Photo by Shaun Penner

By Liam Verster

Draft K-6 Curriculum

Grande Prairie Catholic Schools collecting feedback from teachers on draft K-6 curriculum

May 18, 2021 | 1:14 PM

The Grande Prairie and District Catholic School division has opened a curriculum review process to gather feedback from teachers regarding Alberta’s draft K-6 curriculum.

Jessie Shirley, the Assistant Superintendent of Learning and Teaching for the division is leading the curriculum review, which she says involves hearing a lot of feedback on a number of issues and topics.

“Having now had a chance to have the [draft document] in their hands for a period of time now, we would just like to hear their voice in terms of how would this curriculum be implemented? What are their feelings on the content? Is there enough of best practices in elementary education regarding those important concepts that allow students to think deeply? Is there a coherence in the subjects between subject areas and across the grades that allow some of those deeper understandings to move between subject areas and say from grade two, three, four to five?” says Shirley.

Along with collecting feedback of what is perceived as in need of changing and what would be considered beneficial, Shirley wants to hear what teachers think of the individual outcome expectations.

“I’d like teachers to provide feedback in terms of ‘do you see anything problematic with the specific outcomes,’ or ‘maybe you can identify outcomes that weren’t in our previous outcomes that you are happy to see’. So, we’re going to go from ‘in general what do you see as the strengths,’ then I’m going to ask some over arching feedback about the curriculum, and then get down to the specific outcomes.”

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The school division is collecting feedback just from those legally responsible for implementing the curriculum, meaning teachers and administration, and not teacher’s assistants, parents, or other individuals.

Shirley will gather feedback through to the end of June, and will then compile it into a series of reports.

Those reports will be passed along to Superintendent Karl Germann, who will then have a chance to review and analyze the feedback before forwarding it to Alberta Education.

Shirley adds that there is a survey open on the Alberta Government’s website where the public can submit their feedback of the draft curriculum.