Big Ideas, Competencies & Content
The Big Ideas represent what students are expected to understand as a result of their learning – the “Understand” component of B.C.’s learning model. Collectively, the Big Ideas progress in both sophistication and degree of connection with the lives of students throughout the curriculum.
Competencies
Curricular Competencies are action-based statements that reflect the “Do” component of the curriculum model and identify what students will do to demonstrate their learning. The Curricular Competencies have been written to promote as much flexibility and creativity as possible, enabling students to explore and find multiple ways to demonstrate their learning.
The Curricular Competencies connect with the Core Competencies – Communication, Thinking, and Personal and Social – which are the intellectual, personal, social, and emotional skills that will contribute to lifelong learning. The Curricular Competencies throughout the Career Education curriculum provide ongoing opportunities for student self-assessment of the Core Competencies and growth in self-awareness as it relates to purposeful career-life development.
Core Competencies
The competencies encompass the intellectual, personal and social skills students need to develop for success in life beyond school and to become educated citizens.
Curricular Competencies
Curriculum structure has 3 main components that work together to support deep learning, regardless of subject: Big Ideas, Content, Curricular Competencies.
Big Ideas (what students will understand) – generalizations, principles, key concepts
Content (what students will know) – essential topics and knowledge
Curricular Competencies (what students will be able to do) – skills, strategies, processes
First Peoples Principles of Learning
The use of the First Peoples Principles has demonstrated that Indigenous education is beneficial for all students.
The increased emphasis on personalization and the recognition of the importance of paying attention to more aspects of self echo what has already been known by First Peoples – that education is a complex process that is personal, holistic; embedded in relationship to each other, to self, and to the land; and is most effective when it is authentic and relevant.
Principles of Catholic Education
In our Catholic schools, the ultimate goal of the curriculum is that students have a daily experience of God at the centre of the learning process.
As students work through the career education program, both implicit and explicit connections are made with the curriculum and the principles of Catholic education.
