Saturday, February 21, 2009

Redesigning The Way We Teach

Our school board is in the middle of a renewal process and has asked its schools to rethink how it delivers curriculum in its buildings. It is encouraging administrators and educators to think out of the box and redesign the way we teach in order to increase literacy and numeracy achievement amongst its students. It is encouraging us to break away from traditional models of education (ex. the one teacher-one classroom model) and it is looking for new models to educate the 21st century learner.

For me, I think that this is a very exciting idea. Our province is currently implementing new curriculum that requires educators to use enganging questions to teach learning outcomes. The redesigned curriculum is perfect for embarking on a project based inquiry learning approach to our instruction. Using technology as a tool, we need to redesign how we collaborate as educators and how we facilitate learning in our classrooms.

I'm looking for ideas and examples from others on how other schools use team teaching models to educate using project based learning and collaboration amongst teachers and students to deliver curriculum. I have come across two models: the Calgary Science School (Grades 4-9) and the Philadephia Science Learning Academy (Grades 9-12). These schools use collaborative teaching and inquiry learning to deliver their curriculum. There must be other examples out there. Please share!

Image: Question!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/-bast-/349497988/

3 comments:

  1. Hey Joanna,
    Thanks for following me...new to the blog thing. Still not sure whether it's a useful way to spend limited time. I read your post, and I agree...exciting times! I visited Noble High School in Maine a few years ago. They have a very interesting interdisciplinary program. Also the Maine learning Technology Institute has a website and some interesting resources. Maine had the first state-wide laptop initiative and the spawned some very cool approaches to teaching, mostly at the middle school level.
    Cheers.

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  2. Hi Joana
    This is Prakash Deo from Bhopal,India. Studied Ednl. Tech. at Concordia university, Montreal.Your views on ET seem to be quite innovative. In my view consider ET in a broader perspective.Collaborative, cooperative and democratic learning all may have an element of ET. CAL is agood example.
    Please be in touch, We may share. Prakash Deo

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  3. In England, team teaching is the norm. I have been in many school where literacy and numeracy are blocked at the same time in every class to facilitate swapping. I taught a "year 4" class in literacy where there were only 4 students out of 20 that were actually in year four. The rest were in years 2-5. This kind of swap happens all the time, with student being in one class for literacy, another for numeracy and a third, their year group for all other subjects. It would be very difficult to implement in Regina, with our current model of prep time, but in many schools here, all teachers get their prep in the PM, with many school bringing in outside agencies to cover this time.

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