Learning is a social constructivist process where teaching students to think and talk together leads to learning that is far deeper and far more lasting.  By teaching students to think and talk together they begin to own what they are constructing as opposed to just absorbing information and giving it back to us.  Knowledge develops from how people interact with each other, their culture, and society at large. Students rely on others to help create their building blocks and learning from others helps them construct their own knowledge and reality.  All learners should be equipped with the skills required to know how to think and talk together in ways that innovate as they look to build and sustain the types of societies, we want our children to live in. ~Building Bigger Ideas (Nichols) and Western Governors University

Check out the following resources as you explore strategies that can be applied to all secondary classrooms as you look to develop a learning environment that promotes open, honest, and informed discussions.

Setting the Tone for Productive Classroom Discussions

Creating a space for students to engage with controversial topics starts with shared norms like “assume best intentions” and “show respect and courage.” ~Edutopia

How to Set the Stage for Challenging Classroom Discussions

Forming Ground Rules (Creating Norms)

Norms Construction (A Process of Negotiation)

Getting Students Talking and Thinking Together

Sentence starters that students use to join a class discussion encourage both academic thinking and social connectedness. ~Edutopia

Encouraging Academic Conversations With Talk Moves

	Checklist Goals for Productive Discussions and Nine Talk Moves Sample phrases to get you started using Talk Moves in the classroom.		Productive Talk Moves
	Talk Moves

Flip the Script: Empowering Students to Ask their Own Questions

Make Just One Change (Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana)

Drawing on twenty years of experience, the authors present the Question Formulation Technique, a concise and powerful protocol that enables learners to produce their own questions, improve their questions, and strategize how to use them. This deceptively simple yet profoundly important practice results in students who are more curious and engaged, take greater ownership of their own education, and are learning more deeply than ever before.

To learn more, check out The Right Question Institute

Making Student Thinking Visible

Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12 (Peter Liljedahl)

Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12 helps teachers implement 14 optimal practices for thinking that create an ideal setting for deep learning to occur.  This guide: provides the what, why, and how of each practice and answers teachers’ most frequently asked questions; includes firsthand accounts of how these practices foster thinking through teacher and student interviews and student work samples; offers a plethora of macro moves, micro moves, and rich tasks to get started; organizes the 14 practices into four toolkits that can be implemented in order and built on throughout the year.

Note: Despite being written from a lens of math education teachers from all disciplines will find strategies that can be directly applied to their classroom practice.

To learn more, check out 14 Practices of a Thinking Classroom.

Creating a Feedback Culture

The Ethic of Excellence (Ron Berger)

Drawing from his own remarkable experience as a veteran classroom teacher (still in the classroom), Ron Berger gives us a vision of educational reform that transcends standards, curriculum, and instructional strategies. He argues for a paradigm shift—a schoolwide embrace of an “ethic of excellence.” A master carpenter as well as a gifted teacher, Berger is guided by a craftsman’s passion for quality, describing what’s possible when teachers, students, and parents commit to nothing less than the best. But Berger’s not just idealistic, he’s realistic—he tells exactly how this can be done, from the blackboard to the blacktop to the school boardroom.

Visible Learning (John Hattie and Shirley Clarke)

Feedback is arguably the most critical and powerful aspect of teaching and learning. Yet, there remains a paradox: why is feedback so powerful and why is it so variable? It is this paradox which Visible Learning: Feedback aims to unravel and resolve.

Combining research excellence, theory and vast teaching expertise, this book covers the principles and practicalities of feedback, including: the variability of feedback, the importance of surface, deep and transfer contexts, student to teacher feedback, peer to peer feedback, and the power of within lesson feedback and manageable post-lesson feedback.

With numerous case-studies, examples and engaging anecdotes woven throughout, the authors also shed light on what creates an effective feedback culture and provide the teaching and learning structures which give the best possible framework for feedback.

To learn more, check out Visible Learning.

Why is Feedback So Powerful

Types and Purposes of Feedback

Indigenous Graduation Requirement Information

Ministry Information about the Indigenous Graduation Requirement (edited June 2022)

• Indigenous Graduation Requirement Overview
• Frequently Asked Questions

District Information, Initiatives & Resources

• District Aboriginal Department
• District Aboriginal Language Program
• Cultural Presenter Sign-Up

• Barren Grounds Teacher Resource Guide here (move from mentorship area)
  This SD35 teacher created resource guide is a resources that supports the reading and exploration of The Barren Grounds by David Robertson through strategies and activities rooted in Indigenous pedagogies. This guide captures an ongoing understanding and attempt to learn alongside learners to teach and incorporate Indigenous worldviews and perspectives. Though this guide is specific to The Barren Grounds, it uses many Indigenous teaching strategies that can be utilized across subject areas, in many classrooms. (edited June 2021)

For Students

Health and Well-being for students is explicitly taught in the PHE curriculum and embedded in all other subject areas through the personal and social core competencies.

The BC Physical and Health Education curriculum contributes to students’ development as educated citizens through the achievement of the following goals.

Students are expected to:

• Develop an understanding of the many aspects of well-being, including physical, mental, and social
• Develop the movement knowledge, skills, and understandings needed for lifelong participation in a range of physical activities
• Develop knowledge, skills, and strategies for building respectful relationships, positive self-identity, self-determination, and mental well-being
• Demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and strategies needed to make informed decisions that support personal and community health and safety

For Staff

Your health and well-being also really matters.  The Langley School District is made up of amazing people doing important work and in order to do our best work, we also need to be well.  Watch for announcements and opportunities from the healthy staff healthy schools group and if you would like to get involved with this work please contact :  insert name here or the hs/hs rep at your worksite

Numeracy is everywhere!

In many courses, students don’t recognize that they are engaging in numeracy activities. The following pictures depict numeracy in action.