Teacher(s):

Course Description:

This course focuses on learning strategies to help students become better, more independent learners. Students will learn how to develop and apply literacy and numeracy skills, personal-management skills, and interpersonal and teamwork skills to improve their learning and achievement in school, the workplace, and the community. The course helps students build confidence and motivation to pursue opportunities for success in secondary school and beyond.

Resources Required:

This course is entirely online and does not require nor rely on any textbook. The materials required for the course are:

• A scanner, smart phone camera, or similar device to upload handwritten or hand-drawn work
• A digital video camera, a web camera, or similar device to record and upload video recordings
• A computer microphone, smart phone microphone, or similar device to record and upload audio recordings

Teaching and Learning Strategies:

Helping students become self-directed, lifelong learners is a fundamental aim of the guidance and career education curriculum. When students are engaged in active and experiential learning strategies, they tend to retain knowledge for longer periods and develop meaningful skills. Active and experiential learning strategies also enable students to apply their knowledge and skills to real-life issues and situations.

Some of the teaching and learning strategies that are suitable to material taught in guidance and career education include cooperative small-group learning, one-on-one teaching, guided learning, personal reflection, role playing, simulations, case-study analysis, presentations, and tasks involving real workplace materials, experiential learning, and independent study. Teachers must provide a wide range of activities and assignments that promote mastery of basic concepts and development of inquiry/research skills.

In the guidance and career education program, teachers provide students with opportunities to develop self-knowledge and make connections with the world around them. Students learn how to work independently and with others as they acquire the essential skills and work habits needed for success in school, in the workplace, and in daily life. Students learn how to make decisions about future learning and work, how to put plans into action responsibly, and how to reflect on the actions they’ve taken and revise their plans as necessary. They learn by doing. They synthesize what they have learned by reflecting, analyzing, evaluating, making decisions, and setting goals. They apply their learning both in the classroom and in other contexts, and they evaluate their progress.

Ultimately, students learn to take responsibility for their own learning in preparation for life beyond secondary school. It is essential to emphasize the relationship of guidance and career education to the world outside the classroom, so that students recognize that what they learn in these courses can have a significant influence on the rest of their lives, from their educational choices to decisions about their careers and personal lives.

Assessment and Evaluation Strategies of Student Performance:

Every student attending Christian Virtual School is unique. We believe each student must have the opportunities to achieve success according to their own interests, abilities, and goals. Like the Ministry of Education, we have defined high expectations and standards for graduation, while introducing a range of options that allow students to learn in ways that suit them best and enable them to earn their diplomas. Christian Virtual School’s Assessment, Evaluation, and Reporting Policy is based on seven fundamental principles, as outlined in the Growing Success: Assessment, Evaluation, and Reporting in Ontario Schools document.

When these seven principles are fully understood and observed by all teachers, they guide the collection of meaningful information that helps inform instructional decisions, promote student engagement, and improve student learning. At Christian Virtual School, teachers use practices and procedures that:

1. are fair, transparent, and equitable for all students;
2. support all students, including those with special education needs, those who are learning English, and those who are First Nation, Métis, or Inuit;
3. are carefully planned to relate to the curriculum expectations and learning goals and, as much as possible, to the interests, learning styles and preferences, needs, and experiences of all students;
4. are communicated clearly to students and parents or guardians at the beginning of the school year or course and at other appropriate points throughout the school year or course;
5. are ongoing, varied in nature, and administered over a period of time to provide multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate the full range of their learning;
6. provide ongoing descriptive feedback that is clear, specific, meaningful, and timely to support improved learning and achievement; and
7. develop students’ self-assessment skills to enable them to access their own learning, set specific goals, and plan next steps for their learning.

For more information on Christian Virtual School’s general assessment and evaluation strategies, you can refer to our Assessment, Evaluation, and Reporting Policy.

To ensure that we are meeting the principles of Growing Success, we carefully plan all the assessments within our courses.

First and foremost, they are designed as opportunities for students to improve their learning. Assessment for the purpose of improving student learning is seen as both “assessment for learning (AfL)” and “assessment as learning (AaL)” according to Growing Success. As part of assessment for learning, teachers provide students with descriptive feedback and coaching for improvement. Teachers engage in assessment as learning by helping all students develop their capacity to be independent, autonomous learners who can set individual goals, monitor their own progress, determine next steps, and reflect on their thinking and learning. Examples of these types of assessments in this course include:

Second, we focus on a balance between assessing students’ acquisition of knowledge as well as their skills of thinking, communication, and application of subject-specific material. In this course, you can expect assessment to be divided into the following balance:

Lastly, the assessments are designed so that teachers have an opportunity to gain an understanding of a student’s learning through direct observation of students, one-on-one conversations with students, and evaluating products that students submit. Examples of these methods in this course include:

For more information on our assessment and evaluation strategies, refer to Section 6, Student Achievement, in the Course Calendar.

Program Planning Considerations: