Meaningful Conversations

11/19/2017

I love to meet up with friends and colleagues for a coffee and a chat. The warm ambience and the aromatic brews of trendy coffee shops are so welcoming on a blustery November afternoon. Sometimes, it’s not possible to get together though, due to conflicting schedules and full calendars.

Developing a Professional Learning Network
So, over the past year, I’ve become engaged in several online educational communities on Twitter and Facebook. I’ve “met” amazing people from all over the world and learned from them, as they have from me. To a certain degree, we’ve even become friends and I hope that I will have the pleasure of meeting them some day.

https://twitter.com/aaron_hogan

Schools in British Columbia (where I live and teach) now have a redesigned curriculum. We are teaching and learning about core competencies, as defined by the BC Ministry of Education:

Core Competencies are sets of intellectual, personal, and social and emotional proficiencies that all students need to develop in order to engage in deeper learning. The Core Competencies include thinking, communication, and social and personal competencies.

Communication is Key
One of the Communication competencies is to “connect and engage with others (to share and develop ideas).” Not only do our students need to develop this competency but so do we as educators. I’m thankful for the connections I’ve made and all that I’ve learned from others, locally and globally. Now, I’d like to share some of my work, especially with the BC educators who have expressed interest in the posters which I’ve posted previously.

I’ve created these posters based on the sample “I statements” for the Communication core competency. Please keep in mind that these statements are meant to be “progressive and additive,” which means … don’t stop there! Change the wording to fit your class, your community, your teaching, and your students’ learning needs. Remember, the competencies and the statements were never meant to be a checklist. You might post one or two of these posters for a month or for a whole term and use them as talking points or check-ins. (How are we doing with this?) Or you might wish to post them by your desk or in your plan book as reminders to yourself and to help you focus your planning. (How might I incorporate this CC in ELA or STEM?)

I’m learning too and feel like I’m developing a clearer concept of what this is all about. I’d love to hear how you are teaching the Communication competency in your classroom, what you’ve seen in your students, and how you are practicing it yourself within your own Professional Learning Network (PLN), locally and online.

N.B. The image is Creative Commons and the sample statements are from the Ministry website. I created these posters myself and am offering them to BC educators for free. They are not for sale and never will be. You are encouraged to edit them and make them your own. Once you’ve made a template, it’s easy to just change the “I statement” and the CC at the bottom. Other free Creative Commons images are available through Pixabay, or a Google search and click on Tools > Usage Rights. Within Microsoft Word, click on Insert > Online Pictures > Licensing > Creative Commons only.