tasks, tests)

-         separating academic knowledge and skills from traits we hope to instill in students (timeliness, neatness, organization, positive attitude)

Consider frequency and recency

Students learn at different rates and different times.  Think about when babies learn to walk – we accept that they may walk at 9 months or 10 months or 11 months of age.  However, we are often discouraged and frustrated if a student learns a concept earlier or later than we “expect”.  Why is it a problem if a student masters fractions in May instead of October?  Why do grades often reflect a student’s lack of knowledge in October when they have gone on to master the area more recently?  We need to give students credit for what they know at PRESENT.  Don’t average out old performances with new performances.  For example, we wouldn’t average the results of an old driver’s test with a new driver’s test.  We also wouldn’t want to average proficiency in one area with poor performance in another area.  For example, we don’t want a pilot that got 100% on take-offs and 30% on landings to average a “passing grade”. 

It is also important to consider how often someone has demonstrated knowledge or skills.  Has a student shown proficiency on only one occassion or have they demonstrated it multiple times?  (Again, we wouldn't want the pilot with only 1 successful landing.)  Giving students the chance to demonstrate their knowledge frequently is important!

The Pigeon Wants a Hot Dog by Landon Dmyterko

Our featured author today is Landon.  He wrote a pigeon story titled "The Pigeon Wants a Hot Dog".  You can flip through the pages of his book here or watch the story below. Read how the #pigeonproject started here.

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The Pigeon Finds a Friend by Sarah Chappell

Here's Sarah's story!  You can flip through the pages of her book here or watch the story below. Read how the #pigeonproject started here.

 

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The Duckling Gets a Hamburger by Charlie Airey

Charlie's story is titled "The Duckling Gets a Hamburger".  You can flip through the pages of his book here or watch the story below. Read how the #pigeonproject started here.

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Don't Let the Pigeon Dance by Camryn Ramsey

Today's story is Don't Let the Pigeon Dance.  You can flip through the pages of Camryn's book here or watch the story below. Read how the #pigeonproject started here.

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The Pigeon Finds a Girlfriend by Madison Mann

Here's another Pigeon story to enjoy.  Flip through the pages of Madison's book here or watch the story below. Read how the #pigeonproject started here.

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The Pigeon Loves Things that Run by Jaxen Dziver

Here's another Pigeon story to enjoy.  Flip through the pages of Jaxen's book here or watch the story below. Read how the #pigeonproject started here.

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The Pigeon Finds a Teddy Bear by Addison Johns

Here's our first finished Pigeon story for the #pigeonproject !!   Read more about how we got started here.  Flip through this book here. 

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Inspired by DON’T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS! Copyright © 2003 by Mo Willems. Published by Hyperion Books for Children. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

The Pigeon Project: Our Journey to Authoring Pigeon Books

I am excited to start a new school year, especially since I know I have a great group of students and parents to work with!  For the first time, I am looping up to Grade 2 with my Grade 1 class from last year.  I think it is going to be great and I can't wait to see what incredible things we will do together this year!

In the whirlwind that occurs during the end of the school year, our class started an incredible writing project.  We were so busy that we didn't really even have the chance to share, so here's the scoop!

Our new favorite author:
During our Grade 1 year, our whole class fell in love with the Mo Willems Pigeon books.  They are hilarious stories featuring Pigeon, Duckling and a few other great characters.  We own all of the books released to date and we've read them over and over again!

The Pigeon Pops up in Writing Journals:
Many students started drawing and writing about the Pigeon during their writing time.  We had the great idea to write and publish our own Pigeon stories.

We learn about Copyright:
Students eagerly started writing stories and then I realized that we couldn't be publishing (and "stealing") Mo Willems' character due to copyright rules.  I explained this to my students and we discussed some options for moving forward.

We asked permission:
Mo Willems' website directed us to ask his publishing company about copyright, so we decided to ask the publisher if we could use Mo's pigeon character.  In late May, we wrote a letter and emailed it off to Wernick & Pratt, Mo Willems' publisher.

We wait... 
We didn't hear back from Wernick & Pratt right away (and we know that publishers are busy people), so we decided to write another book with our own ideas and own characters while we waited.  The students came up with an amazing story called "The Counting Zoo", which we published online and in print!  We even printed copies for our classroom and took turns taking them home to our families. 

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Permission Granted
We returned from a fabulous, fun field trip on June 16th and I noticed an email from Wernick & Pratt.  I read the email to students and we were thrilled to find out that we had permission to create our own Pigeon books!

June Flurries
Our classroom was a flurry of activity for the last two weeks of school as students passionately wrote, revised, edited, typed and illustrated.  We ended the year with a few finished books and many partially finished books.  We are excited to be back in the classroom so that we can continue with our project and share our completed Pigeon stories!