So my colleagues and I are teaching outside our comfort zones... Humanities 7 for one grade 7 class and STEM 7 for another grade 7 class (for more on what these mean, please see my first blog post). As the year began, we were also assigned Elective rotation classes (my choices: Drama and Robotics) plus we were tasked with integrating CTF (Career and Technology Foundations) into our timetable. As a whole, my colleagues and I were excited to gain such a tremendous level of control over our schduling but were ignorant to how difficult it would be to prep, teach and assess such a wide variety of subjects. And this was the challenge we were prepared for!
The other major challenge that would catch all three of us off guard this fall was the clientel we would teach this year. The begin with, our group of grade seven's this year, leans heavily towards the young side. From a developmental undrstanding, this means that most of students will struggle with the abstract concepts and lessons that we need to teach; their maturity and brain development keeps them focused in the realm of concrete thought.
Even more challenging was that within our grade seven group (around 85 students) we were given the heads up that 24 of them needed transition planning. We were told about some students (11) who had struggled socially, with mental health, or had senstive information about their family-life that we needed to know in order to tailor our lessons and classroom environments to best help these students learn. On top of that, we also found out that 5 of our grade seven's are English Language Learners (4 of these are Syrian Refugees who arrived in Canada within the last 9 months), and 8 of our grade seven's have serious learning issues (autism, low levels of literacy & numeracy, cognitive delays, etc.).
That was almost 30% of our grade sevens that were identified as needing transition planning and 15% of our population that was previously identified as having extreme needs. The school year hadn't even started!
These 2 challenges, student population and programing, created a whirlwind of a school start and each will be the topic of some blogposts to follow.
The other major challenge that would catch all three of us off guard this fall was the clientel we would teach this year. The begin with, our group of grade seven's this year, leans heavily towards the young side. From a developmental undrstanding, this means that most of students will struggle with the abstract concepts and lessons that we need to teach; their maturity and brain development keeps them focused in the realm of concrete thought.
Even more challenging was that within our grade seven group (around 85 students) we were given the heads up that 24 of them needed transition planning. We were told about some students (11) who had struggled socially, with mental health, or had senstive information about their family-life that we needed to know in order to tailor our lessons and classroom environments to best help these students learn. On top of that, we also found out that 5 of our grade seven's are English Language Learners (4 of these are Syrian Refugees who arrived in Canada within the last 9 months), and 8 of our grade seven's have serious learning issues (autism, low levels of literacy & numeracy, cognitive delays, etc.).
That was almost 30% of our grade sevens that were identified as needing transition planning and 15% of our population that was previously identified as having extreme needs. The school year hadn't even started!
These 2 challenges, student population and programing, created a whirlwind of a school start and each will be the topic of some blogposts to follow.
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