Welcome back to a snowy January in Mission! We are excited to continue the learning journey with you this term.
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Roundtable on Assessment Announcement:
Rather than offer additional Roundtables on Assessment, we are targeting our efforts towards specific themes identified by teachers at the first session. Please see the previous posts for details about what was identified by our colleagues at the First Roundtable on Assessment and the sessions being offered in our 2016/2017 Professional Learning Series.
In addition to the Professional Learning Series, the curriculum department would like to announce the following commitments:
Breaking News…
JUMP Math:
The school district will provide teacher resource guides and training to all K-6 teachers in September 2017. The district will also purchase JUMP Math classroom resources for all K-6 classrooms, starting in September 2017.
Local Workshop: Rebekah Stenner, JUMP Math Educational Consultant, will offer a half day workshop to introduce teachers who want an introduction to JUMP Math earlier than September and who may want to pilot the resource. Every teacher who attends will be given JUMP Math teaching resources at the session.
Joyful Literacy Update:
- Six schools applied and were approved to attend this Early Literacy Summit.
- Teachers and administrators attended a pre-Summit meeting on Monday, January 9th
- Every teacher was given a copy of Joyful Literacy Interventions Part One and Part Two as a resource.
- Teachers will meet and collaborate to share what they have learned at the conference.
Science First Peoples (FNESC): Released in November, you can access this guide digitally for free. In addition, our school district has purchased print copies for every school and they will be in libraries by spring!
Local Workshop: Joe Heslip, District Principal of Aboriginal Education, is offering a workshop to introduce the resource and strategies for using this with students. This highly adaptable guide can be used with students K-12. Every teacher who attends this session will be given a copy of Science First Peoples.
Great Bear Sea: Every school library has a copy of the print and digital files of the Great Bear Sea Science resource for their school community. The digital files include the full length feature film and are also available on the Great Bear Sea website.
Local Workshop: A workshop by the curriculum developers will be offered in conjunction with Joe Heslip’s Science First Peoples workshop.
Self-Assessment of Core Competencies:
Mission Public School District has sent a team of educators to two provincial Curriculum and Assessment Network meetings. The most recent meeting focused on the Core Competencies and how to design meaningful assessments that promote student ownership of the Core Competencies as a reflection of their learning.
Share-out and resources: Curriculum facilitators and administrators from each school will participate in a learning session this winter. Resources will include presentation slides and sample prompts that could be used to design meaningful self-assessment templates.
5000 copies of the Canoe were distributed in December by Siwal Si’wes!
New In your School Library:
Siwal Si’wes Digital Library Catalogue is now accessible from all locations and devices!
The following schools have recently created Virtual Learning Commons of their own! Congratulations to the teacher librarians for their creative efforts and perseverance! Visit the digital libraries at:
- Blog: Library Looking
- Twitter: @SilverdaleLib
- Website: Silverdale Elementary Library
Professional Learning Session:
Teacher Librarians had the opportunity to learn from Stefan Stipp, Prime Minister’s Award-winning teacher & consultant for The Critical Thinking Consortium, at a professional learning session in December. Talk to your teacher librarian about the TC2 resources available through our district partnership and how they connect with the curricular and core competencies.
Collaboration Days Reminder:
Thank you to Edwin S. Richards and West Height Community School for sharing their collaboration templates with us. We have adapted and combined them to share here for examples of possible topics and prompts for teacher collaboration time.
Curriculum Connections 