Cohort at maRS: An Action Plan is Awakened…

After missing the second F2F at BVG, I was able to reconnect with the Cohort21 crew and rediscover what makes this the best professional learning group in town, or province, or COUNTRY!

The main thrust of today’s meeting was to understand Design Thinking Process and how we could apply this to our classes AND, potentially, how might this be applied to our personal action plans.

I’ve really been inspired to think big, and I’ve chosen to redefine what my action plan will be for this academic year. Instead of focussing on a single assignment or class, I want to apply myself to a challenge that I’m facing (along with my colleagues) in all of my english class: using Voice and Choice and teaching through a multi-text approach for our units rather than teaching single text units. This is a challenge that faces all of my colleagues, and I’m excited to tackle it –hopefully with their help and with the help of Danielle Ganley, my doppelgänger who teaches at HTS. 

So, what’s the problem? What’s the plan? Those are steps that are yet to be formulated. But I can tell you this:

I want to:

1. promote a love of reading (in all things, not just unit by unit)

2. promote and teach close reading skills

3. teach through essential questions as a common thread between the different text choices.

4. teach through core skills: have students reading different texts conference on identifying diction, or purple passages, or tone, etc.

5. Emphasizing conferencing with students: in person and through technology

6. Use a tool like DocAppender to track student reading and give them feedback on their success and challenges.

Ok, thanks to Garth, Justin, and all the great facilitators. I’m promise to blog and comment much more regularly. I’m optimistic about the months to come!