We've been given a common language, now let's create unique experiences

Text from the Creative Thinking Profiles

Text from the Communication Profiles

Text from the Positive Personal and Cultural Identity Profiles

What do we want our learners to be? What do we want out learners to be able to do? Is that your definition of 21st Century Skills? Is there more?

The BC ministry of education recently posted competency profiles describing and illustrating growing capacity for communication, creative thinking, and positive personal and cultural identity. In my mind this is the beginning of a formal definition of 21st Century skills in BC. Does it fit what we want for our learners? Will it be of use in our classrooms, and how? It's up to us to answer these questions together, and it's up to us to leverage this common language to enrich core experiences and shape new experiences for the learners we work with. 

What will this look like for you?

Final Meeting of Communication Competency Workgroup

In late November we finished a series of meetings as a Communication Competency Workgroup. It was a rich experience and the collaboration was organic. Our time was focused on sharing samples of student work and sharing ideas to help define and create a Communication Competency Continua as part of BC's new draft curriculum. It was exciting to be a part of a mix of teachers representing a huge mix of students at various points and on various paths in their learning. It was clear as we met and shared our work that competencies are nothing new. What will be new is the continua, a tool for BC and by BC to help each student grow in the core competencies. The group was one of nine in the province meeting to work on continua for the new competencies. The three competency continua being drafted at this time were Creative Thinking, Positive and Personal Cultural Identity, and Communication Competency. Our group was one of three working on Communication Competency. 

Sharon Joerski, the Researcher working with the Ministry, reported on the work in December and we expect more to be published about the three competencies shortly. The ministry website summarizes our work prior to the November meetings. Unfortunately what has not yet been made public is the collection of samples of student work on which the continua has been built. We've been told that these will be available as resources to us develop our understanding of the continua and find ways to tie our work to it. 

Sharon shared with us some of the attributes of the continua as they are being discussed. Its agreed that the competencies are:

• inclusive: everyone is included in the competencies
• strength-based: they are additive and progressive
• student-centred
• holistic
• interconnected (3 with sub parts are all connected)
• about bringing coherence
• everyone’s responsibility
• BC Classroom Based
• continuous and longitudinal
• authentic

In wrapping up our time together we were asked four questions. I've summarized some of our thoughts here. Hopefully this provides some food for thought as we provide additional feedback to the Ministry on the draft curriculum.  

1. How do we see the continua being used?
• assessment (feedback, planning)
• communicating with parents
2. What would be a good starting place?
• build a collection of examples
• open discussion and collaboration on communication
3. What tips do we have in presenting the continua?
• interactive
• user friendly (Teacher, Student, and Parent)
• accessible language
• lots of examples
4. What implementation advice do we have?
• provide time and resources to staff
• slow roll out (perhaps with optional years, pilot years?)
• address questions of Why?

I'm looking forward to the SD57 "Exploring Draft Curriculum" workshops as a forum for discussing the competencies, the continua, and the new curriculum as a whole. I've also enjoyed participating in conversations via the #bccurric hashtag on Twitter. 

How would you see yourself using a continua to supplement your instruction and assessment in the Core Competencies?

Comments, as always, are welcome and encouraged.

Cross Curricular Competencies

BC is transforming education, and it's an exciting and curious transformation to be a part of. After seeing the draft "cross curricular competencies" early on, my Teaching partner and I started working them into our practice. With our students we defined the competencies and built assessment rubrics for each one. Throughout the year students assessed their own growth in each competency using evidence from their project work. The work was very rewarding and the conversations were rich. The competencies allowed us to broaden our conversation and the bridge the skills students were gaining both inside and outside our classroom with the work they were doing within it. For me the quote "concept-based and competency-driven" frames the new curriculum perfectly, and it's a model I can get behind.

From my perspective yhis "transformation" in BC been a very open process, and it has been intentionally welcoming to the voices of British Colombians. I have had the privilege of joining the conversation on communication competency at a district level with a curriculum design team. Our team is one of three meeting in the province to give input into the creation of a communication competency continua. A draft of our work is shown here (https://www.dropbox.com/s/uexp3gx6gmg74w4/sj-sept16%20copy.pptx) and the document explains the possible structure and content of the draft continua. Our goal is to create a tool that will help students grow in their communication competency through descriptive, illustrative statements and examples of communication competency. 

BC has invited everyone to join the conversation on curriculum transformation here: https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/, but if you have an comments on the communication competency work I'd love to hear them too.

Will this support learners in improving their communication skills in all subject areas and at all grade levels? What more does it need? How can it be improved?

Thanks for your input!

Making Feedback an Event

What does feedback look like in your context? How has giving and accepting feedback been modeled in your experience?

Peer Feedback is a powerful classroom tool for a variety of reasons. It helps foster a collaborative culture, exposes students to varying ideas and perspectives, serves as a form of positive peer pressure, and gives students an opportunity to put their best foot forward as they prepare their work for feedback. I believe feedback can also be used to teach content, and I want to improve the way we do feedback in my classes so we can maximize its benefit for our learning.

In this case students had prepared sketches of the models they were planning on building and animating to bring mitosis or meiosis to life. The models will have a QR code attached linking to a video which will explain the model and bring it to life either visually or orally. Although many of the sketches were not fully developed I believe students benefited from thinking through their plan and creating their sketch as well as by looking at the plans and sketches of others.

What I really enjoyed about this round of feedback was that it was very much an event (and for my purposes an excellent form of formative assessment). Students were asked to come with their sketches. Sketches were then touched up to ensure that they were self explanatory to viewers who were circulating by for 3 minutes at a time. Students then added to their sketches notes to guide the feedback. They also added comments to let the viewer know what they liked about their work, what was tricky, and what they thought they might do differently (a suggestion from a student-parent in my PLN, thanks Greg). Feedback then proceeded in 3 minute rounds (a time chosen based one total time available, but it actually worked quite well). This countdown timer was used to add an edgy, funky, fun structure to the event. Students enjoyed it, and agreed that it was comfortable, beneficial, and improved their knowledge of the content.

As we continually seek to improve the quality of feedback one of Dylan William's suggestions (from "Embedded Formative Assessment") I've enjoyed is to collect the post-it feedback afterward and post is on the board. Students are then encouraged to look at all the feedback and vote on which pieces are most useful to the reader.

At the end of the day I want the feedback experience to be valuable enough that students come prepared, and participate to the best of their ability to their own benefit and the benefit of their classroom. So, how can we do feedback better?

Year End Presentation of Learning

In wrapping up our first year of our Project Based Learning Choice Program students created Presentations of Learning. Here's mine:

Student Samples Demonstrating Communication Competency

Summarizing Projects:

• Joslynn's post on over-consumption project

Reflective Thinking:

• Conor's pinhole camera critique

Encouraging Other Students to take action:

• Gabe's post on Shoreline Cleanup
• Chelsea' safety poster in Tech

Presenting the Northern Learning Centre Choice Program to Others:

• Student's answer questions about the NLC

A Brilliant Hook

• We often start a class after a break with a catch up activity, or some kind of icebreaker. A few times now we’ve asked students to summarize their time off in three words. Once the presenter has shared a volunteer is randomly selected from the audience to ask a question based on the three words. Most students use a combination of adjectives to describe various activities and events. One student in particular has mastered the hook. His face was full of enthusiasm as he shared that he had had the “best weekend ever!” Every student in the room was filled with curiosity and almost competing to be the one to question him further. The explanation that followed did not disappoint.