Framework for Teaching & Learning

Students learn best when they have a sense of belonging to a positive learning community in which they have regular opportunities to work collaboratively.

Teachers…

• Organize the classroom environment with flexible opportunities for individual and group learning and resources to support a self-managed classroom.
• Develop and revisit classroom norms in partnership with students to ensure inclusive and respectful interactions.
• Use effective restorative conflict resolution practices to re-establish feelings of intellectual safety when needed.
• Provide direct instruction and guided practice in the skills and dispositions of effective collaboration.
• Affirm identity development over time and offer opportunities for learners to reflect on and express their various evolving identities.
• Facilitate student to student discourse leading to the social construction of knowledge.
• Model disciplined thinking and encourage questions, debate, dialogue and discussion as the hallmarks of academic discourse.
• Structure opportunities for students to share work publicly and promote learning through engagement with others as mentors and critics.

Students…

• Use classroom resources and space to develop independence in the learning process.
• Uphold and exhibit classroom norms for respectful behavior and productive collaboration.
• Participate in conflict resolution processes with a willingness to understand other perspectives.
• Support the expression of various identities in the school community.
• Express ideas and opinions clearly while also actively seeking to understand and appreciate multiple points of view.
• Share work publicly and exchange meaningful feedback to improve process and product.

Students learn best when they understand performance expectations and are individually supported in meeting challenging standards.

Teachers…

• Use learning targets to describe content standards and learner expectations achievable by all with flexible pacing and targeted support.
• Build learners’ understanding of success using rubrics, examples and models of student work.
• Offer multiple and varied ways of demonstrating mastery and timely formative feedback that supports student progress.
• Sequence content and manage the amount of new information in order to attend to cognitive load.
• Anticipate or uncover misconceptions to design differentiated, responsive instruction.
• Pose intriguing questions, problems and tasks that engage all students in productive struggle.
• Design learning experiences with a strengths-based approach, avoiding deficit thinking.
• Engage students in practice, rehearsal and critique protocols to refine knowledge and skills.

Students…

• Ask questions to clarify expectations, learning targets and available resources.
• Describe the attributes of success and reflect on their own related strengths.
• Use models, rubrics, and feedback to evaluate and improve their own work.
• Build effective personalized habits of work and study.
• Persist in the face of challenges, seeking teacher and/or peer support as needed.
• Develop stamina, focus, and confidence as a result of overcoming challenges.

Students learn best when they see content as meaningful and organized around big ideas and questions and can transfer learning to new contexts.

Teachers…

• Learn about students’ family and cultural backgrounds to maximize opportunities to amplify connectedness to the curriculum.
• Link new learning to students’ prior knowledge and life experiences.
• Develop tasks that require students to synthesize, transfer and apply knowledge and skills to new situations.
• Make purposeful connections to broad concepts, themes, and cross-curricular ideas and skills.
• Engage students in applying new knowledge and skills to authentic situations that have an impact on others.
• Design learning experiences that position students as producers not just consumers of information.

Students…

• Be curious about new learning and find connections to life experiences and background knowledge.
• Organize and synthesize new information into broad themes, topics and concepts with cross curricular meaning.
• Share personally relevant experiences when studying new ideas and concepts.
• Demonstrate understanding of big ideas and concepts by applying them to new or novel situations or problems.
• Actively participate in producing meaningful products, performances, or presentations that have an impact on others.
• Recognize and acknowledge that meaning is different for everyone and seek to understand the value of new learning for others.

Students learn best when they are actively engaged in authentic learning tasks and given opportunities to construct meaning and develop understanding.

Teachers…

• Activate curiosity through the design of learning experiences that appeal to learners’ emotions like wonder, surprise, or purposeful uncertainty.
• Structure lessons with an inquiry-orientation and to promote learner agency and self-direction.
• Use media and technology tools to enhance relevance, research, and real world impact.
• Make thinking public and engage students in examining each other’s ways of knowing.
• Give students contributing roles to build individual strengths and talents.
• Situate new learning in a local or global context to highlight relevance.
• Respond to differences by enabling learners to engage with, make sense of, and demonstrate understanding in different ways.

Students…

• Remain open and interested in new ideas and learning experiences.
• Take initiative to bring innovative ideas and new resources into the learning community.
• Actively explore interests, questions, and intriguing problems.
• Use technology skilfully and responsibly as a tool for learning and exhibiting work.
• Hold themselves to a high standard of excellence that keeps them focused.
• Explain the local or global context for learning.
• Embrace partnership and leadership roles in class with self-awareness and adaptability.

Students learn best when they make choices about and take responsibility for their own learning goals and progress.

Teachers…

• Give students opportunities to make choices about content, process, and/or product.
• Enact student-led classroom routines to encourage independence and resourcefulness.
• Introduce students to diverse role models who have overcome challenges and negative stereotype threats.
• Help students understand that mistakes, failures, and self-doubt are temporary and a normal part of the learning process.
• Develop the habit of reflection – monitoring one’s own thinking and setting goals for improvement.
• Explicitly teach strategies for recognizing and regulating emotional states that impede learning.
• Model and discuss healthy ways to balance academic expectations, personal interests and family life.

Students…

• Know themselves as learners and make good choices about what, when, and how they want to learn.
• Take ownership for effective work habits and strategies that lead to productive outcomes.
• Seek role models and trusted adults who inspire confidence and model resilience.
• Persist through challenges and feelings of self-doubt.
• Learn to use metacognitive strategies to monitor thinking.
• Self-assess and reflect on achievement in order to set ambitious but attainable goals.
• Manage and regulate emotions in order to be ready to learn.