Welcome to another year of learning and working together. We have drafted this post with the hope that some of these resources may useful to your planning for September and beyond.
Ministry of Education Curriculum Updates:
Please see the Documents and Assessment Strategies pages for Educator Updates regarding FSA’s and Graduation Years (including Gr. 10-12 Curriculum Comparison Guides for all subjects and the draft design of the Numeracy Assessment).
A series of videos and booklets on Assessment is being developed and we will post links as soon as they are available.
Learning Sessions and Teaching Resources:
Please see the Teacher Developed page for units developed by MPSD teachers, including ADST and Career Education. (Please ask your Teacher Librarian or Jen Lane (jennifer.lane@mpsd.ca) if you require the password to open this page.)
ERAC has curated and recommended a collection of K-12 websites that are aligned with the BC redesigned curriculum. We have added these websites to the Subject Area pages in Resources (K-12). For K-6 sites, you can also go to Databases and Subject Guides in the Elementary Virtual Learning Commons.
September blog posts are published in the Elementary Virtual Learning Commons and are full of teaching ideas and activities! This month we are connecting to growth mindset and the core competencies. (Check back at the beginning of each month for new posts.)
Coming Soon…..
Please see our previous post for some of MPSD’s fall professional learning opportunities.
We also have a fabulous line-up of speakers and presenters for our 2017/2018 Professional Learning Series. Details will be posted this fall.
We continue to add resources to the Competencies page to support learning around Self-Assessment of the Core Competencies.
Teachers have requested that a common introduction to the self-assessment be provided by the district. Please see your administrator for the introduction developed with feedback from educators that can be used on K-9 report cards to introduce the self-assessment.
Career Education K-12:
Resource Announcement: Mission Public School District has purchased the following two digital resources for the new K-12 Career Education curriculum. Stay tuned for learning opportunities in the 2017/2018 school year.
All About Me: Career Education Kindergarten-Grade 6
myBlueprint: Career Education Grade 7-12
JUMP Math K-6:
District-funded resources for all K-6 teachers and students have been ordered and are on the way!
Mark your calendar for training on September 22nd for all K-6 teachers.
Early Literacy:
Mission Public School District sent a team of six schools to the January 2017 Joyful Literacy conference in Victoria. A shared learning session took place in April and we received positive feedback from educators who attended the conference.
Below are some of the responses from educators trying out the strategies and expressing their needs moving forward:
We would like to continue the conversation about about establishing common goals for reading expectations to support early literacy in our school district.
Calling all K-3 Educators:Please join us at our next Early Literacy meeting at the School Board Office on Tuesday, May 16th, 2:45-4:15. This is an opportunity to participate in the decision-making process to establish common, district-wide standards for reading levels K-Grade 3 which will be implemented September 2017. Please bring sample resources, past standards/expectations or any other resources that might be useful to the conversation.
Literacy Professional Development Opportunity:
Congratulations to the MPSD educators who applied to attend the Joyful Writing Summit June 2-3 in Vancouver. Applications were due on May 5th to participate in this professional development opportunity.
Welcome back to a snowy January in Mission! We are excited to continue the learning journey with you this term.
(*Tech Tip: Any time you see text in a colour other than black in our posts, it means that it is an embedded link. Click on the coloured text to be taken directly to documents, posts, magazine articles, etc…*)
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:
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.
During the last week of November, we met with three groups of Kindergarten – Grade 9 educators to discuss the challenges and current positive assessment practices in Mission Public School District.
Feedback was gathered from small groups of educators (teachers and administrators) at each Roundtable on Assessment. They were asked to respond to two questions:
What are the challenges for you in terms of classroom and school-based assessment and/or reporting?
Are there things that are working for you in terms of classroom and school-based assessment that you would like to share?
Please click on the links below to read the collated reports from each grade grouping:
Some of the common themes identified at the Roundtables include:
The need for consistent and meaningful literacy and numeracy assessment practices;
Self-assessment teaching strategies and meaningful self-assessment practices;
Learning about different reporting options and how to engage the whole learning community in the process.
And the winners are…..
There was a draw for Professional Learning Resources at each sharing session. Congratulations to the teacher-winners! Your books have been ordered and we hope to deliver them to you before the winter holiday begins.
Self-Assessment of Core Competencies:
Curriculum Connections 