Curriculum

JUNE 2011

Updates

First Nation and Metis Education

The Avonlea Museum is providing tours for10 classes from our division in hopes to revitalize the Avonlea Dirt Hills. The tours will involve going to First Nations Ceremonial grounds and to a Man Efgy site. This partnership with Prairie South has been developed over the past several years and offers students a wonderful experience in recognizing the rich history and heritage of First Nations and Metis peoples in our region. David Bouchard has a new series of books from Pearson Canada called Turtle Island Voices. Turtle Island Voices is a NEW, levelled, Canadian reading series focusing on Aboriginal cultures, and heritage at grades 1-2-3. (10 titles per grade) The books are a mix of traditional, modern, and informational stories, and represent Aboriginal cultures from all across Canada. If interested in reading a few sample books- email gauvin.vivian@prairiesouth.ca

Mathematics

Grading Practices
Our move to more consistent, accurate and meaningful grades to help support learning has been focused on separating student achievement from student behaviour. Next year we would like to move from the Awareness (idea) stage to the Exploration (action) stage in our schools. Support is available from administrators and consultants for teachers who need a hand in making sense of these changes, so please dont hesitate to ask. Over the past few weeks, quite a few discussions took place at our larger high schools about culminating evaluations. We discussed a variety of issues including schedules, optional strategies for evaluation, weighting, accreditation and the need for nals. A variety of opinions were expressed that will help our school division move toward a more consistent practice across our high schools. For next year, we hope to bring subject and grade-alike teachers together to arrive at consensus decisions concerning the weighting of outcomes, units and the culminating evaluation. As well, we hope to initiate discussion at the Awareness stage about optional strategies for culminating evaluations.
For more information contact hall.david@prairiesouth.ca

Other Highlights
Physical Education
Wellness 10 is being field tested at Eyebrow School beginning in September. Katie McNabb is the pilot teacher involved in this project

Curriculum Renewal
PAA Class, Coronach School Since our three curriculum renewal days last fall, teachers from across our school division have engaged in deepening their understanding of the renewed curricula and in creating many classroom ready products. Here are a few of the many examples. We know that we probably missed out on some people and some projectsour apologies.

Science and Social Studies

Pearson Educational was contracted to write several of the textbooks for these subject areas. Training videos for teachers and explanations of the support resources are available on the Pearson website, http://www.pearsoned.ca/school/ saskatchewan/ Three Prairie South teachersJoanne Feeley, Kelley Delorme and Belinda Spagrudrepresented our school division at Ministry feedback meetings in Social Studies earlier in the school year. They have recommended a variety of supplemental resources which are available now at the MMRC. Katie McNabb and Cyndy Reidy have met to align some of their resources to the Social Studies curricula for Grades 7-8.

Mathematics
Laurie Hawkins, Ward Strueby, Sophie Rosso and Lorne Polupski from our division are involved in a multi-division project to create common pre- and post-assessments for all outcomes in the K-9 renewed curricula. Were happy to say that this project was initiated by our school division. Hopefully by the start of the next school year, these common assessments will be available to all teachers in our school division. As well, many Math teachers have started using Mathletics as a resource to supplement their programs. Avonlea School, Empire School, Assiniboia Elementary School and King George School have taken part in an evaluation of the resource. This evaluation concluded that Mathletics engages and motivates students and provides a resource that can help transfer learning from the school to the home. Little evidence was found to support claims that Mathletics makes a significant difference in students learning of the curriculum outcomes at a higher level, but the evidence indicates that it has some potential as a support for struggling learners. Another resource that is being tried out at Empire School to support the Math outcomes is called Leaps and Bounds and it is primarily used to support struggling learners in Grades 3-8. Initial reports on its efficacy are very positive. Math parent newsletters will be available in September to support the K-8 curriculum. These newsletters help provide communication and home support and will be made available on our website. For more information contact eirich.tim@prairiesouth.ca

Arts Education
Tanis Michener and Daryl McKinnon facilitated an after school workshop for music teachers. They provided curriculum support and led discussions about resources and strategies for assessment and instruction.

English Language Arts

Joan Myers and Belinda Spagrud have started to build units of study at the Grade 8 level. They have gathered thematically related texts and are aligning each unit to outcomes and indicators. Tana Arnott participated in an ELA 20 vetting session offered by the Ministry of Education and Linda Klippenstein is involved with the writing of the ELA 21 curriculum. A teacher-administrator team from Prince Arthur School are in their second year of using a Response to Intervention approach to helping Grades 1-3 readers who struggle. The team consisting of Michelle Michaluk, Margot Keeler, Rayleen Eberl, Tracey Closs, Aaron Ubell, and Dan Orescanin meet regularly to share data, suggest strategies and discuss individual students behavioural and academic needs. CharlaEdwards, DaphneFogal, Tammy Sillers, LindaKlippenstein, DebraWildfong and Ward Strueby will be involved in scoring the provincial Writing AFL assessments this year. A Provincial Writing Project is underway with the goal of establishing rubrics/ assessment tools and exemplars for every type of writing expected at every grade level. The goal for completion of this project is December 2011.

Kindergarten
Thanks to Linda Benson, Jodie Lee, Beth Pickering, Amanda Schollar, Anne Stewart, Patty Mergel and Heather Nicholson for field testing the new Kindergarten report card. Beth Pickering, Patty Mergel, Elizabeth Wiebe, Shirley Chernick and Christina Faris has field tested a resource entitled Nelson Kindergarten Literacy. Theyve found the modules very easy to use and applicable to the Kindergarten curriculum

Report Cards
We will see very few changes in report cards for the coming school year. Our school division is exploring the many options there are in software that enables teachers to easily record both formative and summative scores and have these roll seamlessly into report cards. Since there will be a fairly extensive change when this happens, well try to keep our changes next year to a minimum. Here they are:

Kindergarten: a new report card that was eld tested in six schools will be used starting next school year. Grades 1-8: a slight change will be made in the academic achievement rubric so that there is a clear difference between having not yet evaluated a strand and not having enough evidence from a student. Effort scores will be reported for each strand in ELA and Math as it was before Grades 9-12: no changes are happening for next year, but teacher feedback will be sought on how best to report student achievement separately from student behaviour.

For more information contact hall.david@prairiesouth.ca