Case Study:
Grace’s Walks on Country unit
Teacher: Grace
School: Margaret Hendry School
Learning area: HASS, English, Science
Year level: 1/2
Context
My 5-year teaching journey began and continues at Margaret Hendry school, located in the growing suburb of Taylor in the ACT.
Margaret Hendry School enrols children from Preschool to Year 6, with a current population of 685 children, which has increased rapidly from 179 during its opening year in 2019. It has a diverse population, with 34.7% of children speaking additional languages other than English at home and many coming from a variety of complex social backgrounds. In my class of 20 year 1-2 children, 60% are EAL/D with 11 languages additional to English spoken at home, including Nepali, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Fillipino, Kannada, Telegu, Gujarati, Krio and Tongan.
Margaret Hendry School opened as an Innovative Learning Environment (ILE) and was purposefully designed and built in response to the ACT Education Directorate’s Future of Education strategy. Having undergone a special purpose review in 2021, it now operates in cohorts of Kindergarten, 1/2, 3/4 and 5/6.
The learning environment is influenced by principles of play-based learning in the early years, with increasing influences from Kath Murdoch’s Inquiry Cycle in the middle and upper years.
The school’s pillars for learning (values) are Love, Connect, Grow and Collaborate and these underpin our Positive Behaviour for learning (PBL) framework and expectations.
The pedagogical challenge
Children were regularly running through our school gardens, pulling on trees and plants, standing on plants and not taking responsibility for rubbish and belongings, with the regular excuse or response to reminders of expectations being “but that’s not my rubbish”.
Theoretical Basis
The below readings that we engaged with during our CRP workshops heavily influenced the approaches I wanted to explore through my action research:
Kaupapa Māori
- learning is interactive and dialogic,
- connectedness is fundamental to relations,
Eight Alaskan Culturally Responsive Teacher Standards
- content related to local community;
- learning environment utilising local sites;
Paul Gordon’s ‘Six L’s
- Lore, love, look, listen, learn, lead
Paul Gordons pedagogical cycle was most evident throughout this project as it provided a sequence of steps to guide the inquiry process with a strong connection to place, enabling me to use the walks on Country as a vehicle to access the Australian curriculum.
Links to the five key ideas
I chose to focus on the following key ideas
- Support the performing of learning and multimodal literacies
- Enable an activist orientation
The action research question
How does facilitating learning walks in our local environment cultivate children’s connection to place and collective motivation to care for Country?
Doing the action research
Over the course of a term, I supported our teaching team when collaboratively planning our inquiry unit about ‘Nation’ to maintain a strong focus on using our local environment to build connection to place.
Through Paul Gordon’s ‘six Ls’ pedagogical cycle, we engaged in learning walks in the local area outside of the school. These walks became the vehicle to exploring concepts of place and knowledge of Country. Before each walk children would engage with a multimodal text to ‘build the field’. These included quality picture books by First Nations authors, videos or informative texts about local Indigenous knowledge, or podcasts, which we would then follow with an opportunity to share a personal connection to, either verbally or written. Before we began each walk, children voiced which direction they would like to go before we agreed as a collective.
During the walks children had scrapbooks that they were encouraged to record noticings using writing or illustrations, sometimes with a guiding question or prompt connected to knowledge or skills from English, HASS or Science curriculum outcomes. Over the course of the term children were noticing a lot of rubbish on our walks, as evidenced by children picking up rubbish to bring back to school, unprompted, and comments they were making like the one below.
“I love this place, it looks quiet. I found some rubbish but there’s no bin.”
Upon returning from these walks, we uncovered through yarning circles that we wanted to take action by taking care of our environment and collecting the rubbish to dispose of properly. For our walks that followed, we took garbage bags, tongs and gloves and everyone actively demonstrated how we care for our environment.
These were some of the quotes I recorded from children as I observed them on their walks.
“Walks on country are the best, there are ducks!”
“I love the pond because of the sounds.”
“The kangaroo is camouflaged it blends in with the colour.”
“We learnt about different animals that we hadn’t heard of before.”
“I love walking on Country.”
“It was fun because I was the first to find the rubbish.”
“I loved the lake we sawed and I loved to pick up those rubbish and I loved everything.”
“If we don’t keep it tidy, nature like things like birds something will happen to birds and nature and nature will like get dirty.”
“I liked the Kangaroo we saw it was fun to see them.”
Throughout the unit I emphasised oral language development through partner talks, sharing personal connections to place and transferring spoken ideas to illustrations or writing. At the end of the unit through collaborative writing we innovated the text ‘The River’ by Sally Morgan and Johnny Warrkatja Malibirr to reflect our new understandings of Country.
Data I collected:
- Photographs
- Videos
- Voice recordings of yarning circles and 1:1 conversations
- Anecdotal observations from walks
- Written reflections in inquiry planner document
- Work samples
Outcomes
- Initially some children were indifferent to the experience, appearing bored. As the walks became more regular, they expressed increased excitement and curiosity.
- The shared experience allowed children to build vocabulary when reflecting on each walk. More introverted children used these as opportunities to connect with different peers, giving them the confidence to share during yarning circles.
- Children’s questioning became more authentic and concerned about the local area which led to, without adult prompting, noticing the rubbish and asking each time if we could collect it to dispose of properly.
- When returning to school, I began to see children stop and change course when they were about to run through the garden.
- I hear children reminding their peers of our pillar of ‘Love’ and the expectations ‘Care for environment’ more regularly, showing collective responsibility.
Conclusions
What did I learn about my pedagogy?
- Having autonomy and professional trust in myself to be proactive and try a different approach was empowering.
- The approach encouraged me to model an inquiry mindset.
- Watching and listening to children is powerful and informative and I learnt to be comfortable not always being in ‘control’ or knowing the outcomes of each experience.
What did I learn about the children?
- Shifting children’s understanding that learning can take place outside a classroom confined by walls takes time, but they grow to deeply value this time and thrive.
- As the children shared a concrete experience with their peers, they were more engaged, curious and supportive of each other in their interactions and collaborative tasks connected to the walks.
- Through my notes and observations, I feel I learnt more about children’s dispositions, experiences and understanding than other assessment tools I regularly use.
What did I learn about action research?
- Encourages teacher reflection on practice, challenge your assumptions, and the ‘why’ of what we do.
- It is responsive to the current context and needs of a community of learners.
- It is not perfect, and it is reasonable for it to evolve and be adapted.
- Can sometimes seem isolating, so it is important to build in systems to support sharing practice and ideas with colleagues to make a difference in the broader school community.