Grade 9 & 10 Focus (Ongoing Professional Development):
The new de-streamed Grade 9 math course and the academic stream Grade 10 course are the focus of our department's math improvement plan. Here is a summary of what we have been working on to support our students through our own professional growth:
Aanse: Indigenous Student Well-Being and Achievement Initiative
Two teachers from our department have been invited to collaborate with the Urban Indigenous Education Centre to help our teaching practices to align with Indigenous ways of knowing. By ensuring deeper levels of respect and reciprocity with our self-identified Indigenous students, we will transform our classrooms into safer, more productive learning environments for all students.
Building Thinking Classrooms
Our Grade 9 teachers, with the support of our Learning Coaches, have participated in an ongoing professional development and inquiry program to integrate highly effective, research-based teaching techniques that create "Thinking Classrooms" where students are actively engaged in their own learning. Students frequently collaborate on specialized tasks while working at whiteboards, allowing groups of students to learn from each other with targeted guidance and questioning from the teacher/coach.
This approach to teaching is also a step in decolonializing the math classroom. Teachers are no longer at the centre of everything, and are no longer the "possessors" of math knowledge - rather, students are creating their own knowledge and understand by exploring mathematical ideas on their own.
Improving Grade 9 & 10 Student Achievement
We, along with many other schools in the TDSB, have observed the challenges faced by our students in the Grade 9 & 10 math courses. Our department is committed to supporting and improving our students' learning and achievement in these courses. We are currently in the process of creating a Math Improvement Plan for Monarch, which will include ongoing learning by our team and the implementation of a variety of high-impact teaching and assessment practices. More details to come...
Coding in the Grade 9 Curriculum
A teacher in our department participated in a professional development program that has helped us incorporate coding into various parts of the Grade 9 curriculum (geometry, financial math, etc.) We have also invested in a class set of "rovers" - vehicles that can move and draw geometric shapes based on commands programmed by students. Use of this technology makes the coding requirements of the Grade 9 course much more interactive and collaborative.