Learning Opportunities

Innovators don’t invent without a deep understanding of how the world works. With this foundation, they apply conceptual understanding to solve new problems. This workshop provides tools for how to help students uncover conceptual relationships and transfer them to new situations.  With a focus on the unique teaching environment of the colony school setting most frequently presenting cross-graded scenarios Gr 1 – 3 and 4 – 8 with little to know access to technology in the classroom.

This workshop demonstrates practical ways teachers can begin to build the schema in students’ brains that facilitates deeper understanding and the ability to unlock complex problems through learning transfer.

• Investigate the role of conceptual understanding in the retrieval of information, depth of understanding and transfer of learning  
• Understand that transfer is both a means and an end  
• Examine the importance of quality thinking and metacognition in the transfer of learning  

Examples from classroom lessons and projects are used to support understanding throughout the session.   

Targeted Outcomes for teachers at the end of the day:   

• I can compose transferable conceptual relationships and corresponding questions that build both breadth and depth of understanding.   
• I can build understanding of single concepts and teach students how to make connections between concepts.    
• I can use multiple, fact-rich contexts that illuminate conceptual relationships.  
• I can provide opportunities for students to transfer their understanding and provide solutions to problems.   
• I can teach the language of conceptual learning explicitly to students.   
• I can make the goals visible using rubrics, success criteria, examples, think-alongs and more. 
• I can leverage this work in a cross-graded classroom using the Alberta Curriculum as it presently exists and will be in a position to adapt it moving forward in any curriculum.