Battleford Central School

Online Calendar

You may have noticed that our new website has an online calendar of monthly events.  This calendar is located on the right side of the page, and is updated each month, based on the calendar included with the newsletter.  Please check it out, as we are constantly adding events, activities and important notices to it.  This is just another way we are trying to increase the communication between school and home.

Teacher Professional Development Days – School for Teachers!

Another day off for students - what are the teachers up to?

Living Sky School Division Professional Development Day (February 6):

On the morning of February 6, teachers from across our Division will gather at NBCHS for the third day in our learning about "unwrapping" the curriculum.  In the morning, we will learn about how to better tie instruction to assessment and evaluation strategies, and to ensure that we are purposefully creating the best possible learning experiences for our students.  We will look at how to focus our assessment of students' learning progress with what they are to be learning, and how to ensure that what we evaluate (final marks) is directly aligned with the curriculum outcomes (those big, broad ideas about that which students need to learn) and their indicators (the specific skills, content and knowledge).  Finally, we will learn more about how to work as teams of teachers with the assessment and evaluation data we collect to improve student learning results and our instructional practices.  Our afternoon will be spent putting the finishing touches on the actual unwrapping of the curricula with which we have been working, as well as working together as teams to start the process of developing plans and strategies to make our learning in the morning a practical reality.  This will be a very busy day, with a great deal to learn, talk about and work on for our teachers.

 Teachers’ Convention (September 19-20):

Each year, teachers participate in two days of teacher-directed professional development sessions.  This year, our focus was on improving student learning through clarifying the outcomes/expectations and better assessment and evaluation practices.  We had a number of keynote speakers who are recognized international leaders in these areas speak to us about what practices we could/should be using to help our students achieve more each school year.

Living Sky Divisional Professional Development Days (October 24-25):

This year, our teachers have undertaken a process we refer to as “unwrapping the curriculum”.  In the last couple of years, teachers have received new curriculum documents from the Ministry of Education, and these new documents have significant changes to them.  We have moved to what is referred to as an Outcomes-based model.  Outcomes are broad, general statements about what children should be learning about at each grade level and in each subject.  Think of the outcome as a long-term goal to be achieved over the course of a unit or even year.  Within each outcome are specific indicators, or benchmark items that students will need to know how to do, use or demonstrate in order to reach the outcome.  Think of these as short-term goals or performance tasks that need to be accomplished on the way to reaching the long-term goal.  As an example, Grade 7 math has 18 outcomes, with a total of 148 indicators that are aimed at getting students to fully understand and use the concepts desired by the outcomes.  Now, back to the “unwrapping” process…

We know that in the 184 days that students attend school that we don’t get time every day for every subject.  We lose time to presentations, fire drills, speakers, weather days, sporting events, illness, family trips, etc..  We also know that trying to cover 148 items in 184 days is asking a lot of students (or even adults) to handle.  Teachers were led through a process by which teams of teachers working together at specific grade levels and subject areas determined what the key indicators were for each outcome.  The teachers worked through a process of determining the complexity of the learning by analyzing nouns and verbs used in the curriculum, so that students are sufficiently challenged in their learning to form deep, lasting understandings of the material, not just memorization and forget it after the test situations.  By doing this, teachers are able to share experience, knowledge and expertise in the subject area, have discussions about what teaching practices worked best for different types of learners, and how to effectively assess and evaluate student learning.

Through these conversations, debates and discussions, teachers work out where the most emphasis should be placed, and how learning is aligned from one grade to another.  Teachers will have a more thorough understanding of what the expectations of the curricula are after going through this process, and will be able to purposefully design high-quality learning activities for students to engage in.  Using the Grade 7 Math as an example again, the group working on that subject area was able to determine that of the 148 indicators listed, 51 of these were key or critical to long-term student learning and success.  This is not to say that the rest won’t be covered, but that they are of lesser significance to student success and achievement.  Thinking of another analogy, think back to your child learning to walk.  There were many stages involved in learning to do this task, with some steps being more important (maintaining balance, looking at where one is going, etc.) than others (fluidity of the stride, length of the stride, etc.).

This is a huge undertaking for teachers, and many groups have not completed this initial introduction, due to the size of the curriculum document they are working from.  Teachers will have another two days to continue working through this process later in the school year (February 6 and March 19, 2012).