The End of the Beginning… Wrapping Up Cohort 21 2018-2019

The End of the Beginning… Wrapping Up Cohort 21 2018-2019

Since our third Face2Face in January I have been slowly working away at implementing my Action Plan of working with my Grade 9 Geography course team and our Science colleagues to create a cross course/interdisciplinary project for Grade 9 students in Geography and Science that deepens learning while reducing student workload. We had started to build some connections between the courses in the 2017-2018 school year, I am had hoped to take it further. With @akraguljac’s help, all of the teachers met in February, and the Science teachers agreed to modify their climate change presentation project to better support the goals of the geography program. In the past, students had been able to choose any aspect of climate change they wanted to investigate; this year, they had to focus on an issue that is connected to the province or territory that they are responsible for in geography. My hope is that this change of focus will help the students as they prepare policy recommendations for the First Ministers’ meeting on climate change that they will be completing as their geography course culminating task. We’ll have to wait and see for those results, but I was lucky enough to be able to attend a science class and watch some of the presentations, and I was very happy about what the students were doing. I look forward to continue to develop this project in the next school year, with the hope of further integrating the two courses.

I want to thank the Cohort 21 team for the help this year, especially the support from @nblair throughout the process – thanks, Nicole!. I also found discussing what @jagostino is doing at her school with a similar cross disciplinary project to be both helpful and inspiring – thanks, Juliana!