Planning - for ALL

Just before the holidays, I spent a terrific morning with the team for our Compass Program at Kwalikum Secondary School.  This blended grade 8-10 environment is a cohort of students working together through their math, science, social studies and English coursework.  It's a cohort-based, half-day, linear program.  This supportive environment is team-taught by a classroom teacher, in partnership with a learning services teacher, often supported by an educational assistant.

One of the challenges with a multi-age, multi-ability group such as this is figuring out the best way to approach the curriculum.  The team has experimented with a variety of lesson structures, whole-group, small-group, individual, and partner work.   This group struggles with self-regulation, needing lots of support for social-emotional challenges, in addition to their academic needs.

We've been exploring some of Shelley Moore's ideas around inclusion, looking for ways to find a way in for every learner in the room.  We're also inspired by the changes to the new curriculum, thinking about big ideas and essential understandings. 

Our goal for the morning was to explore ways to support learners with math and science.  We started

the day with a big pile of print-outs from the new curriculum documents, and explored some of the overlapping concepts between the grade levels.   Knowing that math, in particular, is a cumulative skill, we worked toward thinking about the various concepts along a continuum, from a beginning point to increased layers of complexity, rather than according to the grade level they "belonged in."


By working with concentric circles, the teachers developed lesson frameworks that had the big idea for the unit in the center, the essential skills in the first ring, and increasingly complex skills in subsequent circles.  The lesson for ALL is the one that everyone can access in relation to the big idea.  Instruction will initially focus on mastery of the foundational skills and conceptual understandings.  Students who need to stay in that place will continue to explore and practice those concepts, and students who are ready for more will be given opportunities to move on.  There will be space for learners who want to work alongside the support of an adult, and space for learners ready to continue more independently. This will be accomplished by having the students work through self assessment as well as teacher assessment, and self-select the level of support they need.  Groups will not be assigned or static, but rather, they will ebb and flow from big idea to big idea.  Everyone will explore big ideas together, regardless of the grade level they are assigned to, and move on when they are ready.

It's very difficult to provide for such a diverse group of learners, the team is always concerned about the students who need the most significant support and adaptations.  Differentiating by picking the most appropriate starting place will give everyone a way to participate in classroom lessons without needing to work on materials that are separate or stand-alone.  I'm looking forward to seeing where this new way of approaching instruction takes them, this is a classroom where They Are All Our Kids.