The new B.C. curriculum will come to elementary schools on the Sunshine Coast this September, putting a strong focus on core competencies, Aboriginal education and more personalized learning opportunities.
The new curriculum will also be used by high school students in Grades 8 and 9 starting this September, while the curriculum for Grades 10 to 12 will take another school year to sort out.
The Ministry of Education developed the new curriculum with the help of teachers around the province and input from experts around the world. It was designed to support the development of critical thinking, communication skills and personal and social competence. While there are some course changes, it keeps the traditional subjects of math, science, social studies and language arts in place and continues with a focus on literacy and numeracy.
Some of the new curriculum for Grades K to 9 is still under development but most of it has taken shape and is available in detail online now.
Of note is the shift by teachers to focus on three core competencies in every grade. Core competencies are described in the new curriculum as “a set of intellectual, personal and social competencies that students develop through the course of their schooling.”
The new curriculum centres around three core competency areas – thinking (critical and creative), communication and personal and social.
David Barnum, curriculum/transitions coordinator for School District No. 46 (SD46), said those core competencies have always been part of what’s going on in classrooms, but now they’ve been “noticed, named and nurtured.”
He pointed to the written messages in report cards to parents identifying whether children can work well in groups or if they take initiative in class, for example, as a way teachers have been trying to demonstrate those core competencies to parents for years.
“So we’ve always known it was important and it was front and centre but then, often the report card message would be, ‘That’s nice, but let’s get to the grades and see what’s really important,’” Barnum said.
Exactly how teachers will assess student learning of the new core competencies has yet to be decided, but SD46 superintendent of schools Patrick Bocking said the ministry is working on finding the best reporting tools before school starts in September.
One such tool that might make the shortlist is FreshGrade, an online portfolio of student work that’s interactive for parents and teachers and has been used by some educators on the Coast with success over the past year.
Some teachers have also taken bits of the new curriculum into their classrooms, as it was available this school year to try out, but Bocking said students and parents haven’t noticed much of a difference because Coast educators have been teaching in similar ways for some time.
The new curriculum encourages teachers to create personalized lesson plans that engage students in their learning by making the curriculum less prescriptive and instead focusing on what students are expected to understand before course completion, described as “big ideas” in the new curriculum.
“All teachers, in one way or another, are already teaching in a way that is very much reflective of the philosophy of the new curriculum. The project-based and inquiry-based lessons, for instance, are very much in line with the new curriculum. So just that pedagogy, the way teachers teach, is very much aligned to the new curriculum,” Bocking said.
One new piece to be introduced with the new curriculum is the integration of unique Aboriginal perspectives into every subject in every grade.
The move comes as a way to implement some of the recommendations that came out of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, with the Ministry of Education noting, “Aboriginal perspectives and knowledge are part of the historical and contemporary foundation of B.C. and Canada.”
Students will now be taught the Aboriginal perspective on everything from art to science.
Barnum said a Grade 4 science class, where students currently learn about the relationship between the sun and the moon, would have a new cultural element that looks at the 13 moon cycles traditionally found in Aboriginal culture, for example.
Bocking sees the new emphasis on Aboriginal perspectives as “hugely beneficial for students.”
“There are a number of reasons for that. One is that the history of Aboriginal people has not been supported in the way that it needed to be,” Bocking said, noting that once again SD46 is ahead of the crowd when it comes to Aboriginal education, which is currently taught throughout the district, although not in every subject at present.
“We’re seeing the well-being of our Aboriginal students changing greatly. There is a lot of pride. When I’m talking to parents of Aboriginal students, they say that their children are happy to go to school and that has simply not always been the case for Aboriginal students.”
Two other changes to the curriculum include the applied design, skills and technologies course and the career education course, both to be taught from Kindergarten to Grade 12.
The newly named applied design, skills and technologies course will include subjects such as home economics, already taught in schools, but it will also incorporate technology education and learning from “new and emerging fields.”
The career education course will establish career education as its own area of learning, whereas in the past that learning was integrated into the health and career curriculum as well as planning courses offered in high school.
Neither new course has been finalized yet but the draft frameworks are available online for perusal.
Barnum said he’s pleased with the direction the new curriculum is taking and he’s been explaining its benefits to parents throughout the district through parent advisory committee meetings and coffee talks with interested groups for several months.
“I think teaching has always been moving in this direction and now the ministry is saying, ‘We acknowledge that, and here’s what we’re going to do about it.’ It’s a good shift,” he said.
Teachers seem eager to put the new curriculum into action and SD46 has been providing workshops and opportunities for educators to train throughout the 2015/16 school year to make sure they’re ready.
“The board has provided $156,000 to ensure that teachers have the training and the opportunity to work together to deeply understand the new curriculum,” Bocking said.
He’s confident teachers will be well prepared to implement the new curriculum this September and that students will benefit greatly from the new model.
Find out more at https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca
