Digital Promise Signature Workspace

English: Understanding Contemporary First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Voices

This workspace, created by Lynn Thomas, features her thinking through the most important factors to support her students when planning for a new course.

My factors 

Literacy 7-12

Students build knowledge from their experiences both in and out of school.

Literacy 7-12

Composition is the expression of ideas through writing.

Literacy 7-12

Critical Literacy is the ability to identify purposes, motives, and potential biases of a particular text to enhance overall comprehension and critical thinking.

Literacy 7-12

Motivation is the desire and energy that guides behavior.

Literacy 7-12

The trauma that comes from experiencing adversity in childhood releases stress hormones that can lead to changes in the body and brain.

Texts

Rich Library: Multimodal
Literacy 7-12

Providing access to a variety of multimodal texts that align with the interests of learners allows them to practice digital, information, and Critical Literacy.

Rich Library: Poetry

Literacy 7-12

With figurative language and creative sentence structure, poetry supports the development of a deeper understanding of the different ways language makes meaning.

Selecting Culturally Responsive Texts
Literacy 7-12

Selecting culturally responsive reading materials, including multicultural and diverse texts, is critical for supporting all students.

strategies

Model the Assignment or Skill
Literacy 7-12

By talking through their thinking at each step of a process, teachers can model what learning looks like.

Guided Inquiry
Literacy 7-12

During guided inquiry, teachers foster student autonomy by designing lessons centered on meaningful questions in which students locate, analyze, and present relevant information on their own or in small groups.

Gallery Walk
Literacy 7-12

As students move through multimodal stations pertaining to a particular unit, the social and physical nature of the activity supports deeper understanding.

Writing Conferences
Literacy 7-12

Writing conferences allow students to fully immerse, share, reflect, and receive feedback during the writing process, promoting Motivation for continuing the sometimes lengthy revision process that occurs in the upper grades.

Audiobooks

Literacy 7-12

Audiobooks allow students to hear fluent reading and to experience books that may be above their reading skills.

Products/tasks

Annotating
Literacy 7-12

When annotating, students engage deeply with a text and make their thinking visible while reading.

Composition Projects: Multimodal
Literacy 7-12

For adolescent learners, the Composition process can become more robust, as learners begin to express ideas through multiple media, which includes visual, audio, and digital production.

Creating Visuals
Literacy 7-12

When students express information visually, they are activating more cognitive processes while problem solving and increasing their experience with alternate texts.

Producing Counter-texts
Literacy 7-12

When students write from a non-dominant or marginalized perspective, they consider and give voice to points of view that are often missing.

Authentic Audiences & Purposes
Literacy 7-12

When adolescents can connect and communicate with authentic audiences about their interests and values, reading and writing become more personally meaningful and relevant.

reflection/metacognition

Reflect on Learning
Literacy 7-12

Student reflection on learning, particularly when done collaboratively, is critical for moving knowledge of content and strategies into Long-term Memory.