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Written by Shain Chisholm, Instructional Coach During a recent Social Studies class, students were discussing current events centered around Syrian, Haitian, Turkish and Nigerian refugees seeking asylum in Canada.  In light of the current political debate around the immigration process, the students were invited to think critically at some of the pros and cons of our current immigration system. To become more informed on the Canadian immigration, the students read articles and watched videos that dealt with economic, safety, political and health concerns related to immigrants coming to Canada..   To help students think critically about immigration , they engaged in an thinking routine called “Tug-of-War”.   As they read the articles and watched the videos, they individually recorded on sticky notes whenever they encountered a fact, example or argument they deemed to be either negative ( created a pull in the negative direction) or positive ( created a pull in the posi...

A High School’s CTS Program Story:  Our First Steps in The Journey Towards  Understanding and Assessing the Basic Competencies Written by Shanda Dupras, Instructional Coach at FSD38 “Did you bring your pencil to class? Did you speak during a class discussion? Did you arrive late…again?” An amalgamation of high school teachers from numerous CTS pathways ( Welding, Construction, Communication Technology, Business, Mechanics, Robotics ) decided that the way that they were embedding and assessing the basic competencies in their learning spaces could not be farther away from the real world.   Pencil preparedness, lack of speaking in class and arriving late were the foundation of their evaluation of the competencies. The teachers knew that the basic competencies were larger than what they had been assessing and teaching through ‘day marks.’   Students could not articulate, nor did they understand that the competencies were more extensive than arriving with...