Creating Pathways for All Learners in the Middle Years

Leyton Schnellert, PhD, (he/his/him) is an associate professor in UBC’s Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy and Eleanor Rix Professor in Rural Teacher Education. He focuses on how teachers and teaching and learners and learning can mindfully embrace student diversity and inclusive education. Dr. Schnellert is the Pedagogy and Participation research cluster lead in UBC’s Institute for Community Engaged Research, inclusive education research lead in the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship, and co-chair of BC’s Rural Education Advisory. His community-based collaborative work contributes a counter argument to top-down approaches that operate from deficit models, instead drawing from communities’ funds of knowledge to build participatory, place-conscious, and culturally responsive practices. Leyton works and learns on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Sinixt who were declared extinct by Canada’s government in 1956 and stands in solidarity with the Sinixt in their reclamation efforts.Leyton has been a middle and secondary years classroom teacher and a learning resource teacher for grades K–12. His books, films, and research articles are widely referenced locally, nationally, and globally.Nicole Widdess currently works in the Richmond School District as an Elementary School Principal. She has been working for 20 years in both an elementary and high school setting. Multiple roles such as Resource teacher and ELL teacher have benefited her in understanding individual student needs. She is committed to teaching diverse learners and is passionate about literacy. She is co-author with Leyton Schnellert and Linda Watson to It’s all about thinking: Creating Pathways for All Learners in the Middle Years. Faye Brownlie’s (she/her/hers) goal is to build capacity with teachers, co-planning and co-teaching, providing seminars, workshops, and keynote presentations in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Asia. Passionate about including and supporting all learners, her work focuses on literacy, teaching for thinking, assessment, and inclusion. She has co-authored many books for teachers, including It’s All About Thinking series for Portage & Main Press and most recently, a 2nd edition of Grand Conversations Thoughtful Responses. Faye believes, ‘We know enough, collectively, to teach all our students to read, and more importantly, to create readers who not only can read but want to read."

• Table of ContentsForeword xiChapter 1 Teaching and Learning in the Middle Years: Diversity as Strength 1Developing and Sharing Our Practice 2 Middle Years Philosophy and Practice 2 Identity Development in the Middle Years 8 Conclusion 10 Chapter 2 Pathways to Professional Learning: Inquiry, Collaboration, and Professional Reading 11All Teachers, All Subjects 13 Working Together for All Learners 13 A Collaborative Model of Support 16 Collaborating to Teach Math to Combined Grades 18 Lesson Study: A Powerful Approach to Teacher Teams 21 Teacher Leaders as Facilitators and Co-Learners 24 Conclusion 26 Chapter 3 Responsive Teaching: Connecting Assessment, Planning, and Instruction 27(In)formative Assessment: Getting Started 28 Using a Performance-Based Assessment to Guide Your Teaching 32 Assessing Student Work 35 The Cycle of Assessing, Planning, Teaching, and Assessing 38 Planning to Use Formative Assessment Information 39 From Assessment to Instruction 41 Grouping Students for Optimal Learning 43 Differentiation 51 Conclusion 51 Chapter 4 Deep Learning: Integrating Content, Process, and Product 53The Curriculum We Need 54 Including Students with Significant Learning Challenges 58 Using Diverse Texts and Big Ideas to Enhance Student Engagement 68 Information Circles Using Text Sets 75 Conclusion 79 Chapter 5 Creating Pathways by Integrating the Arts 81Rationale for Integrating the Arts 82 Drama as a Pathway 84 Dance and Music as Pathways 91 Visual Arts as a Pathway 97 Conclusion 104 Chapter 6 Creating Pathways Using Inquiry and Project-Based Learning 105Project-Based Learning 106 Lessons in Decoding Texts and Constructing Meaning 110 Inquiry-Based Research 114 Inquiry in a Differentiated Math Class 126 Developing Powerful Questions in Humanities 131 Deep Inquiry Learning: An Integrative Unit 136 Conclusion 150 Chapter 7 Creating Pathways through Social-Emotional Learning 153Developing a Learning Community 154 Integrating Social-Emotional Learning and Project-Based Learning 158 Service Learning 167 Challenge-Based Projects in Community Learning 172 Effective Essential Questions and Challenge Statements 175 Conclusion 180 Chapter 8 Creating Pathways to Self-Regulated Learning 181Helping Students Self-Regulate 182 Building Criteria with Students 189 Making Shakespeare Accessible 190 Engaging Students as Critical Thinkers 195 Numeracy Circles: Tackling Problems Together 197 Conclusion 204 Chapter 9 Creating Pathways Using Diverse Texts 205What is a text? 206 The Power of Text Sets 206 First Nations Community-Generated Texts 209 Information Texts: Synthesis and Inference 212 Graphic Novels Expand Our Repertoire of Text 216 Integrating Diverse Texts 227 Stop Cyberbullying Unit 231 Conclusion 236 Chapter 10 Creating Pathways through Writing 237The Pleasure of Writing 238 Poetic Play Pays Off 239 A Pathway into Personal Writing 243 Writing Informational Texts through Inquiry 246 Conclusion 259 Chapter 11 Creating Pathways through Technology and New Literacies 261Making the World a Better Place Together 263 Musqueam Inquiry — Using iPads 269 Creating Pathways with New Technologies 277 Conclusion 288 References 289Index of Frameworks, Approaches, or Strategies 297