New pedagogies and critical thinking

New Pedagogies  are a new way of thinking about teaching and learning for the 21st century in a highly complex and ever-changing world. 

In this model, the role of the teacher is "that of activator of learning who designs learning experiences that build on learner strengths and needs, creates new knowledge using real-life problem solving and help all students identify their talents, purpose and passion." . 

Six competencies guide the learning (les 6 Cs) ; creativity - créativité, critical thinking - pensée critique, communication, citizenship - citoyenneté, character - caractère and collaboration. With every C comes a learning progression or a way of evaluating where the students and educator are in their learning journey. My goal this year is to unpack some of the learning progressions with the students. I am translating the progression into French then as a class we are discussing what they mean in order simplify the progression to student friendly language. Students should be able to evaluate where they are on the progression, set goals and find ways to improve. 

As most parents will have noticed we have been working ridiculously hard on our biodiversité inquiry. In looking at what students were doing I thought this was the perfect time to look at the critical thinking progression. We simplified the language as much as we could, we evaluated where we thought most the class was and we used part of the progression in our rubrique for our final task. You can find our version here.The progressions are quite lofty in their goals so don't be shocked if we are on the "low" end. The students are after all only in grade 6 AND doing all this in a second language.