Dianne Jojic

Due to many competing demands in our work space, Melody and I have struggled to move our project forward. Having said that, some thinking that has shifted is towards a more generalized framework showing progression, which would guide more grade level work. We don’t want what we are proposing to become a “make work” project, rather a tool to guide our planning and program development.

We also realized that we actually had already a number of pieces to help in the creation of this framework – a fairly decent starting point for our work. 

What we really need, to be able to move our project forward, is collaborative time to dig into fleshing out the framework. And, following that, time for feedback from both our faculty and the literacy consultant we are working with.  We would also LOVE to see if any frameworks or examples which are already in place in other schools that we could view and consider. We are also curious about  how AI might help us develop something specific to our needs. We would need support in this area as we are just learning how best to use prompts to grow AI supports. Further, consideration of how to capture writing instruction which lives alongside all reading and many subjects instruction, will be next steps for us. 

In an ideal world, our next face to face session will allow us time for collaborative work to develop our thinking, our possible framework for feedback.

I’m excited to be joining COHORT 21 with my colleague, Melody. The strand we are focusing on is pedagogy, belonging and well-being (Jk-6) but specifically a focus on Literacy Practices and how best to teach, support, and assess our students in the realm of literacy. Melody and I have been working together for a few years now and last year we began a deep dive into Literacy practices, spurred on by the Science of Reading and the renewed Ontario language arts curriculum. Our collaboration is exciting to me – to have a thought partner in this work is a WIN!

I don’t think we realized that there were well-being focused strands that our project should fall within when we signed up : / but we definitely have a project in mind linking to pedagogy and supporting students.

There have been many developments at our primary in the realm of literacy in the last years and we still have some learning to do. However, Melody and I are challenged by how to capture it all in a meaningful way – a format for capturing learning that weaves in the 5 pillars of reading with writing. We have many documents that capture literacy learning but no ONE place to go to capture it all.

So, while we don’t have a fulsome plan, and we acknowledge our thinking may shift, we hope to begin to:

• develop something based on what we already do organized by the pillars of reading (to build out as we go with collaborators at school)
• capture our writing text types across curriculum to be built out further
• research writing continuums and best practices
• use ONT LA curriculum to guide
• examine where syntax/sentence level work lives in both reading and writing to intentionally shore these up
• connect to experts in our community
• tap into other sources through COHORT connections
• get guidance from our school literacy consultant/partner

While our ideas plentiful, we are open to adjusting our thinking along the way and maybe there will be a place to weave in some well-being thinking.We know there is a lot here so it may be a multi-year project but we’d like to get well on the way through our COHORT time this year.

Happy to meet you all and read your posts! See. you soon.

Welcome to Cohort 21 Cohort 21.

The mission of this professional development initiative is to build a community of passionate CIS Ontario educators who are interested in refining and redesigning their practice through the exploration of new pedagogies, ideas and learning tools.