Competency-Based Curriculum in High School

By Eve Krakow

Competency-based teaching is all about active learning, says Myrna Hynes, curriculum coordinator for Riverside School Board. "You help students learn how to learn, rather than just cover content." To illustrate, teachers Amber Coones, from Centennial Regional High School, and Colleen Carter, from Heritage Regional High School, shared some of their classroom strategies.

Portfolios

Coones combines portfolios and cross-curricular learning with her students in English Language Arts and Geography. Students follow a four-step portfolio process: create, revise, select and reflect.

Each week, students "create" pieces of writing, either in class or at home, through free-writes, mini-workshops, and other activities. Revision is carried out by the students, their peers and the teacher, using an editing checklist and conferencing. Students rewrite their drafts and repeat the process several times.

At the end of the term, following prescribed criteria, students select the pieces they think best represent their abilities. Other pieces go in a "hit 'n miss" section. Students must also submit one piece from each of their other subjects. Then comes a key step: reflection. Coones gives her students prompts and worksheets to make it less abstract.

To avoid having to evaluate 120 portfolios over her Christmas vacation, Coones conferences with her students individually in class. Not only does this help them see their progress, but "it brings out their honesty," she observed. "Students can't lie to your face!"

Owl Pellet Dissection

Colleen Carter, an award-winning science teacher, has been teaching for 35 years. In ecology, she has to teach her Secondary Cycle One students about predators and prey. She begins by showing them a Barn Owl pellet.

Owls pellets are what owls regurgitate after swallowing their prey whole; they contain the fur and bones of their prey. But Carter doesn't tell her students this right away. Students weigh and measure the pellets, trying to guess their origins.

Eventually, they dissect the pellets. The students have to establish the victim, by identifying the bones they find and reconstructing the skeleton. They record data and determine the average number of prey per pellet, the barn owl's favourite foods, etc. "Students are using the scientific method, without even knowing it!" Carter said. Students then expand on their findings to determine the Barn Owl's place in the natural food chain, and create a "food web" using Bristol board, photos and other materials.

Then Carter asks students what else they would like to know about the Barn Owl. The list of questions is categorized, and research is conducted to find the answers. Finally, students write a paper on one important component they have learned about the Barn Owl's impact on the ecosystem.