Learning Opportunities

Alberta’s impending new curriculum presents educators with both opportunities and challenges. With a focus on developing conceptual understanding, educators will need to re-orient their curriculum planning with a greater focus on transferable learnings and broad concepts. While this may appear as a daunting challenge to re-design curriculum it is in fact an opportunity to build on the excellent work that has established Alberta’s education system as one of the best in the world. Over the past several years, Alberta teachers have explored and adapted teaching to put a greater focus on core competencies. Concept-based learning is an excellent complement to the competence work that has already taken place in the province. Paring transferable competence (critical thinking, collaboration etc.) with transferable concepts will help to truly prepare students for success in a rapidly changing world.

In preparation for the implementation of the new curriculum, this 2-day session will guide educators in identifying the powerful and important work that has ensured quality learning over the past decade, and the connections between the work of the recent past with the emerging demands of the new curriculum. Educators will work collaboratively, guided by Garfield Gini-Newman to explore, reflect and review their district’s design for learning framework with a mindfulness to what enhancements may be necessary to bring the new Alberta curriculum to life in their classrooms.  Further to this framework reflection, district teams will be guided in the development of frameworks for unit and lesson design that will make planning both manageable and powerful by ensuring effective teaching for competence and conceptual understanding.