New pedagogies - Caractère

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. 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. 

This week we went over the character progression which is all about deep learning, self-regulation, and taking responsibility for your own learning. It was a great way to launch our biodiversité research projects! Here's our student-friendly version of Caractère.

la biodiversité

We are starting our biodiversité unit today by exploring our padlet and defining what is biodiversity. Students will get their first taste of a really open project when they get to inquire about a topic  within biodiversity that interest them. I find that the first project is always anxiety producing because by grade 6 students are really used to being told what and how they are going to learn about a subject. However, once they discover how much more motivating and enriching it is making their own way  they obviously love it. This week we will also be discussing our first C: character/ caractère (post to follow with more info on this).

Meet the teacher

If you happened to miss Meet the Teacher Night here are the cliff notes.

un polyglotte sommeille en vous

Like many people, I am fascinated by Ted talks at the moment. I stumbled on a really great one about learning multiple languages and...it's in French!!!Next week we are going to watch the video and discuss why one should learn one or more languages (obviously focusing on French). We will also discuss some of the strategies we use to support our language learning. We will even look at the FSL curriculum! Below is the link to a padlet with the video, some guiding questions and additional resources (great homework!). Un polyglotte sommeille en vous

première semaine

This week our learning goals are typical back to school goals. We are working on getting to know each other as well as the routines and procedures of the class. We have started preparing very short oral presentations to show the class a bit about who we are and what makes us tick. 

Yup...already...but it should be fun this week. 

Students are encouraged to bring two or three pictures or artifacts to help them tell me, and the class, a little bit about who they are. I would like at least one of the pictures to stay at school to decorate our lovely classroom (it will go back home with the student eventually or I can photocopy it if you don't want to risk damaging or loosing it)

Bring in as soon as possible but any time within the next weeks is fine.

Also, check out our September Newsletter