Olds Elementary School is participating in a pilot project designed to help teachers tailor their lessons to each individual student to better help them learn.
The project was begun in November and runs until the end of June. Julie Bjarnason, a Grade 1 teacher, Cathy Hayes, a Grade 3 teacher and Carrie Krause, a Grade 4 teacher, are working with two coordinators from Chinook's Edge School Division head office. Curriculum, instruction and technology departments are also involved with different parts of the project as well.
Debbie Thompson, vice-principal at OES, said the project has three goals: to build capacity in the school, to foster collaboration and build curriculum.
ìWe wanted to look at what our needs are as a pre-kindergarten to Grade 4 dual-track school offering both French Immersion and English Ö and how we could best support all students in their learning and what teachers needed in order to do that,î she said.
OES is focusing on strategies that will help all students on an individual basis by the participating teachers drawing up profiles for each student on how they learn best. The key, Thompson said, is doing that without exhausting teachers ìbecause it's a big job when you look out at 20 smiling faces and how do you make learning exciting and fresh and accessible for all the kids.î The profiles would go with the student as they advance on to the higher grades, giving the next teacher a better idea of how each individual student learns.
At the same time, the project aims to transfer the knowledge the participating teachers have gained to all staff, so they can implement those strategies in their classrooms in the future. At the end of the project, the information gleaned from it will be shared with division head office. Staff there will then transfer that information to Alberta Education so all students might benefit from what was learned in the future.
ìEssentially, what we're trying to find out is how can we (teach individual students) most effectively for all students. The idea is if you start to learn some of these things, how do you branch out and really try to make a difference for us as a school division and then provincially as well,î Thompson said.
About 70 students are indirectly involved in the project in the three classrooms.
Bjarnason said the project has gone well for her thus far, giving her specific techniques to use to help individual students.
ìFor my future, every time I have another student like this, they will just benefit because I will have learned so much from this project. It's a much more hands-on approach,î she said, adding that there is much more information available to her now than when she started teaching 15 years ago.
Hayes said the advantage to this project is that rather than specialists who have never taught coming in and telling the teachers how use the methods ó the coordinators have actually taught before and can suggest ways to use the methods that will actually work when teachers are juggling 20 or more students at once.
ìA lot of people have great ideas, but it's a matter of practicality. (This) is very practical in that sense,î she said.
