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St. Albert teachers do curriculum homework

Months-long scramble to get ready for fall term
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MAKING A GAME PLAN — Phys-ed specialists Ryan Parker (left) and Glenn Wilson discuss the new K-6 phys-ed curriculum during a workshop at Lorne Akins July 6, 2022. Wilson said he plans to spend most of this summer creating lesson plans for the new curriculum. KEVIN MA/St. Albert Gazette

St. Albert teachers will have a lot of homework this summer as they race to get ready for this fall’s new school curriculum.

About 42 St. Albert Public teachers met at Lorne Akins on July 4 to 6 for a workshop on the new provincial school curriculum, portions of which are set to roll out this September.

The province is revising the eight core subjects taught in Alberta’s K-6 schools. It originally planned to launch the new courses this fall, but hit the brakes on five of them following a wave of criticism from teachers and parents. Instead, just three of the revised curricula — K-3 math and english language arts and K-6 physical education and wellness — will roll out this September, with the others to reach classrooms in the next two years.

This is still a pretty compressed timeline, said St. Albert Public curriculum services director Catherine Coyne — teachers typically take a year to adapt their lessons to a new curriculum, but this time they have just a few months.

Coyne said St. Albert Public teachers held training sessions on the new curricula in recent months. Last week’s paid, voluntary workshop was meant to give teachers a chance to collaborate. The district plans to hold a second such workshop in August.

Sir Alexander Mackenzie Grade 2 teachers Lucy Raven and Kim Smolley said it was exciting to get together with other teachers to share ideas.

“We’ve got a huge leg up with this,” Smolley said.

New class plans

The new curriculum sets out the “what” of education, or the skills students should have at the end of each grade, Coyne explained. Teachers at last week’s workshop worked on the “how,” or the lessons and resources they will use to teach those skills.

Leo Nickerson phys-ed specialist Glenn Wilson was one of the teachers at last week’s session.

“To be perfectly honest, I thought it was going to be terrible,” he said of the new curriculum — the new document proposes to have phys-ed teachers teach sexual education and financial literacy, which he believes would have taken vital class time away from fundamental movement skills (running, jumping, throwing, etc.) and physical literacy (e.g. balance and speed) needed for active living.

Wilson said the province has since allowed schools to shunt sex-ed and financial literacy out of phys-ed and into other courses. St. Albert Public has done so because it is more efficient, allowing him and his fellow phys-ed teachers to put more focus on physical literacy in their lessons.

“It’s such a skeletal curriculum that it has inadvertently given us a foot in the door to create something better than would have existed originally,” he said.

Raven and Smolley said they are happy to see many similarities between the old and new english and math curricula, with both still focused on literacy and numeracy. English now puts a greater focus on phonics, while math now requires Grade 2 students to understand numbers from one to 1,000 instead of one to 100.

Wilson said the tight timeline for this curriculum rollout is pretty onerous.

“We’re just finishing [the Grade 1 course plan] now, and we’ve spent three days on this,” he said, adding he expects to spend most of the summer on plans for the other five grades.

Raven said this first year of the rollout will definitely be a challenge, as teachers will have to bridge knowledge gaps caused by differences between the old and new curricula.

Coyne said she is uncertain about how this fall’s curriculum rollout will affect student education, but is confident teachers will make it work.

“I know the students in our division are in amazing hands with our teachers.”

Visit www.alberta.ca/curriculum.aspx for details on the new curricula.


Kevin Ma

About the Author: Kevin Ma

Kevin Ma joined the St. Albert Gazette in 2006. He writes about Sturgeon County, education, the environment, agriculture, science and aboriginal affairs. He also contributes features, photographs and video.
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