PME 811 - Innovation in Teaching & Learning

 As I am taking PME 811 - Innovation & Teaching, I am also taking PME 810 - Integration Planning and Assessment. Something that is of interest to me is how do schools, teachers and districts collaborate? In my other course I am learning about Professional Learning Communities. I of course have been a part of Pinterest for a long time and love all the different ideas one can get when logged in. I am also a part of Conscious Teaching on Facebook, which is a group that I discovered when I went away on a Pro-D conference two years ago.  So, I never realized until recently that Professional Learning Communities are a great resource if your district/school does not allocate collaboration time. I have done some research asking friends and colleagues who come from other districts, what it was like in their experience and how does collaboration work? It seems it is either driven from the district level which has to be allocated by the principal or it just comes from the principal's...

I came across these excerpts in a small rural community museum. It was the summer before my first year teaching and I though WOW! This is so interesting. It falls inline with what we have just been reading regarding gender and diversity.  The first image is clearly depicting gender diversity by stating that women are the teachers and there are clear rules to abide by. The rules are very interesting, and none are "todays rules" however, it really shows what it was like to be a women in the 1920's and for one to compare nowadays it is really ground breaking how far women have come today not only with "rules" but also in any profession.  The second image it talks about girls and boys however, the wording is still stereotypical and the part that is most interesting to me is "avoid him and avoid her".  As I am writing this I am also watching Shania Twain's new documentary on Netflix. It is really awesome to see and hear how she had to overcome diversity...

 Going on my fifth year of teaching and being primarily a special education teacher in both Elementary and High School settings for the last four years, I have been able to be a part of lots of discussions about curriculum, planning and assessment.  However, when it comes to teaching and planning for inclusion and diversity I think there is still lots of work to be done. In our district we did a big planning session and workshops with Shelley Moore, who is the Inclusion "Guru" at the moment. When it came to planning for competency based IEP's, it really helped me understand what Shelley was looking at and targeting when planning the curriculum and new IEP format. Very much focusing on a strengths based approach (learner) rather than content and memorization (subject). Something that I think we still struggle with especially in High School, is we have learners who are so far apart. We have our lifeskill students (true life skills, as their IQ is below 70, actually more lik...

 When I think back to my schooling years, I remember having a lot of positives, definitely some negatives but I remember early on what kind of a learner I was. I remember I appreciated when we did not have to have tests all the time, and would work extra hard when we had a project or something other than tests. I would look at the course syllabus and see how much of my grade would be weighted on tests. I did not like tests because I could never retain the information. I remember saying to myself, "why do I need to know this", "when am I going to use this?", or "I'm not going to remember half of this when I am done".  I knew the value in remembering information but I knew that through a test, I would not really grasp it for long.  There are three different types of assessment: as, of and for learning.  Assessment of learning:  - heavily factual -tests were the common assessment used - Recalling facts and basic concepts Assessment for learning: - it is f...

 I currently am taking two courses at Queens University: Integrated Planning & Assessment and Innovation & Teaching. I am writing these blogs for Innovation & Teaching however, am seeing lots of connection in taking this course with the Integrated Planning & Assessment course. I am enjoying taking both courses at the same time and find it beneficial as both are influencing my own perceptions on curriculum.  Today, I am writing about curriculum influences. As previously written in my last blog, I touch on how philosophies have influenced curriculum and the three biggest are: subject, learner and society.  In this last week I have learned about foreign influences.  Tomkins (1981) writes about the foreign influences on curriculum and curriculum policy making. It was confirmed that Canada is heavily influenced on American, British and France (Quebec). Canada today is still heavily influenced based on American policy.  So, thus far the biggest takeawa...

 Until recently, I never realized how much curriculum was influenced by philosophers such as Rousseau, Plat, Dewey and more. It's very interesting to learn how each philosopher had their own perspective on education and curriculum.  There are three overarching foundations: Society, Learner and Subject.  I would classify Subject as - High-School or College level, where each is taught by teachers who specialize in the subject area and students are to learn each subject, whether they like it or not. I know if I did not have to take math in High School, I would not have. If I could have taken PE all day long, that is what I would have loved. Then there is society, which I have talked about lots in my blog. Society influences curriculum as does the government. BC curriculum has been influenced by the needs of society, through the core competencies. The core competencies are not explicitly taught, rather more like implicit. They focus on communication, critical and creative thi...