LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES

The opportunities described below provide educators with supports to develop their practice in committment to the belief statements about students and these instructional and assessment goals:

• working through a lens of culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy

• applying the Equity Habits of Mind when designing learning spaces as well as learning and assessment opportunities

• using Universal Design for Learning principles to provide multiple means of engagement in instruction and assessment

• employing Differentiated Instruction where necessary to be responsive to supporting individual students’ learning needs and academic success, and

• paying attention to which students may need more intensive support to address learning opportunity gaps in a targeted way through a tiered approach.

You are invited to express your interest in joining an Inquiry Learning Team whose work will support the WRDSB's continued shift toward de-streaming in Grades 9 and 10. The courses that the work of these teams will focus on includes, but is not limited to the following: ENL1W, ENG2D, MTH1W, MPM2D, CGC1D (or CGC1W), CHC2D, SNC1W, SNC2D.

These small teams of educators will have an opportunity to collaborate and co-learn alongside educators from Learning Support Services throughout the semester on a common problem of practice or area of interest. Depending on interest, these teams may be cross-curricular or include educators teaching the same subject/course.

Each team will have the chance to define their inquiry focus within the three areas below, all with the purpose of improving student access to curricular expectations through effective instructional and assessment practices.

Participating educators will commit to the following

• 4-6 half days of collaborative learning (these may include collaborative meetings, classroom observations, planning time, focused learning, etc.) where occasional teacher coverage will be provided;

• implementing learning/approaches in their own classes in order to share reflections at subsequent meetings; and

• sharing their learning beyond the team.

Please complete this expression of interest form by February 23, 2024. Please connect with a consultant if you have any questions.

To view recordings from meet-ups from past years, please click below

• 2021-2022 - Math Meet-Ups centred around practices in grade 9 destreamed mathematics (MTH1W)

• 2022-2023 - Cross-Curricular Meet-Ups centred around supports for all educators (especially de- and single streamed classes)