BUILDING A SCHOOL COMMUNITY THROUGH AN EDUCATIONAL FRAMEWORK

16/11/2020

Educational Frameworks thus far have been explored through the development of individualized teacher planners that serve to support them and connect a staff together, but this is not to say that one couldn’t take things a step further and incorporate students and parents as well. And the benefits of this? Imagine the power of deepening the understanding of how curriculums tie together and having an entire school and its community moving in a common direction to achieve learning goals. Although it may seem like a daunting task, once your Educational Framework is complete, this can be accomplished in a few easy steps. In an earlier article, a Language Framework was used to depict how planners could be layered so that students and parents were included, as shown below.

Using this model as a base, the following steps will outline how student and parent planners might be developed to support this framework.

Step 1: Select a Teacher Planner

For our purposes, we will use the detailed version of a Social Studies unit planner that was created for a mainstream teacher following the International Primary Curriculum (IPC) as our starting point (expanded version from the above Language Framework).

In the above, you can see that a teacher would need to start out by filling in Social Studies subject descriptors and then move onto inserting learning goals. From there, the teacher would need to think about any Language Arts and Math outcomes that could be met during Social Studies lessons, (Cambridge was chosen but it could be any other curriculum framework) and then plan activities/ assessments and list possible materials. In the last column, the teacher would need to list vocabulary and grammar that may be covered so that the Modern Foreign Language team and support staff could use these as a starting point for informing their lessons.

Step 2: Modify for Students

With our base planner chosen, the next step entails deciding which columns/rows are relevant to learners and if the ordering needs to be switched and/or the wording changed to be more accessible for them. The sample below depicts one way this could be done.

As you can see, with a few simple modifications a student could easily follow this planner as it walks them through what they will be learning about, learning goals, activities for the week and required materials. As for the Language Arts and Math connections and the Vocabulary List columns, these could be filled by students during class time, and discussions could be had on links between Social Students and other subject areas, ensuring learners gain a deeper understanding of how curriculums connect to one another. And will there be a lot of extra work for the teachers to do? Not really, as sections to be filled in by the teacher can be a copy and paste from their original unit planner.

Step 3: Modify for Parents

To create a parent-friendly planner, the same steps for developing a student planner could be followed, only this time the wording would be changed to encourage meaningful classroom discussions about learning. With that said, a parent planner could look something like the one below.

In looking at the above, you will note that the order of the columns matches that of the student planner; however, the wording has been changed from “Connections” to “Ask Your Child About …” so that parents have a starting point for conversations they can have with their children at home. Sections have also been added to include project/assignment/assessment due dates so that parents can help keep their children on top of homework for the week.

Once student and parent templates have been designed for mainstream subject areas, the same process can be repeated for specialists and learning support staff. And when all the planning templates are complete and inserted into your Educational Framework, what you will end up with is a solid plan of action for moving forward as a cohesive learning community that extends beyond school walls!

Building a School Community Through an Educational Framework

Is your school interested in elevating your current Educational Framework so that it includes learners and parents, but feel you may need some further guidance? Contact us, we are always happy to assist in any way we can!