Course Descriptions


COMMUNITY BASED LEARNING & CO-OPERATIVE EDUCATION
Community-based learning enhances the student’s personal development, their sense of belonging to the community and their understanding of community roles and responsibilities. Community-based learning experiences improve the student’s understanding of employment requirements and the knowledge, skills and attitudes they are acquiring in school and their future plans. These experiences also assist students to develop skills described in the Conference Board of Canada’s Employability Skills 2000+, including fundamental, personal management, and teamwork skills; specific career, occupation, and job skills; and labour market knowledge and understanding.

 Student Expectations:

• Demonstrate an understanding of and appreciation for their community and its potential
• Demonstrate the behaviors and attitudes of active citizenship
• Demonstrate a growth in understanding of the importance of safety in the home, workplace, and community
• Apply fundamental skills, including communicating, managing information, using numbers, and problem solving
• Apply personal management skills, including positive attitudes and behaviors, responsibility, adaptability, and lifelong learning
• Apply teamwork skills
• Demonstrate an understanding of the skills and knowledge related to a range of careers and community roles
• Demonstrate a commitment to the process of personal growth
• Expand the range of artifacts in their Lifework Portfolios
• Demonstrate the skills and attitudes required to be successful in a co-operative education course

Classroom Expectations

• Demonstrate maturity in daily interactions with the instructor, peers and guests to our classroom
• Be punctual and attend class regularly
• Demonstrate respect and safe practice for the technical equipment, resources and school property
• Complete all assignments, test, quizzes and projects by the assigned date
• Be prepared for class at all times

COURSE EVALUATION:
A. In-School Component – 4 modules
     Personal Discovery                        
     Workplace Readiness
     Health and Safety at the Workplace
     Reflective Learning

Major Projects
Mini Assignments
Journals/Reflections
Portfolio Development

B. Out-of-School Component

• Co-op Work Placement ?%

Assessment: To determine how well students are learning, assessment strategies have to be designed to systematically gather information on the achievement of the curriculum outcomes.  In planning assessments, teachers use a broad range of strategies in an appropriate balance to give students multiple opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge, skills and attitudes.  Many types of assessment strategies can be used to gather such information, including, but not limited to,

• Attendance and participation
• Formal and informal observations
• Work samples
• Anecdotal records
• Conferences
• Teacher-made and other tests
• Portfolios
• Learning journals
• Questioning
• Performance assessment
• Peer- and self-assessment

Formative Assessment is to show growth over time, determine student needs, plan next step in instruction, and provide students with descriptive feedback.
Summative Assessment is to determine the extent to which learning has occurred in students.
Guiding Principles of Fair Assessment: The fundamental assessment principles endorsed by the Department of Education and Culture are as follows:

• Assessment methods should be appropriate for and compatible with the purpose and context of the assessment.
• Students should be provided with sufficient opportunity to demonstrate the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours being assessed.
• Procedures for judging or scoring student performance should be appropriate for the assessment method used and be consistently applied and monitored.
• Procedures for summarizing and interpreting assessment results should yield accurate and informative representations of a student’s performance in relation to the curriculum outcomes for the reporting period.
• Assessment reports should be clear, accurate and of practical value to the audience for whom they are intended.
• Assessment practices should be such that the best interests of the student are paramount
• Assessment should inform teaching and promote learning.
• Assessment is an integral and ongoing part of the assessment process and clearly related to the learning outcomes.
• Assessment must be fair and equitable for all students and involve multiple sources of information.

 Evaluation:
 Evaluation involves teachers and others in analysing and reflecting upon information gathered in a variety of ways about student learning. This process requires:

• developing clear criteria and guidelines for assigning marks or grades to student work
• synthesizing information for a variety of sources
• weighing and balancing all information available
• using a high level of professional judgement in making decisions based on the information available
• Many times, students can show mastery of subject material in a variety of ways.  I will do my level best to provide each student with opportunities and assessments that suit their strengths.

Communication
Teachers will communicate with parents throughout their child’s learning process and parents have a variety of ways for which to reach out.    The methods of communication include, but are not limited to, the following: 
Phone Calls

• PowerSchool
• Emails
• Communication logs
• Parent teacher and curriculum events
• Teacher’s website
• Report cards

More specifically, I can be reached at carterd@hrce.ca , Room 308 O2 Cell: 902-399-8327


I can be reached during school hours until 3:30 pm.  Please leave a message and I will get back to you as soon as possible.  I can be reached by email after school hours.