I appreciated the topic of knowledge curation tools in class. To me, this is something that has been overlooked as an important aspect of teaching and taking this program. If we aren’t organizing what we’re learning in a way that is easy to access, so much of it will be lost and we’ll be forced to learn it all over again (or not bother).
I also think that we as teachers need to explore and share the wonderful resources that already exist online for free. There are so many organizations that work with experts to develop fantastic units and lesson plans that are available for free. For instance, I think the material at “Facing History and Ourselves”, “Zinn Education Project”, “CIVIX CTRL-F,” “The Critical Thinking Consortium,” “Composer Education,” “Teaching Tolerance,” and “Common Sense Media,” are all incredibly helpful for a social studies classroom. Often they include built out activities with profiles and details that teachers would not normally have the time (and often the expertise) to create. I like the creative aspect of creating units so I probably wouldn’t take anything completely without tweaking it to meet the specific needs of my students, but they are a fantastic place to start.
Personally, I use OneNote to organize all the notes and resources I find. I was introduced to the software at my last work place, and it was there that I grew to appreciate how powerful it is. I can have all my notes, information, links, etc. available just a couple of clicks away, in an easy to organize fashion. Rather than having to peruse through layers and layers of folders in order to open up separate documents, everything is at my finger tips. If I’m typing notes for my PSYCH class and she shares a strategy that resonates with me that I would want to do in my future class, I can quickly add it to my “Class Planning” notebook.
Regarding the future of education, I hope it continues to move in the direction it has been moving since I was in high school. I hope that it becomes less rigid and grades become less important. I hope that students are cared for first and foremost as human beings. I hope that they learn to explore what they are interested in, but also are inspired by their teachers and classmates. I hope that technology is leveraged carefully and selectively to enhance the experience, but nature and the outdoors is done so just as often.. And I hope that teachers work together to bridge disciplines and learn and grow from one another. This is the future that is worth working towards.
I can’t believe the semester is already coming to a close! I feel like I have gotten a lot out of my free inquiry project and yet there is so much that I didn’t get to. The researching and understand the local Indigenous communities here has already been really helpful and important in some of the lessons and units I’ve been building.
Some areas I hope to explore more over the break:
Chinatown and Asian history in Victoria
Black history in Victoria
Visiting the Victoria Archives
Taking a Walking Tour of Victoria
Visiting the Royal BC Museum again
This project helped me see just how much I don’t know about this place I call home. I hope to continue being curious and adventurous with exploring and understanding different parts of this Land and its history.
Last week, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to interact with students at Claremont secondary. For my “booth”, I wanted to utilize some principles of place-based education that I had been researching, and help the students collaborate and contribute.
I ended up creating a giant map of Victoria and Saanich and prompting students to consider:
Where is a place you feel at home?
What is something you love about your community and want to preserve?
What is something you want to improve or transform?
Students then used colours to indicate their choices and wrote a few words on a sticky note explaining their choices. It was really cool to see places that were special to them – some I had never even heard of! Guess I have some more exploring to do over the break.
This week we got to hear from Tracy Humphreys, the Chair and Executive Director at BCEd Access. She talked to us about the organization, and the importance of considering accessibility and inclusivity in the classroom. I appreciated getting to hear from her, as this is something I know will be a critical priority, and also a real challenge. This semester has mostly been focused on creating unit and lesson plans that are exciting but I realize I didn’t often have a wide diversity of students in my mind when making them. Sure, I always try to include different forms of engagement (such as videos, writing, moving, etc.), but what happens when one student is miles ahead and another is struggling with the basics? I realized I have been designing for a monolithic classroom, and have not built in much UDL or differentiation.
This is a good learning for me. I already know that I have a tendency to want to cram in an unrealistic amount of activities into short periods of time, and this approach would be a big disservice to many students. That tendency of mine probably has roots in capitalist, ableist ideas that tries to squeeze every ounce of “productivity” from the moment. Yet it is the opportunity to pause, reflect, ask questions, and struggle with the content that leads to deeper learning, and helps those who may otherwise fall behind catch up. I will try to reframe the issue to myself as one of equity, and hopefully this helps me step back and be okay with “going slow.”
I imagine supporting diverse learners is often pushed to the side for new teachers, who spend so much of their time just gathering and creating lessons and units for their classes. I hope that any opportunity I have to prepare and plan ahead of a semester starting I take it; I want to be able to give my energy and presence to the students, and be receptive to their needs and interests. I can already picture how difficult this would be when I am feeling overworked and anxious about the half-planned lessons that I need to finish. Yet in a world that is already so challenging for people with diverse abilities, I hope to meet all my students where they’re at, and help them to get wherever they want to go.
As a teenager, I went to Oak Bay High, and every day I would walk through Bowker Creek on my way to school. I learned that since living away, there has been a massive effort to restore the creek. There is hope to one day see salmon return to the creek, as they once did. To me this is such a great example of community action and investment to help undo some of the damage that we have done over the past few centuries.
I took a walk around Bowker Creek this week and got to look at the changes. I’ve found that the Royal BC Museum has a learning portal playlist devoted to this topic of salmon at Bowker Creek (access it here).
I think it’s important as educators that we’re aware of stories of success and victories to share with our students. In a world where things can often feel helpless, examples of people coming together for the common good can empower us through hope. I hope to find and share more stories like this in the future.
Teachers should harness a growth mindset in their students through the development of metacognitive skills that facilitate reflection and improvement in their work. One effective strategy is Assignment Wrappers. Assignment Wrappers challenge the idea that the learning from an assignment ends once it is marked, and instead prompts students to reflect and learn from the feedback they received and strategies they used. In so doing, teachers can change the studentâs focus from the past (which they can do nothing to change), to the future (in which they can grow).
When Might it Be Useful?
Assignment Wrappers can follow-up any assignment, and can be made more in-depth for larger assignments, and briefer for shorter ones. For very short assignments, teachers may have students reflect on a single question.
How to Use Assignment Wrappers
So, how can you implement Assignment Wrappers? Once you hand back an assignment to students, ask them to read through the feedback, and answer some prompting questions. The goals of these questions should be to help students see the strategies they employed that worked, and where they can improve in the future. Teachers can also encourage students to take the next step and set goals for themselves to improve their performance and understanding for the next assignment. These goals can then be revisited in the next opportunity for Assignment Wrappers.
An Illustrative Example
Ms. Greenâs History class has just completed a project in which they worked in small groups to develop a virtual museum exhibit with 5-10 significant items from WWII, each with a description of the artefact and why it is important to understand the history of the war. Miss Green hands back the marks and feedback to each of the groups and gives them a few minutes to read through them individually. Then, Ms. Green writes the following questions on the board, and asked the students to respond to each one in their journals:
What strategies did I employ to do well on this assignment? How effective were those strategies?
What aspects of the rubric did I overlook / could I have done better on?
In what ways did I contribute positively to the group? In what ways could I have been a better group member?
What are three strategies I can use next time to help ensure I improve?
Ms. Green wanders around the room supporting students through their reflection and facilitates a class discussion to help students get ideas from one another. She tells students she will ask them specifically about these goals in the next assignment and makes a personal note to remind them of this later. Finally, Ms. Green gives the students the rest of the class period to implement any of the feedback that they received into the project and detail the ways they did so, explaining they can improve their mark by demonstrating they have reviewed the feedback meaningfully.
The Research to Support:
Gezer-Templeton et al. (2017) explored the effects of exam wrapper assignments for an introductory food science and human nutrition course in a university setting. The exam wrappers were offered as an extra credit assignment after three exams throughout the semester. The majority of students completed all three exam wrappers, which involved answering the following 3 questions:
How did you prepare for the exam?
What types of questions on the exam were most challenging for you? Why do you think they were challenging?
What changes to your study habits do you plan to make when preparing for the next exam?
The lack of control group prevented the researchers from making firm conclusions from the study, but the results are promising. The researchers found that ââŠstudents not only made the right plans, such as not waiting until the last minute to study but were also able to follow through with the plans they set for themselvesâ (pp. 33) and students indicated that they found the exam wrappers to be a helpful tool.
Gezer-Templeton, P. G., Mayhew, E. J., Korte, D. S., & Schmidt, S. J. (2017). Use of exam wrappers to enhance studentsâ
E-Portfolios (or digital portfolios) are collections of writings, documents, and other artefacts collected over time to demonstrate student learning. While there are different types, we will explore the Learning Portfolio, which facilitates and demonstrates learning over time (rather than the best pieces being evaluated at the end).[i]
Benefits
Making Learning Visible
By collecting, documenting, and reflecting on different pieces of work over a period of time, digital portfolios allow students and instructors to see progress that has been made. The insights that digital portfolios provide help educators give targeted feedback seamlessly and allow parents to follow along with their childâs learning. At the end of the unit / class, students walk away with a tangible representation of their learning.[ii]
Metacognition
Digital portfolios allow opportunity for students to reflect on feedback, past work, and their learnings in a way that encourages growth. Built in opportunities for self, peer, and educator feedback can help students deepen their learning.
Building Independent Learners
Digital portfolios can support the development of self-directed learning and representational learning. Through the gradual release of responsibility, teachers can support students in finding new and creative ways to represent their learnings.[iii]
Digital Tools
E-Portfolios can be kept on a number of different platforms; some offer the benefit of simplicity, while others allow for greater creative freedoms and options. Here are some ideas:
Google Slides: students document their learning through notes / images on Google Slides. The teacher may create a template that provides a clear structure, but the Slides are somewhat limiting. Great video example here.
Microsoft OneNote: Students could have their own section or section group in which they can add a multitude of media types. This has the advantage of everything being easily accessible in a single Notebook. Guide here.
WordPress: Students can create a website through which they can blog and add media, like weâre doing in our class. Some students may find the platform challenging without a lot of guidance. Guidance here.
NOTE: Students can complete a lot of their portfolio without computers in class through writing, drawing, etc. They just need to take photos of their work and upload them once they have access to a computer.
Self-Assessment: The portfolio format allows students to self-assess how well theyâve demonstrated their learning.
Peer-Assessment: Through comments or separate submissions, peers can provide feedback and direction. Both self and peer-assessment should be supported by clear criteria and expectations around how to give it. If using a site like WordPress, you may ask students to read and respond to the works of others, using hyperlinks. You may have students work in âpeer blog mentorâ groups to help facilitate this. Teachers should still review all feedback.
Teacher Assessment: Ongoing meaningful feedback is critical for students. Teachers may choose not to give grades throughout, and instead provide written / oral feedback that students can incorporate in their future posts.
Develop and communicate a clear purpose, focus, and structure
Determine where will there be choice for how students reflect their learning, and where will you give them clear structure
Structure should be clear, but not overly rigid
Donât overwhelm them with all the information at the beginning for a long portfolio.
Choose a platform and create a template for each student to use
Facilitate students developing and creating media / learning artefacts
Start a lesson by telling students what their portfolio output look like at the end of a lesson / unit. This will help them begin with the end in mind, and engage with the material intentionally.
Support skill development and time management
Remind students regularly to put work in their portfolio
Avoid a âdigital dumpââ â make sure that everything they upload adds something.
Build in time for reflection, self assessment and peer assessment. Check out some strategies / questions for facilitating metacognition here.
Support students in keeping the contents of their portfolio at the end.
Possible Products in an E-Portfolio
Artwork
Audio recordings / podcasts
Book reports / reviews
Charts and graphs
Essays (drafts and final copies)
Self and peer evaluations
Interview results
Blog / journal entries
Maps
Classroom notes
Photographs of experiments / monuments / etc.
Videos of presentations, debates, interviews, or simulations
Mind Maps
Embedded social media posts from figures
Posters / Digital Posters
Activity sheets and other assignments
Examples
Create a digital museum exhibit with some of the most important items from history. Each entry should center on a different object related to what we learned in class and be supported by evidence.
Your digital portfolio is based around the question: how do we see the past in the present? As we explore themes in our class, you will reflect on ways that it relates to your life today using tools of inquiry.
Your digital portfolio for English will be where you house your responses to the different texts we explore. You will be prompted with specific questions relating to the texts that build on one another week to week.
Your digital portfolio for HPE will track your research and learning around what makes a healthy lifestyle. This will inform your personal health plan, which will be the summative assessment.
Your digital portfolio will be where we track your learning throughout the semester. Youâll answer the question âWhy is science important?â at the beginning, and regularly return to ways that your thoughts have been broadened and deepened.
Group Work
The best way top facilitate group work with portfolios is creating small groups that are accountable to reviewing and providing feedback to one another. Additionally, products that are created together could be shared across different platforms or linked between them.
Drawbacks / Risks
Access to technology. Many students may struggle if they donât have reliable access to computers or the internet. This could be mitigated if they have a phone (can upload at school through photographs), but still adds an additional burden on that student. It is recommended you survey your studentsâ situations and provide fair accommodations before beginning.
A lot to keep track of. Itâs critical to provide regular and ongoing feedback because if youâre not on top of it, you could fall behind. Having a clear roadmap with milestones and opportunities for metacognition and different types of assessments will help ensure it stays under control.
An Illustrative Example
Ms. Brownâs wants to use an ePortfolio in her social studies classroom across the entire semester. She surveys the students to get a sense of their access to technology and provides alternatives ways of participating and looser deadlines for students with more limited access. She decides she wants to use WordPress and so sets aside class time in the computer lab to walk students through signing up for the platform and getting familiar with it. She plans to use the portfolio as a way to track student thinking and learning, as well as facilitate collaboration and feedback. Ms Brown explains the benefits and purpose behind the portfolio for the students, outlines the criteria they will be evaluated on (which includes creativity), and explains that she will be explicit about when they need to add something to the portfolio. She chose this strategy rather than âupload whenever you wantâ because she thought her students would benefit from the direction, it would make assessment more straightforward, and would ensure higher quality work rather than risking a âdigital dump.â
She also outlines the different options for students, explaining they can use a pseudonym and works with the class to develop rules that everyone is comfortable with (ie. Donât use last names, etc.). She has students submit their websites to her in a form, and emails the parents of the students to let them know that they are encouraged to follow along.
Ms. Brown splits the class into groups that will support one anotherâs portfolios. Ms Brown is the only person to initially provide feedback, but instead of giving a mark, she gives concrete praise and suggestions for improvement, which her students can choose to immediately implement for a small boost of their grade. After a few weeks, she supports students in understanding how to self-assess, which she then begins requiring before she assesses, to help support student metacognition. A few weeks later, she teaches students how to give effective peer feedback, and occasionally requires this through the use of private comments, which she oversees and corrects when necessary.
Ms. Brown frames each unit around 1 or more critical inquiry questions, that allow the students to demonstrate their evolving understanding through their portfolio. One unit for instance, is framed around the question âWhich social movement most drastically reshaped our world?â The students submit assignments like a digital infographic on the impacts of the Pride Movement, an interactive map to capturing dimensions of the Idle No More movement, a photo essay of evidence of the current day feminist movement around their neighbourhood, and a podcast interview of someone who lived through a major social movement. Additional submissions range from larger items (such as a group project timeline) to smaller pieces (such as a paragraph detailing the studentâs top takeaways from a single class discussion.) Ms. Brown also requires periodic reflection posts that encourage students to make connections between topics and recognize their learning strategies and skills that have been successful thus far. For each major content submission, Ms. Brown tries to give a few options of the multimedia type of submission that can be used but explains that diverse modes of communication are part of the criteria for assessment. Rather than expect students to know how to utilize these different types of multimedia effectively, Ms. Brown provides step-by-step guides and encourages peer mentorship within the groups.
Part way through the semester she has students fill out a survey to get a sense of how they are finding the portfolio, and if she can make any changes to make things simpler for them. At the end of the semester, Miss Brown asks the students to choose 1-5 portfolio submissions that represent their biggest learnings from the class and supports them in writing a short paper explaining and backing up their choices.
How can the concept of place help create a more meaningful learning environment and learning experience?
I am interested in exploring the above question to help inform my own teaching; from the little I know about Place-Based Education (PBE), I can see many strands of promise and potential. It is important to me that my students feel what they are learning is relevant in their own lives. Too often, I believe school can appear to be about issues and concepts that are distant and irrelevant, which can result in a lack of engagement, retention, and knowledge transfer. The new curriculum provides teachers with a tremendous amount of flexibility in terms of content and competencies, opening up the possibility for a shift towards more place-based methods of teaching.
PBE may facilitate the development of a critical consciousness in students about their surroundings and help them practice the skills required to be active and engaged community members. By grounding challenging social and environmental issues within studentsâ communities, PBE may help students feel greater agency and hope in making a positive impact. Furthermore, PBE may challenge educators to expand learning beyond the four walls of their classroom and integrate more authentic learning environments and opportunities for their students. I can imagine there are many challenges and opportunities in this realm that I would like to learn more about.
At the same time, I would like to understand some of the limitations or tensions of the approach. For instance, I believe it is important that students feel a sense of global citizenship and I recognize that many issues and systems are enforced on a larger scale than their local communities. I hope by exploring the above question I can uncover some of the possibilities and challenges within PBE to better serve my future students.
Resor, C. W. (2010). Place-Based Education: What is its place in the social studies classroom?. The Social Studies, 101(5), 185-188.
Resor argues that Place-Based Education (PBE) can be a meaningful tool to integrate into social studies classrooms. PBE is the process of using the local community and environment as jumping off points to teach subjects, and that it emphasizes real-world learning experiences that are often interdisciplinary. Resor distinguishes between the concept of space, which has no name or meaning and place, which is a social construct, imbued with meaning through the minds of individuals and groups. Place is linked closely to power and is an important point of investigation in social studies classrooms. Resor ends with an example of a place-based project in which students interrogate the subjective elements of place through competing ideas of what should be included in their townâs walking tour.
McInerney, P., Smyth, J., & Down, B. (2011). âComing to a place near you?â The politics and possibilities of a critical pedagogy of place-based education. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 39(1), 3-16.
McInerney, Smyth, & Down outline the challenges and possibilities of Place-Based Education (PBE) and argues for a more critical framework. While advocates of PBE argue that it empowers students with a sense of agency and opportunities for hands-on learning, critics hold that it is often undertheorized, uncritical, and disconnected from global perspectives. PBEâs lack of critical outlook may sustain the dominant, status quo perspectives of education. Additionally, connections must be made between local issues and the more regional and global systems to which they are connected.
PBE builds on Ecojustice notions of revitalizing the commons, the natural systems and cultural patterns that hold value but are currently being destroyed. It also seeks to break down the false divide between school and community. The research shows that PBE can provide authentic learning opportunities and foster community involvement and environmental consciousness. At the same time, we shouldnât overidealize the notion of place; many homes and communities may not feel safe for learners and so a focus on what needs to be transformed is important. By incorporating a more critical perspective into PBE, we can invite students to question the established order and work for the common good.
Greenwood, D. A. (2013). 9 A Critical Theory of Place-Conscious Education. In Internationalhandbook of research on environmental education (pp. 93-100). Routledge.
Greenwood argues that a place-conscious approach to education can serve as an effective framework for students to understand and address todayâs issues. Rather than reinforcing a narrow view of global realities, a focus on place allows learners to understand more deeply specific contexts that then allow for more global understandings of relationships. Place can make learning accessible and relevant for learners, help to overcome the false binary of âcultureâ and âenvironment,â and reveal that different people have diverse and competing meanings for the same physical spaces.
Greenwood advocates for a critical theory of place-conscious education, a philosophy that provides ethical direction for PBE, and challenges educators to rethink standard assumptions of schooling. He argues for decolonization and reinhabitation; critically problematizing current systems and building ecologically and culturally conscious relationships in their place. Educators can be guided by the following inquiry questions to help achieve these aims:
What happened here? (historical)
What is happening here now and in what direction is this place headed? (socioecological)
What should happen here? (ethical)
Willis, A. S. (2017). Queering Place: Using the Classroom to Describe the World. In Interdisciplinary Approaches to Pedagogy and Place-Based Education (pp. 135-145). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Willis argues that educators can use the concept of place within the four walls of their classroom, rather than feeling the need to always go outdoors. Objects and social relations in the classroom can serve as departure points to discuss broader themes of power and justice globally. Through this approach, teachers can politicize their classroom and refuse the binary separation between school and community, ultimately bringing to light the explicit ways that students are embedded and tied to global forces. Questions such as âwho built the stairs you climbed today?â or âhow did this desk get here?â can make the erased labour of classroom objects visible. This can encourage students to consider and grapple with the ways their classroom and school relate to the maintenance or transformation of the status quo.
This guide provides an overview of Place-Based Education with some tips and examples for educators to implement this approach in their classrooms. Problem-based learning provides an effective framework to empower students to identify and solve real issues in their communities. The authors outline many ways to facilitate integration into the community such as inviting community leaders to speak and give feedback to students, as well as visiting them in their places of work. It is important that field trips be accompanied with intentional pedagogical strategies such as proper framing and reflection. The authors also weave in the importance of a critical stance to PBE, citing Greenwoodâs previous work. Critically, the guide emphasizes the importance of teachers building their networks in the community and collaborating with others in this space.
Reconciliation in the Classroom: Tensions and Opportunities
In “Teaching for Truth: engaging with difficult knowledge to advance reconciliation” Tupper & Mitchell (2021) investigate teacher successes and challenges in advancing reconciliation in their classrooms. They outline common resistance by students in classrooms and consider effective tools and strategies for teachers. I felt the authors did a good job of exploring the challenges and recognizing tensions that do not have simple, easy answers. After discussing the major themes in our seminar, I found myself with some points of tension that have stuck with me.
One point of tension is the desire to center local Indigenous voices in the classroom, while also recognizing that their time and energy should be respected. Tupper & Mitchell (2021) note that while inviting community members to the classroom can be beneficial, it can be traumatizing for them to continually speak to past and current injustices. On top of this, I think it’s important that educators don’t let themselves off the hook; with so many resources, they have a major role in understanding and teaching about local nations. Of course, itâs a tricky line; I donât want to overstep and speak to customs and issues that are not mine to speak to.
I hope that the school I work at in the future has resources and staff committed to help the Indigenization of the classroom. Even understanding customs of inviting a guest in, how to thank them, etc. is something that I imagine varies from district to district and guidance and connections would be valuable; I would have liked the authors to have delved more into these types of supports. To me reconciliation takes intentional and specialized knowledge and practices but is also intertwined with many other pillars of good teaching such as creating a safe and inclusive space, engaging students to think critically, and integrating place into the content.
