Mar 82 min read

Message from the Principals 3/8/2024

Updated: Apr 12

Hello everyone! Today's Topics: 1: Important Reminders

2: Curriculum Focus - Constructivism

3: Learning Highlight -G2 research activity

4: House Points

5: Photos of the week!

Important Reminders:

Summer school registration is OPEN!!
Mar 15 - Hope Family Day
Mar 22 - Student-Lead Parent/Teacher Conferences
- REGISTRATION closes Mar 10
Mar 22 - Parent Workshop: Hope High School Program/College and Careers Guidance
March 25 to April 2 - Spring Break (NO SCHOOL)
April 1 - Teachers' Professional Develpment (NO SCHOOL)
April 29 - Open School
2024-25 School Year Calendar is here!

2: Curriculum Focus - Constructivism

At Hope, the seven foundations of the IPC and IMYC help to guide our day to day approach to Teaching and Learning. In previous blogs, we’ve explored many elements of the foundations, including “Differentiation & Inclusion”, "Teaching & Learning Policy”, and “The Process to Facilitate Learning for All”. Over the next few weeks, the Curriculum Focus updates will explore the 2nd Foundation - “A Progressive Pedagogy”.

The idea of the progressive pedagogy has been informed by a range of learning theories and practices across the world, and has been grouped into four key areas:

Constructivism
Brain Based Learning
Experiential and Active Learning
Metacognition.

Today’s update will focus particularly in the area of constructivism. This approach seeks to ensure that students are not simply passive in their day-to-day learning, awaiting direct instruction but rather, they build up the skills to follow their personal areas of exploration through facilitation and guidance from their teachers.

At Hope, constructivism is enabled through such things as the “Knowledge Harvest” which allows our students to connect new knowledge to prior knowledge and increases the awareness of how new learning builds upon old. This allows the students to make these connections through active engagement, rather than through direct teacher instruction.

Another lens in which students engage with a constructivist approach is through building up their understanding throughout their “Research, Recording and Reflection” tasks, particularly through reflection, as this allows students to demonstrate their own personal journey in deepened understanding. These tasks also allow students to actively engage with their classroom environment, as well as socially with their peers.

At the end of the unit, the constructivist approach is seen very strongly through the Exit Point. The Exit Point allows students to build connections between all of the learning that has happened throughout their unit and find ways to share this understanding with their peers, their teachers and the community. Learners are co-constructors of their Exit Point ideas, having agency and voice in the communication medium, as well as the understanding shared through the medium.

3: Learning Highlight -G2 research activity

The grade 2 students learned about the parts of the teeth in the IPC unit "How Humans Work". After researching the parts and functions of the teeth, students used paper clay to create teeth based on what they learned.

The challenge was to create an accurate number of permanent teeth (28 permanent teeth) and try to form the teeth parts accurately as best as they could. (Teeth parts include: incisors, canines, bicuspid, and molars.) Great work G2 students!!