Curration

  Education and career/life planning is now a lifelong process that requires all learners to be flexible and able to adapt to changes in themselves and in the world around them. Therefore this policy document recognizes the need to place a greater emphasis on helping all students develop knowledge and skills in this area from an early age and throughout their school experience. 


Creating Pathways to Success involves the implementation of a comprehensive Kindergarten to Grade 12 education and career/life planning program designed to help students achieve their personal goals and become competent, successful, and contributing members of society. This is a whole-school program delivered through classroom instruction linked to the curriculum and through broader school programs and activities. To promote success in school and life, it is essential for Ontario schools to provide opportunities and support for all students to plan their individual pathways through school and for each to make a successful transition to his or her initial postsecondary destination. 

The Vision Creating Pathways to Success is founded on a vision in which all students leave secondary school with a clear plan for their initial postsecondary destination, whether in apprenticeship training, college, community living, university, or the workplace, and with confidence in their ability to implement, and revise or adapt, their plan throughout their lives as they and the world around them change. This vision sees students as the architects of their own lives.

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/policy/cps/CreatingPathwaysSuccess.pdf


Schools that adopt “pathways thinking” enhance every student’s outlook for success by: • supporting students in identifying their personal interests, strengths, needs, and aspirations and in using this knowledge of themselves to inform their choices of programs and learning opportunities; • providing a range of diverse and engaging learning opportunities, courses, and programs, both in and outside the classroom, that meet the interests, strengths, needs, and aspirations of the students and honour all postsecondary destinations – apprenticeship training, college, community living, university, and the workplace.

Students from Kindergarten to Grade 6 will reflect on and capture evidence of their developing knowledge and skills in the four areas of learning in a portfolio called “All About Me” (see section 3.4.1). In Grades 7 to 12, students will document evidence of their learning in an Individual Pathways Plan (IPP) (see section 3.4.2)
In secondary schools, guidance staff plays a strategic role in the development and implementation of the program, as part of the delivery of the school’s guidance and career education program.

Students believe about themselves and their opportunities, and what their peers and the adults in their lives believe about them, significantly influence the choices students make and the degree to which they achieve their goals. Thus as educators we must guide students to find their passions by providing opportunities to lead them in finding their interests and strengths and helping them building the required skills.






Post-Secondary Pathway Options
§   Community Living
§   Workplace
§  Apprenticeship
§  College
§  University   


Examples:

Provides students with an opportunity to earn secondary school credit(s) while completing a work placement in the community that is related to the learning expectations of a secondary school course in the Ontario curriculum.
Students in secondary school can take college or apprenticeship courses that count towards both the Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD) and a postsecondary certificate, diploma, degree, or apprenticeship certification.
Specialized program that enables students who are 16 years of age or older to meet diploma requirements while participating in a cooperative education program in an apprenticeship occupation.
Specialized program that allows students to acquire technical knowledge and skills related to a specific economic sector while meeting the requirements of the Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD).




How Are the Types of Student Inquiry Helpful?  Inquiry is most successful when strongly scaffolded. The Types of Student Inquiry act as a scope and sequence to support learners in their journey toward Free Inquiry. This structure allows us to successfully address the curriculum and the “must know” content and skills of each discipline, grade level, and course. In the Structured, Controlled, and Guided units, I plan to achieve specific learning objectives and unpack particular resources in order to best prepare my learners for whatever summative assessment they will see at the end of our time together. 


I wonder is an activity that stimulate students’ curiosity, encourage them to think. Teachers can build an I wonder and I think wall activity so students can record what they wonder about and what things they think about and then have them choose something that they are really curious about and research about it and share the results. Genius hour can be used for this activity...> Explore by clicking


How to implant it:
At the beginning of a new unit to motivate student interest
During the unit to connect with the topic
At the end of the unit to encourage further thinking and ideas
At any given moment with any theme or project
Skills: Observing, developing metaphoric thinking, making predictions, writing, speaking, listening to other students’ ideas

Students should feel connected to their learning, certain about how to plan their inquiry, and comfortable with its responsibility. The Types of Student Inquiry structure our coursework and learning in a gradual release of control model, one where students learn essential inquiry skills throughout the year rather than being thrown into the deep end of the inquiry pool right away.


Student engagement 

 Voice
Students should have a role in their learning environments, learn from others and then share their learning. Some examples that are used in my practicum are the: Author's chair, students work on creating stories during writer's workshop after editing their own work (self assessment) and finishing illustration they can choose to share their book to the class. 

Choice
 Students should have a choice based on Strength and intrest. Students should have different learning tools available to them. An example is a website teachers and parents can use to help students write stories by providing different pictures to help build creativity is storybird an example of digital story telling.

Time For Reflection
 Students must have opportunities to reflect on their learnings. Self-assessment is part of Ontario curriculum, which helps students to learn by following success criteria. 
Activities for student engagement: Explore 

In cohort we talked about the modes of thinking: Lateral, Divergent and Convergent thought. How to teach by taking these modes of thinking into consideration. A convergent thinker uses logics, critical thinking when learning and focuses on coming up with the single, well-established answer to a problem by focusing on standards or probabilities. This type of thinking was used mostly in traditional teaching where as in modern teaching creativity and exploration is encouraged. Divergent learners accept any possibilities because they don't focus on standards.


Convergent thinking is a term coined by Joy Paul Guilford’ (who also coined the term for the ‘opposite’ way of thinking, ‘Divergent Thinking’).
‘It generally means the ability to give the “correct” answer to standard questions that do not require significant creativity, for instance in most tasks in school and on standardized multiple-choice tests for intelligence.
‘Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. It is often used in conjunction with its cognitive colleague, convergent thinking, which follows a particular set of logical steps to arrive at one solution, which in some cases is a ‘correct’ solution. By contrast, divergent thinking typically occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing,

Lateral thinking last but not least which involves solving problems through an indirect and creative approach, using reasoning that is not immediately obvious and involving ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic.



Teaching for Creativity 

The arts curriculum is based on four central ideas:

Developing Creativity
Developing aesthetic awareness • using the creative process • using problem-solving skills • taking an innovative approach to a challenge

Communicating
Manipulating elements and forms to convey or express thoughts, feelings, messages, or ideas through the arts • using the critical analysis process • constructing and analyzing art works, with a focus on analyzing and communicating the meaning of the work • using new media and technology to produce art works and to convey thoughts, feelings, and ideas about art.

 Understanding Culture
 Understanding cultural traditions and innovations • constructing personal and cultural identity   (developing a sense of self and a sense of the relationship between the self and others locally, nationally, and globally) • making a commitment to social justice and dealing with environmental issues

Making Connections

Making connections between the cognitive and affective domains (expressing thoughts and feelings when creating and responding to art works) • collaborating to create works with others, and performing in ensembles • making connections between the arts and other subjects (e.g., transferring knowledge, skills, and understanding to other subject areas)




Teaching for creativity: 



1.    Embrace creativity as part of learning.  Create a classroom that recognizes creativity.  You may want to design awards or bulletin boards to showcase different ways of solving a problem, or creative solutions to a real-world scenario.


2.    Use the most effective strategies.  Torrance performed an extensive meta-analysis that considered the most effective ways to teach creativity.  He found that the most successful approaches used creative arts, media-oriented programs, or relied on the Osborn-Parnes training program.  Programs that incorporated cognitive and emotional functioning were the most successful

  1. Consider how classroom assignments use divergent and convergent thinking.  Standardized tests do a great job of measuring convergent thinking that includes analytical thinking or logical answers with one correct response.  Divergent thinking considers how a learner can use different ways to approach a problem.  It requires using association and multiplicity of thought.  We should design assignments that consider both types of thinking models.

4.    Creativity flourishes in a “congenial environment”.  Creative thinking needs to be shared and validated by others in a socially supportive atmosphere.  Researcher Csikszentmihalyi (1996) coined this term, to explain the importance of reception from others.  Others consider how to create communities that foster social creativity to solve problems

5.    N Flaherty's model, people vary in terms of their level of creative drive according to the activity of the dopamine pathways of the limbic system. Dopamine mediates reward-seeking behavior and appreciation for music and beautiful faces--Flaherty suggests that creative motivation also originates in these dopaminergic pathways. The evidence for the involvement in dopamine in creativity comes primarily from drug studies: dopamine agonists (such as cocaine and levodopa) heighten arousal and goal-seeking behaviors while dopamine antagonists (such as antipsychotics) can shut down the free associations that may be necessary for creativity.

6.    Expansion of the innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship (ICE) training in Specialist High Skills Major (SHSM) programs and Dual Credit programs to help more high school students turn their passions into career opportunities


Using  songs in the classroom, for example, is very motivating for learners and can help them process the language and improve pronunciation Including drama techniques and integrating them into your syllabus is another great way of allowing a hobby to enrich your teaching. Carefully examine what it is you want your class to learn in the lesson? Is this going to be a lesson focusing on vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, or a particular topic? Focus on a particular verb tense or aspect of grammarFocus on vocabulary, idioms and expressions

You can use ‘You’re so vain’ by Carly Simon to introduce a text that looked at vain people. In another lesson, ‘In the air tonight’ as it uses the present perfect continuous tense. Whatever your focus, remember that this doesn’t necessarily place a limit on what you can do with the song. For instance, you might wish to use the song in question to exemplify a particular verb tense, and structure your lesson accordingly, but you might at the same time wish to take the opportunity to look at those interesting idioms in the lyrics! If you’re a teacher of young learners, you will probably want to use songs that are repetitive and very easy to understand. For teenagers, however, use contemporary or fairly recent pop and rock songs. My advice: it’s often best to ask them ‘what’s cool’. Alternatively, for adult learners, who will probably have a more open approach to classes, use songs that are interesting to their age group.

Here are a couple of examples of the types of questions you can ask:
For John Lennon’s wonderful ‘Jealous Guy’:
·       ‘What is a ‘jealous guy’?’
·       ‘What are three things a jealous guy might do?’
·       ‘What kinds of jealousy are there?’
For Queen’s classic ‘We are the champions’:
·       ‘What is a champion?’
·       ‘What kinds of champions are there in the world?’
·       ‘What activities have champions?’
·     Alternatively, prior to having listened to the song you can teach a couple of words and give a simple task for the first listening. My favorite strategy is to give three or four words from the song and ask to them to listen out for the words that rhyme with them. You could also brainstorm possible rhymes before listening.

Finishing things off with an activity that stimulates creative thought. 

·       Write another verse of lyrics, maintaining the same mood and style as the original. This can be done individually or in groups. These new lyrics can be presented to the rest of the class. Perhaps several groups can work on this to come up with a completely new set of lyrics for the whole song.
·      A song tends to give you the perspective of the singer. Write a response (this can be a paragraph, i.e., not necessarily in lyric form) from the point of view of the person the song is being sung about, or any other protagonist.
·       Have the learners plan a music video for the song. In groups they decide the location, the characters, and what happens. Then each group explains their idea to the rest of the class and the learner’s vote on the best one. The results can be surprising, as they frequently come up with an interpretation that hadn’t even occurred to you!
·       Write a diary entry for a character in the song. Get learners to examine the thoughts and feelings that inspired the story being played out in the lyrics


Using art as a tool to learn how to express our feelings.


 Activity: Children will be introduced to about abstract paintings that show three very different moods, for example a Franz Kline painting of thick, straight black strokes against a stark white background, a Sonia Delaunay painting of curved brightly-colour stripes with soft edges all interlacing with each other, a Willem de Kooning painting full of wild slashes of reds, or a Morris Louis canvas of soft blues, or a Helen Frankenthaler abstract of translucent mysterious shapes. Show the paintings one by one and ask the children how each picture makes them feel.  As each child answers, ask if they can figure out what it is about the colors or shapes or how the paint is used that make them feel this way. After they have looked at them one by one, line up the three pictures in a row and again ask if they can see a difference in feeling. What is clear is that different pictures make us feel very different, just because of the shapes and colors.

Teacher: The teacher will have children brainstorm as many feelings as they can and write them on the board. Will have each child silently choose a feeling, but they can’t tell anybody what it is. Give each child a piece of white paper, and have it write the feeling very small on the back. Then the teacher will provide painting tools and will allow students to show their feelings through art and at this point the teacher will emphasis on the fact that how each child has unique talents. (Connecting it to the second story)
Ask them what feeling they think it is, and what about the picture gives that feeling: the colors, the shapes, the lines, how sharp or curved or irregular they are. After discussing seven or eight of them — teacher will tell the children they can either continue to finish the picture they’ve started, or they can change the feeling they’ve put on the back to make it go better with the picture, or they can begin again with a new picture but the same feeling. The final parts of the game is for everybody to put their pictures on the floor and to go one by one having the class guess the feeling, then turn the picture over and see if they were right.

Consolidation: They can see how feelings can get turned into art, and they can see how they might want to make pictures when they’re angry — even pictures that show "reality" like battle scenes or monsters or big explosions — rather than do something else.




Positive teaching environment 

I believe that creating a positive, safe and supportive classroom environment is one of the most important aspects of teaching. All students should be set to strive despite their abilities and weakness.  Students success drives from a positive learning environment, students should be able to trust teachers. Teachers and students must respect each other, diverse backgrounds and learning styles, treat all fairly and meet everyone's needs. provide a safe welcoming place to learn about each other.  Classroom/behaviour management is one of the most important things to master in your classroom. Having solid behaviour management helps maintain a positive classroom environment while enabling teachers and students to accomplish LEARNING! http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/parents/climate.html

positive-classroom-management-tips




Growth mind set activities Students should not be aware of making mistakes, but they should know that making mistakes are part of learning process. Growth mind set allows students to grow freely without having fear of failure. Teachers can help students build a growth mind set by scaffolding learnings and sharing student's achievements and success. Success criteria helps students to have  a growth mind set by knowing where they started and where they need to go. Assessment as and for learnings can also be used to help build a growth mind set, by providing positive feedbacks and help students set learning goals.

Getting to know your students is very important aspect of teaching, by knowing student's need you can provide them success opportunities. Modification and IEP are examples of helps provided to meet different needs. http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/general/elemsec/speced/individu.html






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