Category: Masters work (Page 1 of 2)

Curriculum…a Forest Worth Exploring

July 28, 2020 / fnicholas / 0 Comments

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Initial Thoughts:

When I first considered a metaphor of how I view curriculum I thought about how convoluted, over packed and dense it is. I considered how much there was to teach and how many various concepts there were to cover in the allotted time given. It seemed overwhelming and quite frankly, impossible. Although I think that time and practice is what makes navigating curriculum easier, I have found a new understanding of where curriculum comes from and what it is for. We first discussed where curriculum is derived at the beginning of the course. I had actually never asked myself or even considered how curriculums could be different. I didn’t realize that curriculum is created by each individual province. Furthermore, each province focuses on concepts that are specific to knowledge that space. When exploring this I looked at the difference between Quebec’s curriculum in relation to B.C.’s, where I live. I noticed that they were vastly different in how they were written, what they focused on and even how they looked. Quebec’s curriculum was very confusing to me, as it was difficult to understand the plethora of diagrams, paragraphs and even how Quebec’s school system functions. I suppose, that Quebec’s curriculum would actually be considered a forest in comparison to B.C’s simply because I’ve worked with the B.C. curriculum for several years.

Comparison of Curricula:

Picture from Pixabay

I found it so interesting that Quebec has a large focus on religious learning and didn’t, until recently, have any focus on Indigenous studies. Whereas B.C.’s curriculum had a larger emphasis on Indigenous studies within all subject areas. B.C. has certainly done a good job of highlighting Indigenization and technology within it’s curriculum. However, it is still difficult to navigate all the resources available to aid educators within these areas. These key concepts are purposely integrated into each subject in the B.C. curriculum to make the connections simplistic. Yet, it is the responsibility of the educator to determine where the best connections exist between indigenization and the curriculum. Furthermore, technology doesn’t have to be a separate entity in itself but instead it should enhance the learning the students are already doing. When using technology they can learn how to type, how to use various apps for reading or math and develop skills such as coding. This being said, it is important that technology is available to all students within your classroom. My eyes have been opened to the realization that when teaching online, technology isn’t readily available to all. The Covid-19 pandemic has truly demonstrated the inequality of students and families when it comes to access to technology. Thus, when considering technology in curriculum one must also take into consideration those apparent inequalities.

Final Thoughts:

Photo from Pixabay

In conclusion, curriculum itself hasn’t changed for me. Instead, I have a new understanding and better connection to curriculum as a whole. I still believe curriculum is a forest and although there are many paths through, they are all beautiful in their own way. I have always known there is a connection between all subjects within curriculum but now I see where those connections derive from. I think there is something unique and liberating to engage with curriculum in your own way. It is an amazing thing to watch multiple people interpret one document in such different ways. I believe that how one follows and interacts with the curriculum demonstrates their own personal pedagogy and passion within teaching.

Created Resources

July 27, 2020 / fnicholas / 0 Comments

Co-Authored by experienced educators in online learning who teach at a distance learning school. These resources were created through experience and supported by academic research. The created resources are current (created July 2020), relevant (addresses assessment learning outcomes), authoritative (co-created by educators who are students in a Master of Education program), accurate and purposeful (instructional demonstration).

myBlueprint Assessment Strategies:

The myBlueprint video below, is a resource that demonstrates how to utilize myBlueprint as an assessment tool. Students can reflect, explain, justify and demonstrate personal connections through written, video and audio submissions. It is important that teachers choose accessible digital tools for student assessment. Teachers can give valuable and timely feedback on all submissions. This platform allows for continual student-teacher communication, which directly improves student learning.

Formative and Summative Assessment in an Online Environment:

The infographic below outlines various assessment strategies for both formative and summative assessment. It details which digital tools are well suited to assess students in both online learning and classroom environments. It is important that both formative and summative assessment are embedded in all learning environments where teachers use a variety of assessment strategies to inform their teaching practices and evaluate students’ learning.

Formative & Summative Assessment Graphic PDF

Moodle Formatting for Timely Feedback:

The instructional videos below demonstrate how to structure a class on the Moodle learning platform in order to achieve timely assessment. Moodle was selected to demonstrate what the framework can look like under one central learning management system. Other systems such as Blackboard and Canvas, or combination like Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams can use the same formatting framework.

1) Weekly Schedule

2) Tools

3) Student Activity

Rational For Created and Curated Resources

July 27, 2020 / fnicholas / 0 Comments

Introduction:

Photo from Pixabay

Assessment is a crucial component of learning used in both K-12 and post-secondary education. In order to support other educators, we wanted to examine assessment through the lens of an online learning environment. Assessment is meant to focus on “student involvement and authentic, meaningful assessment, leading to the development of a variety of assessment forms” (Weurlander et al., 2012). Quality assessment requires knowledge of provincial curriculum frameworks, district vision and goals, as well as teachers’ expertise with traditional and online tools to support it. Furthermore, there is an emphasis on competence-based curriculum focusing on “capability rather than factual knowledge” (Weurlander et al., 2012). The resources we curated as well as the resources we created are supported by research and support our learning outcomes.

Formative Assessment:

Formative and summative assessment are vital aspects of all learning environments. Formative assessment informs teachers of students ongoing learning and understanding, whereas summative is a final capturing of students overall learning. According to Weurlander et al. (2012) formative assessment can influence “students’ learning in a number of ways. It sends messages about what counts as important knowledge; it has an impact on students’ approach to learning and gives feedback to students about their learning” (p. 749). Additionally, they included research that found formative assessment “positive[ly] impact[s] student learning” (p. 749). When considering or creating assessment, it is important to include a variety of “assessment tasks [as they] have the potential to support student learning in different ways” (p.758). Moreover, a multitude of assessment strategies, including collaborative and blended learning approaches, increases student engagement (Vaughan, 2014).

Summative Assessment:

Summative assessment is meant to be a final snapshot of students learning. However, it can exclude learners or create anxiety when the stakes are high for a singular assessment for both in-person and online learning environments. Harlen, 2005 states that,

“[h]igh– stakes tests are inevitably designed to be as ‘objective’ as possible, since there is a premium on reliable marking in the interests of fairness. This has the effect of reducing what is assessed to what can be readily and reliably marked. Generally, this excludes many worthwhile outcomes of education such as problem-solving and critical thinking” (p. 209).

Another concern about high-stakes summative assessments is that they may encourage cheating, a pressing concern for teachers, particularly in an online environment (Mellar et at.,2018). Creating a variety of authentic summative assessments and giving students choice can help to ensure their validity (Mellar et al., 2018). Therefore, it is imperative that students are provided with a variety of summative assessments with low stakes when teaching online.

Formative and Summative:

Picture from Pixabay

When integrating formative and summative assessment strategies, teachers should consider the quantity, as creating too many assessments to track student progress can have a negative impact (Vaughan, 2014). This also restricts teachers from providing timely feedback to their students, a key component of successful online learning (Gaytan and Mcewen, 2007). “Feedback is therefore a key component in formative assessment, and students need to understand and be able to act on the feedback they receive in order to improve their learning” (Black and Wiliam 1998; Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick 2006; Sadler 1989, 1998; as cited in Weurlander et al.,2012., p. 748). Furthermore, Shea and Bidjerano (2010) discovered that teaching presence along with teaching students the technological skills they need to complete and navigate given tasks leads to “successful online learning” (p. 1727). Thus, well planned online learning experiences along with feedback, help and encouragement also improves learning success for at risk learners (Hughes, 2007).

Picture from Pixabay

Conclusion:

In conclusion, when considering online or in-person teaching environments, summative and formative assessments are vital. Formative assessment should be used to continually check in with students about their understanding of content, leading into a summative review of their learning. When assessing students, a variety of tools and strategies should be used in order to reach all learners for both types of assessments. Overall, the focus of this project was to provide teachers with a realistic and comprehensive overview of what assessment in classroom and online environments could entail.

Reference List:

Gaytan, J., & Mcewen, B. C. (2007). Effective Online Instructional and Assessment Strategies. American Journal of Distance Education, 21(3), 117–132. https://doi.org/10.1080/08923640701341653

Hughes, G. (2007). Using blended learning to increase learner support and improve retention. Teaching in Higher Education, 12(3), 349- 363. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13562510701278690

Harlen, W. (2005). Teachers’ summative practices and assessment for learning – tensions and synergies. The Curriculum Journal, 16(2), 207–223. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585170500136093

Mellar, H., Peytcheva-Forsyth, R., Kocdar, S., Karadeniz, A., & Yovkova, B. (2018). Addressing cheating in e-assessment using student authentication and authorship checking systems: teachers’ perspectives. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-018-0025-x

Shea, P., & Bidjerano, T. (2010). Learning presence: Towards a theory of self-efficacy, self-regulation, and the development of a communities of inquiry in online and blended learning environments. Computers & Education, 55(4), 1721- 1731. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2010.07.017

Vaughan, N. (2014). Student Engagement and Blended Learning: Making the Assessment Connection. Education Sciences, 4(4), 247–264. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci4040247

Weurlander, W., & Soderberg, M., & Scheja, M., & Hakan, H., & Wernerson, A., (2012). Exploring formative assessment as a tool for learning: students’ experiences of different methods of formative assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. 37.(6). 747-760, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2011.572153

Cross-Curricular Teaching and Learning

July 23, 2020 / fnicholas / 0 Comments

Photo from Pixabay

About Me : I started teaching 4 years ago and as I worked through the curriculum I constantly found myself realizing that I missed several competencies throughout the year. This wasn’t the case with just one subject but what seemed like every subject. How does one manage to teach all concepts and competencies within the year to all students at a sufficient level? I knew there had to be a better way. I reached out to district level coaches and learned about cross-curricular teaching. I discovered that subjects areas weren’t separate but in fact overlapped by teaching literacy concepts during science lessons or teaching mathematical concepts during social studies lessons. I found when I started to dig deeper for myself into what the curriculum meant to me my students in return had increased engagement, excitement and practical understandings of what we learning within the classroom.

Some things I’ve learned so far:

Cross-curricular teaching is not a new concept; in fact, it has been researched and developed since the before the 1990’s. In both Denis

Photo from Pixabay

Haye’s 2010 article The Seductive Charms of Cross-Curricular Approach and Robert J Marzano’s 1991 article Fostering Thinking across the Curriculum through Knowledge Restructuring the inherent need for cross curricular teaching was born from the lack of higher level thinking demonstrated by students. This concern was brought to the government level in both Hayes and Marzano’s articles which highlights that there were fundamental aspects of education that were missing from the current system. Despite these articles being 20 years apart, they both still note that simply teaching content isn’t enough of an education to create a holistic and well around citizen of society. Hayes argues “[a]s children are continually on a self-discovery tour, it is essential for them to know who they are, how they should best relate to others and their role as ‘world citizens’, rather than just being able to reach academic targets” (p. 386). To aid this, cross-curricular teaching focuses on concepts such as meaning, peer projects, higher level thinking, student lead interests, inquiry, themes and issues. It allows students to take control and defend their thinking about the content as opposed to simply regurgitating information that was given to them. Marzano states “that for knowledge to be restricted and higher level thinking fostered, students must use knowledge within tasks over which they have some control and which match personal goals or needs” (p.519). Cross-curricular learning allows for this to happen by providing student choice and peer interaction. Not only are they learning the content required of their grade level, but they are learning skills such as time management, organization, communication and compromise which are concepts that are hidden within the curriculum. So why is it not done in every classroom?

Reference List:

Hayes, D. (2010). The Seductive Charms of a Cross-Curricular Approach. Education 3-13, 38.(4), 381-387. DOI: 10.1080/03004270903519238

Marzano, J. Robert. (1991). Thinking and Learning Across the Curriculum through Knowledge Restructuring. Journal of Reading, 34. (7), 518- 525. https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/stable/40014576

Unlocking Assessment

July 18, 2020 / fnicholas / 0 Comments

As educators, assessment is a large part of our job and there are a vast number of tools and pedagogies available. Therefore, as a group we chose to look at the specific aspects of assessment and online assessment tools for the current time we are in, during the COVID-19 pandemic. We first created a set of learning outcomes for assessment (see below), then our curated list and finally we collaborated on a blog post. The Key to Unlocking Assessment seeks to provide educators with ideas of how to transition into the blended and online learning environment that will likely be our reality in the fall. These sources, strategies, and tools were chosen with a critical lens in order to provide practical resources for the everyday educator. The remainder of this post provides our rationale behind this curation. We focused on a range of resources from connections to ministry curriculum, different types and formats of assessments, tools to conduct them, and opportunities for professional development. To achieve this, we examined government and university articles, commercial enterprises, as well as public/private blogs. The CRAAP test was applied to each entry, to evaluate whether they were: Current, Relevant, Accredited, Accurate, and Purposeful. There were only a few resources in our curated list that did not meet every aspect of the test, however they were included for the following reasons.

Old ministry document: This document is not considered current as it was created in 1994. However, the PDFs are still useful as a starting point for educators; although some adjustments will need to be made in order to address updated curriculum. Included in the list are the updated curriculum resources.

Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment: A 2001 summary of a 1998 literature review that provides a detailed outline of the important building blocks of assessment by answering the questions of why assessment is important and how it aids learners. It focuses specifically on formative assessment for learning. Although the literature review was written over 20 years ago the information provided is still applicable to today’s learners and educators.

Assessing the Online Learner: Does not contain a specific date but does contain referenced work from 2007, therefore we can reasonably conclude that it was written sometime after this. The information shared is applicable, purposeful, reliable, accurate and could be a very useful resource for teachers.

Learning Outcomes for Assessment:

Identify self-assessment tools that allow students to engage with content through:

Explanation
Justification
Personal connection

Build and apply rubrics and scales to assess curricular competencies.

Investigate and utilize various forms of formative and summative assessment for online learning environments.

Develop a variety of assessment methods to engage students in a subject area using technology.

Consider teaching/learning environment (online vs blended)
Personalized to consider student needs.
Voice and choice
Use assessment to inform instruction

Construct timely assessment or appropriate support to ensure student success.

Check-ins
Support Blocks
Office Hours
Communication Home

What’s Next?

Our next step is to create resources and evidence informed content that will authentically assess student understanding, in our new learning context. Additionally, we aim to aid educators in developing their own assessment skills, strategies, and tools, that will fit both in-class, blended and online environments.

Co-Authors: Faune, Jerry, Leanne, Rhyanon and Rochelle.

What is Curriculum:

July 14, 2020 / fnicholas / 0 Comments

Fog, Coniferous Forest, Spruce, Forest, Green

https://pixabay.com/photos/fog-coniferous-forest-spruce-forest-3622519/

Metaphor:

To me curriculum is a forest.

The Why?

It is heavy and dense with knowledge that as a professional and educator you must circulate your way through. The more you learn about this forest the more trails become clear and the better you are able to navigate these pathways. A forest also connects and lives off of itself. Everything is connected, the soil provides nutrition to the trees, the trees capture sunlight etc. all things are intertwined. Curriculum is not just a mandated place of concepts provided to teachers. It is a well thought-out forest of learning that can be interpreted and explored in a vast amount of ways.

Avenue, Away, Nature, Walk, Trees, Forest, Landscape

https://pixabay.com/photos/avenue-away-nature-walk-trees-5239679/

Designing Curriculum? Drink In The Beauty

July 9, 2020 / fnicholas / 1 Comment

Thought’s Prior:

This week we started to discuss the project we are about to embark on as a Cohort. We are creating an online resource that aims to support parents and teachers during this transition into online and blended learning models. This is obviously an unprecedented time within the world and within education. However, it is also a great opportunity to learn and strive for a new understanding of what education can look like. What a glorious undertaking you’re thinking. Although that’s true, I have very recently realized how difficult creating learning outcomes and designing curriculum truly is. As a teacher, I am handed the play book on what I have to accomplish. Essentially, I sit down one day, look at the various outcomes and put them into a plan of attack. How do I accomplish these? What’s the best way to blend multiple subjects together? How do I best distribute these outcomes across my entire year plan? Oh, and how do I teach all of this with all the vacation time I’m given? No problem though, this is what I was trained for I practice this skill every single year when I create my year plan. As I move from year to year I better learn the outcomes and know how to integrate them more and more. So what’s so hard about designing the curriculum?

Reality Check:

Well, let me be completely honest when I say designing curriculum is not easy, trust me. Between the entire 26 people in my cohort I am sure many of us at one point or another thought “wait…what?” I have always been given the playbook on curriculum, I have never had to step all the way back and ask myself “what is important for someone else to know and teach in this area?” I found we circles around massive ideas about student engagement, assessment, participation and connection. These topics is not small by any means. They encompass thousands of ideas and routes one can take to accomplish these goals. However, they also pose major road blocks. So although I am extremely excited for this opportunity to take a step back and look at the biggest picture, I am realizing that this is not going to be a small task. Anybody else have a new respect for those who actually designed our curriculum? I sure do!

Check back in to see what other types of struggles and strives I make is this area of learning.

Going Back To Our Roots

April 3, 2020 / fnicholas / 0 Comments

My prior thoughts:

This weeks discussion has been one that I have absolutely LOVED as a grade 3 teacher. We discussed the concept of Maker Spaces and learning through play. Maker Spaces aren’t something I am necessarily familiar with but given our discussion I have dabbled with it unintentionally. The whole idea revolves around engagement and inquiry. Allowing the students to discover by manipulating and creating from their own ideas with small amounts of guidance. Now I am no expert on this specific idea and I have done a little bit in inquiry. The connection to teaching was obvious this week. I didn’t want to stop there though, I wanted to figure out how I could bring this idea to families and parents while I am teaching online.

Through reflection, my thoughts now:

In trying better to understand Maker Spaces not only through readings and discussion, I truly enjoy Ted Talks. They often give a combination of visual examples and ideas that have already been done in the schools. The idea of Maker Spaces allows for the creativity and problem-solving skills that we are trying to get our students to indulge in. The Ted Talk I watched is presented by Vipul Redey. He speaks to the past of how Leonardo da Vinci used what he had around him in order to create what he saw in his mind.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n7aBQDubLU

My Key Connections:

Vipul Redey in his Ted Talk says “children are in their very nature, makers. They are drawn by their innate curiosity to make sense of the world.” This is a huge key factor in teaching. We often speak of allowing students the freedom to learn. We are meant to ignite the passions within them so that they are excited to learn. Often times though, we end up feeling like we (as teachers) are not doing anything if they are taking all the control. We have questions such as how do we mark them? How do I help them if I don’t know all the content about the subject? How do I keep them on task? Whenever teachers are asked to relinquish control they can nervous and truly question if they are doing the right thing.

People, Children, Child, Happy, Kids Playing, Cute

https://pixabay.com/photos/people-children-child-happy-1560569/

Learning Through Play:

What was your favorite thing to do as a child? Usually we hear people say play games, play outside, go camping etc. The reason is because we were able to play and able to explore without the fear of failure or expectations. We often turn students away from play and place paper in front of them and ask them to be wildly creative and fearless but only in the way we want them to. Makers Space, Inquiry and learning through play eliminates those preset expectations. This doesn’t mean that expectations don’t exist because they do, but they are not set to limit the students ability to explore. Instead they are set to ensure that students find success. In terms of the teacher, it is okay for them to be uncomfortable at first. It is okay to defy some peoples expectations of what school is meant to look like. It is okay to allow the students to teach you. It is amazing how much information is in both a teachers and students brains and it’s even more amazing to watch how they support one another. Play is a key part of life and allowing students to use that fundamental aspect of they nature to learn is by far one of the most important things we as teachers can do, in my opinion.

Reverting Back To Data

April 3, 2020 / fnicholas / 0 Comments

What I thought:

A couple of classes ago our instructor asked us to watch a Ted Talk about data collection. To be honest, I was confused as to why. Of course as teachers we collect data in terms of grades or where students are in a variety of subjects. But how did these two ideas connect? How could data collection relate or even inform my teaching? It took me a while to write this post simply because I had to take so long to process and determine what the video meant to me. Perhaps it would be helpful to know which video I’m talking about.

Link: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen?language=en

New thoughts through reflection:

Perhaps there is a correlation between data and teaching. It could have been obvious to others but I did not see it at first. When going through this video several times I start to ask myself, how does this relate? All of a sudden it hit me that he’s talking about people. Not specific people but people in general and how we’ve moved through time, adapted and changed. One part that really stood out to me was the idea of diversity within a country. In one part of his video he shows how diverse Africa is in terms of its needs. He split apart Africa into its various areas and spoke to how aid must be varied in Africa depending on the region and that regions specific needs. There are regions with more money and regions with less money and thus they should be given aid differently depending on their needs. So, I finally connected the dots and thought, this is the same in Canada. A large country with various places all needing different things. I started to scope it down from large to small and thought first we have Canada, then B.C, then Langley, then my school and finally it ends up in my classroom. I thought about taking this visual Hans Rosling used to separate Africa and using it within my own classroom. You could use it to determine whether students are given basic needs or whether they’re lacking them and how that could effect performance. You could also look at the variety of family sizes, housing and income etc. All these things determine how a class composition is shaped. Through a long winded thought process and discovery, I now see how collecting data and ‘knowing your students’ creates the conditions to have the best informed teaching.

Unprecedented Times

March 20, 2020 / fnicholas / 4 Comments

Current Situation:

During this week people are encountering an unprecedented time where social distancing is a continued safety measure. Since this is occurring all schools within B.C. have closed.

Questions:

https://pixabay.com/illustrations/question-mark-pile-questions-symbol-2492009/

The question then begs, what will teaching look like when teachers return to school? Will it be a question of working from home or working within the classroom? Are we going to be mandated to use a particular online learning service such as MyBluePrint or Google Classroom? All districts and provinces will be different in their approaches. Seeing as I am on Spring Break now, which doesn’t have a normal Spring Break calmness, I am unsure of what will be expected of me when I return to work. I also wonder how long we will be required to teach online everyday? Will it be the 6 hours of normal schools time? If it is, I for see many many issues that will occur.

Options and Considerations for Online Curriculum:

Given that my district has focused and implemented MyBluePrint as their online learning space I am going to be using that to provide online learning tools. On MyBluePrint, you are able to assign lessons or activities. For example, I would record myself doing a read aloud, asking questions and ask the students to submit a typed response on their MyBluePrint to answer the questions I have asked about the book. I could even have them pose questions themselves about the book. In doing this, we can then have discussions about the questions or connections that we have made during the reading. Following this, students could be asked to submit a written reflection about a topic that I assigned to them that involved the book. Another thought I had around using MyBluePrint, is that I could send out a picture of a Story Workshop I have created and have the students write a story using that they see in the picture.

For math, I could utilize platforms that my students are familiar with such as Math Playground or Greg Tang Math websites. This will allow students to focus on specific concepts while playing games just like we would in the classroom. Furthermore, using the MyBluePrint platform I could pose open ended math questions to which students would respond with explaining their thinking and problem solving. They could provide a video or picture as well to demonstrate how they solved the problem or what questions they encountered. Students could be sent home a copy of math games and asked to play with them their parents or a sibling. How this would occur if students didn’t have a printer would be another question to consider. It is one I don’t necessarily have the answer to just yet.

Other considerations could be sending out YouTube videos, National Geographic links or using the Digital Resources Page that would allow students to watch videos based on science or social studies curriculum. Given that I had already planned to incorporate a science specific inquiry project. Students could be given directions and resource links in order to complete this project at home. They would be required to send in weekly updates on their research, questions they have, a visual plan of how to create their project, a video of their completed project and explanation and finally a reflection. All of these pieces could be submitted on MyBluePrint.

Learn, Student, Laptop, Internet, Online, Books, Woman

https://pixabay.com/photos/learn-student-laptop-internet-3653430/

Overall Thoughts and Feelings:

Of course this is a stressful time for everyone but given that I have been doing my masters which specifically focuses on technology I feel that I am prepared enough to have a starting point. I will absolutely encounter hurdle after hurdle but I believe I have some necessary tools at my disposal in order to provide students with basic education. I believe it is essential for teachers to open their minds and share, share, share their knowledge so support one another during this time.