Curriculum development in BC has has been redesigned to:

• Make curriculum more flexible to better enable teachers to innovate and personalize learning
• Reduce the prescriptive nature of current curricula while ensuring a solid focus on essential learning
• Focus new curricula on higher order learning, giving emphasis to the key concepts and enduring understandings (big ideas) that students need to succeed in their education and their lives
• Make explicit the cross-curricular competencies that support life-long learning
• Respect the inherent logic and unique nature of the disciplines while supporting efforts to develop cross-curricular (transdisciplinary) units
• Integrate Indigenous worldviews and knowledge
• Develop assessment and evaluation programs that align with the changed emphases in curriculum

As you learn to teach, you need to both understand the underlying concepts and uniqueness of each discipline while helping learners make connections between and among these disciplines.  Integrated in all of this are the core competencies (Thinking, Communication and Personal and Social Responsibility) and First Peoples Principles of Learning.

Reflection

• Examine the curriculum for a specific disciplinary area.  How do you see the guiding principles described above in the curriculum?
• How would you describe the disciplinary concepts from a subject area to someone who was not familiar with it?
• What examples have you seen or experienced where the concepts of the discipline were shared with the learners?
• What assessment methods (formative and summative) could assess a learner’s understanding of these big ideas?  How might they be different for diverse students?
• How do teachers acknowledge individual students perspectives on the “big ideas”?

Teacher as Change Agent

“A change agent, or agent of change, is someone who intentionally or indirectly causes or accelerates social, cultural, or behavioral change.” (Nussbaum-Beach, 2010).

Being a Change Agent

• Understand the beliefs and attitudes that you have towards and about education; know what your personal vision is as a teacher
• Engage critically and creatively with ideas
• Integrate technology into lessons, activities and assessments, knowing why you are using it and how it meets student needs
• Continually reflect on the effectiveness of your practice
• Integrate anti-racism theory into lessons, activities and assessments, knowing why you are using it and how it meets student needs
• Collaborate with colleagues
• Have a growth mindset
• Be innovative
• Infuse activities with real-life, real-world problems and issues while maintaining cultural sensitivity
• Empower students to be self-learners with a focus on 21^st century learning skills
• Assist students in accessing the curriculum through a social justice lens

“The fundamental role of a teacher is to help kids exceed their potential.” (Hattie, 2014).

Reflection

• Why are the roles of teachers changing?
• In what ways can teachers be influence change in education?
• As a new teacher, how can you navigate in this profession when it’s possible that others may not view today’s teaching role in the same way?
• What will you do, while still in your teacher education program, to assist you in becoming a change agent?
• How can the concept of teacher as a change agent impact the ways you design your units and lessons?

Inquiry to Support Change

The world of tomorrow will look nothing like the world of today, and to be successful, students need to develop the skills and knowledge to become innovators and problem-solvers. Inquiry-based learning, as supported by the BC curriculum, is well suited to help students achieve this, as it places them in the centre of the learning experience. It also encourages educators to create a culture of learning where students are challenged to wonder, create, test, and question. In the spirt of these ideas, here are eight simple ways to support inquiry-based learning from Kindergarten to Grade 12 classrooms.

• think about the learning environment
• start with students’ questions
• foster curiosity in your classroom
• be a co-learner: let’s find out together
• think like a scientist by exploring and discovering
• think like an engineer, an artist, a writer
• focus on skill development
• look for cross-curricular connections

As educators, developing an inquiry mindset requires that we ask questions of our own practice rather than simply looking for answers externally.  It recognizes that ideas and possibilities (and even further questions) come from a variety of places.  An inquiry topic is explored through different lenses:

• Self-Study (What can I learn from my personal experience?  What intuitions do I have?   Why do I care about this topic?)
• Community (What do colleagues, students, community members have to say about the topic?  How does what they say inform your topic?)
• Observations (What do I see/hear about this topic in classrooms?  In hallways? In staff rooms?  What is present (or absent)?)
• Academic Literature (What does the larger academic community think about my topic?  How does this inform my understanding?)

Inquiry learning is reflective of the First Peoples Principles of Learning and Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Learning in terms of the view that “education is a complex process that is personal, holistic; embedded in relationship to each other, to self, and to the land; and is most effective when it is authentic and relevant”.

Chrona, 2016

You are likely concerned about some complicated and important questions.  For example, you may wonder:

• What do I really care about as an educator?
• How might my attitudes and beliefs affect my teaching?
• What do learners really care about?
• What matters in our communities?
• How do I build a caring community in my classroom?
• How can I embrace the complexity of teaching?

Reflection

• What questions about teaching and learning most intrigue you?
• How can you collect and show evidence of your personal and professional preparation in your dPortfolio?
• How are the roles of teachers changing?
• How can teachers support inquiry? How do they engage in inquiry?
• As a new teacher, how can you navigate in this profession when it’s possible that others may not view today’s teaching role in the same way?
• How can the concept of inqury inform unit and lesson planning?
• What are some challenging to inquiry?  How can you address this?

Learning Design Process

You will be learning about unit and lesson design in a variety of courses and contexts. There are many templates, styles and formats to choose from.  The ones included here reflect the wording and layout of the BC curriculum. The templates are intended to guide your thinking processes as you begin planning, using an intentional learning design framework.

You will notice that how you plan is different from how you teach. “Beginning with the end in mind” is a useful phrase to consider. Your plans should start from the end goal of what you are hoping students will learn, and in what ways will the students demonstrate that learning. Once you have those in place, you can begin planning individual lessons/learning sequences.

There is no one “right” way to plan or one template to use, and teachers develop planning strategies that work for them. At the beginning of your practice, however, when working with your mentor and supervisor, it is important your plans are thorough to make your planning “visible” to those who can provide input and feedback. As you get to know your students, your plans will change to better accommodate their needs, and as you respond to the formative assessment you and your students engage in. This is an essential characteristic of professionalism.

Assessment (beginning with the end in mind)

Although you may think of assessment as happening at the end of learning, considering assessment is the very first step in good planning.  What and how you assess learning needs to inform all stages of the planning and instruction.

There are three types of assessment that are part of teaching and learning:  assessment for learning (feedback for the learner), assessment as learning (students monitoring their own learning), and assessment of learning (based on a product or performance). Assessment should not be limited to a high-stress event that occurs after the learning has happened. It should be a natural, cooperative, ongoing process that involves the active engagement of students and teachers.

Principles of Quality Assessment

Within the online documents for the curriculum, the government has identified the following principles for the development of classroom assessment, evaluation and communication of student learning. Quality assessment:

• is fair, transparent, meaningful and responsive to all learners
• focuses on all three components of the curriculum model – knowing, doing, understanding
• provides ongoing descriptive feedback to students
• is ongoing, timely, specific, and embedded in day to day instruction
• provides varied and multiple opportunities for learners to demonstrate their learning
• involves student in their learning
• promotes development of student self-assessment and goal setting for next steps in learning
• allows for a collection of student work to be gathered over time to provide a full profile of the learner and learning
• communicates clearly to the learner and parents where the student is, what they are working towards and the ways that learning can be supported

Once you have your unit developed, it is time to turn your attention to planning the specific learning experiences you are designing for students. Although traditionally called “lesson plans”, more people are using the term “learning plans”, which better reflects the focus on student learning. What is consistent is that you are taking the broad ideas of your unit and planning a variety of experiences for your students to engage in demonstrating what they know, can do, and understand. There is no one “best” template or format; the one offered here is a suggestion that can help guide your thinking processes as you design your unit and learning plans, and incorporates the language and design of the BC curriculum.

Find out more about Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to support all your learners. Perhaps move this up or connect it earlier as well

Reflection

• Why is planning important for intentional and appropriate learning?  Does planning preclude spontaneity?
• As you observe in classrooms, can you identify the learning intention(s) of the lesson?
• How might teachers communicate the intentions or big ideas of the unit and lesson to students?
• As you observe teaching, can you sketch out a lesson design from the observation?
• How can you design units and lessons that reach every student?
• How does considering assessment first change the planning and teaching cycle?
• Why are there different types of assessment?
• Are these assessments reflecting anti-oppressive frameworks?
• What types of assessments best allow students to demonstrate their learning?
• How will these assessments reflect 21^st century learning skills?
• What assessment practices have you observed and what have been their purposes?

During your teacher education program and throughout your career, you will be expected to continually acquire new knowledge about how people learn.  One of the ways that teachers incorporate these new learnings is by reflexive practice.

Reflection is giving something serious thought and consideration after the fact—What was learned and how it can possibly be improved upon the next time. In the process of reflecting, it is not just a retelling of what you observed. What is important about what you saw? What does it make you wonder? How will it change your practice?  Reflexive practice is “reflection in action”; considering, with critical thought and introspection, the what and the why, engaging in the moment, understanding what is happening while experiencing an experience, and acting in that moment, with that understanding in mind.

Reflection

• What understanding do you currently have about how people learn?
• How can you apply the reflective cycle to what you are observing in classrooms?
• How can you be a self-reflective teacher candidate in both your observations and your teaching experiences?
• In what ways do you observe teachers and colleagues being reflexive?
• How can you be a self-reflexive?
• How does having an awareness of your worldview, with its presuppositions and beliefs, impact the outcome of your reflexivity?
• Why are reflection and reflexivity crucial aspects of an effective teaching practice?
• Consider the difference, as it relates to reflection and reflexivity, between learning about teaching and yourself as a teacher, as well as learning to teach.