June 17^th Message from Usha James, our Executive Director

Dear TC² Partners, Colleagues, and Friends,

We started these weekly emails every Wednesday way back on March 18^th as schools were shutting down across the world. At the time, we weren’t sure if it would simply be an extra long spring break or something more serious. Here we are, over 3 months later. It has been an historic moment in the world that has challenged all of us in many ways. To all educators, all of us at The Critical Thinking Consortium would like to say

You have been on an extraordinarily steep learning curve. You have

• stepped out of your comfort zone to shift your practice for remote learning
• very quickly learned new technologies and incorporated digital tools into your online classrooms
• worried deeply about your students’ learning and safety and well-being
• watched, sometimes feeling helpless, heart-wrenching images of violence, anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism, and oppression and trying to heed the call to confront our own biases, privilege, and complicity
• supported each other through long hours and challenging circumstances
• endured high levels of stress as you tried to juggle caring for your own families with developing and implementing a whole new skill set in many cases.

In education, we are so often asked—and we ask our students—to think about what could have been done better. We’d like to ask you to take a moment to relish your successes. There is a wonderful viral video that I’ve used in sessions. It’s of a father “interviewing” his young child who has just learned to ride a bike. In the moment of the child’s success, while he is bursting with excitement, his bike helmet still on, the father brilliantly asks the child whether he has “any words of wisdom for other kids trying to learn how to ride a bike.” Here’s a link to the video—I hope it makes you smile and also prompts you to think about your moments of success and whether you have any words of wisdom for others and for your future self.

What will you do to invite students to relish their successes before the end of the school year? What words of wisdom might they have for their future selves about their resiliency and strength?

We hope that in the last three months we have been able to support you in some small way. We hope that our efforts to convert resources to direct-to-student formats, our newly developed tip sheets, and our materials to support parents and teachers of young children during this time and into the future have been helpful. Thank you for reaching out and telling us what you needed. We are grateful for your trust.

Please rest when the end of June arrives. But know that we’re still here for whatever you might need. We’ll be working with leaders, preparing new resources and developing new ways to support you when you’re ready.

Please don't hesitate to be in touch with me at usha.james@tc2.ca or with our Director of Professional Learning, Victoria Campoli at Victoria@tc2.ca.

You have earned the awe and admiration of many parents supporting their kids at home who can’t imagine how you do what you do every day in schools. You are superheroes. Fold up that cape for a while and take a break. You so deserve it.

Sincerely,



Usha James, Executive Director
The Critical Thinking Consortium
www.tc2.ca
Twitter:
@TC2thinks
@UshaJames

For questions about facilitation and professional learning, please contact Victoria Campoli.

For questions about resource development, please contact Andy Nesbitt.

For all other inquiries, please contact our administrator.

June 10^th Message from Usha James, our Executive Director

Dear TC² Partners, Colleagues, and Friends,

I’ll keep it short and sweet today! I know fatigue is setting in and everyone is longing for a break. We’ve also heard about new challenges that are emerging related to schools reopening in some provinces, continued need for blended learning and the logistical complexities of preparing for the end of the year in jurisdictions where schools remain closed. It’s a lot. I hope you are continuing to find ways to be kind to yourself and recognize the inner strength and fortitude that's carried you and your students through to this point.

You will need a long, rejuvenating, well-deserved break. And we also know that it will be difficult for you to not think about what the fall will look like. Whenever you’re ready to think about it, we’ll be ready too to support you however we can.

After you’ve had a chance to breathe, if you want to return to some professional reading this summer, feel free to take a look at some of our publications. The core principles and approaches remain relevant and important regardless of circumstances but we’ll be thinking with you about how to adapt practices to a blended learning environment that will likely define classrooms in the fall.

• For a refresher on all the aspects of our framework and principles that can continue to guide educational change, check out Creating Thinking Classrooms
• For a deep dive into practical strategies to teach the most important competencies across all subject areas, take a look at The Competencies Toolkit
• For a quick afternoon read on how to take practical steps towards nurturing thinking in all learners, see our Quick Guides to a Thinking Classroom
...and check out many more ideas across all our print and digital publications .

We’ll also be ready with professional learning conversations and opportunities later in the summer when you’re ready. Of course we’ll continue to work with system leaders through the summer but we’re thinking about hosting summer institutes or webinars for teachers on a variety of topics that might help you prepare for and navigate the challenges and opportunities of the new classroom contexts that we’ll return to in the fall. We’d like to think together about questions such as:

• How can we best plan instruction and assessment in a blended model of learning?
• What might sustained critical inquiry look like for students in the new model?
• How can we adapt practices to build a thinking community given flexible scheduling requirements?
• How will we get to know our learners as deeply and monitor their learning as effectively if we’re not going to see them as regularly?
• How do we manage the demands of a blended learning model in ways that not only best support students but are also manageable and feasible for us?

We’d love to have your input on whether or not you and your colleagues might be interested in webinars or a summer institute before school reopens – AFTER you’ve taken that break!

Please let us know what you think! Please be in touch with me at usha.james@tc2.ca or with our Director of Professional Learning, Victoria Campoli at Victoria@tc2.ca.

Feel free to pass this message along to your colleagues or post on social media.

Keep breathing. You’ve been holding it together for a long time and you’re almost there. Take good care.

Sincerely,



Usha James, Executive Director
The Critical Thinking Consortium
www.tc2.ca
Twitter:
@TC2thinks
@UshaJames

For questions about facilitation and professional learning, please contact Victoria Campoli.

For questions about resource development, please contact Andy Nesbitt.

For all other inquiries, please contact our administrator.

June 3^rd Message from Usha James, our Executive Director

Dear TC² Partners, Colleagues, and Friends,

We have been reflecting on how to respond to tumultuous events in the United States over the last week. We are simultaneously heartbroken yet angry, worried yet hopeful, energized and committed to acting and yet still needing to deepen our understanding. As an organization, we condemn the deep rooted anti-Black racism and violence that has recently and historically been perpetrated against Black families and communities in the US and here in Canada. How do we respond individually and organizationally? How do we understand these events in the broader context of historical and systemic issues? I know many of you are feeling the same way, asking the same questions and are also thinking about how to best support students in making sense of current events.

At TC², we must seek to understand how we have been complicit in perpetuating racist or colonial attitudes. We are pledging our commitment to look inward with humility and honesty. We will hold up a mirror to examine our own beliefs, assumptions and biases and walk our pedagogical talk. For us this means committing to at least three actions:

• Critically examine our self-concept. We believe we are critical thinkers. One of our goals is to foster in learners greater willingness and ability to act in thoughtful, ethically responsible ways. Do we always live up to these ideals? Where might we fall short? Do we fall prey to seeing critical thinking as an end in itself or are we focused on the goals of high quality thinking—eliminating oppression, respecting and honouring all voices, and contributing to better lives for all beings?
• Critically examine our practises. Words have power. Silence speaks volumes. What explicit and implicit messages do we send when we facilitate learning? In the examples we use, the references we cite, what we say and what we choose not to say, are we conveying an anti-racist, inclusive approach? How explicitly, consistently, and effectively are we addressing bias, systemic discrimination, racism, stereotyping, and other critical issues?
• Critically examine our resources and processes. We have been re-examining our approach to resource development to ensure that we are not writing about different groups but instead finding ways to authentically and meaningfully collaborate and then writing with communities. However, our journey is far from over. We need to re-examine our existing resources to determine which should be reimagined and revised to reflect a culturally responsive and anti-racist orientation.

As you work with your districts, schools, and students, I wonder if the three steps listed above could also guide your thinking and responses. Could you invite students, families, and communities to help critically examine your resources, approaches, and learning activities? What might you learn about yourself and your practises by collaborating with others?

We strongly believe, as you do, that education can be both a catalyst and a support for meaningful and lasting change. In addition to your existing efforts and commitments to anti-racist education, consider which competencies are needed by all learners—students and educators—to act in thoughtful, ethically responsible ways. We hope that some of our resources might help, including:

• Critically reading a source | Lecture critique d'une source
• Identifying important voices | Distinguer les voix importantes
• Assessing historical commemorations | Évaluer des commémorations historiques (also available as a “ready-to-post” resource in English and in French)
• Explaining the significance of historical events | Expliquer l’importance d’événements historiques
• Selecting actions to strengthen relationships | Choisir des actions pour renforcer des relations

We recognize that these lessons could be enhanced by the use of examples and content from a variety of communities. Please feel free to customize them for your contexts. We’d also love to hear which lessons worked, what might need to be revised, and what other resources would support your work.

I have no doubt that current events are weighing on you. Combined with your efforts to make remote learning work over the last few months, you may feel drained. As we enter June, I hope you’re planning to take some time to think about what you and your colleagues achieved in these challenging times for it is truly remarkable.

Thank you to all of you who nominated colleagues for our awards. We have been deeply impressed by the commitment and dedication of the nominees and the gratitude expressed by the nominators. We are so excited to announce and celebrate award winners at our Annual General Meeting this month.

We truly believe that all teachers deserve an award for the work they’ve put in. We invite you to continue to share with us stories of your own learnings, of what you’ve tried, and of the efforts of your colleagues. We want to share them with others to celebrate your successes, and to learn from you. Please feel free to respond to this email or tag us on Twitter @TC2thinks.

In June, I’ll send two or three more Wednesday update emails and then we’ll pause while teachers take a well-deserved break. When we restart emails, we’ll turn our attention to the challenges and opportunities of re-opening and how we might support you to ensure we emerge stronger from this experience.

If you’d like to explore ways that we might help support your thinking as leaders or teachers, please don’t hesitate to be in touch with me at usha.james@tc2.ca or with our Director of Professional Learning, Victoria Campoli at Victoria@tc2.ca.

Please feel free to pass this message along to your colleagues or post on social media.

Take good care of yourselves and each other.

Sincerely,



Usha James, Executive Director
The Critical Thinking Consortium
www.tc2.ca
Twitter:
@TC2thinks
@UshaJames

For questions about facilitation and professional learning, please contact Victoria Campoli.

For questions about resource development, please contact Andy Nesbitt.

For all other inquiries, please contact our administrator.

May 27^th Message from Usha James, our Executive Director

Dear TC² Partners, Colleagues, and Friends,

As a heat wave hit us here in our corner of the world this week, my 14-year old daughter mentioned that “summer is the most abrupt season”. So true in most parts of Canada! The warmer weather is both a relief and a reason to rethink our habits and decisions during this time of social-distancing. It also reminds us of how much time we have left in the school year and invites us to prioritize the most important concepts and competencies that we hope our students will take away from this year.

We thought it might be a good time to remind you of some of our long-standing and well-loved resources that might fit well with the learning you are focusing on right now with your students. Each of these resource collections can be easily adapted to remote learning. They can also be used in different content areas and for the curriculum of different jurisdictions often with very minor, if any, adjustments.

1) Picture sets: A searchable collection of carefully selected sets of drawings, photographs and paintings. The sets can be used:

• as information sources about many topics, particularly in social studies and science
• as a context for developing abilities such as observing and inferring
• as prompts for questions that support the growth of thinking in younger children

2) ImagineAction: A set of teacher and student resources to support social action projects. Funded by the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, these resources help students take an active role in improving the world around them. Student videos and teaching ideas are available for different grade ranges from Kindergarten to Grade 12. Available in English and French.

3) Inquiry-pacs: Although these were originally developed for social studies, history, and geography in Ontario, we have been told by teachers how transferrable they are to many jurisdictions. These rich, well-scaffolded units of study embed a critical inquiry approach focused on important and transferrable competencies. There are free samples on the webpage and a deep discount right now if you’d like to purchase more. Each Inquiry-pac includes:

• detailed teaching ideas for numerous individual lessons that can also be used individually or added to other units you already have in progress
• fully editable PowerPoint slides that can be used in synchronous teaching and learning contexts or can be easily adapted for students to view and interact with asynchronously
• background information sheets at age-appropriate reading levels
• student activity sheets that support and scaffold student thinking

REMINDER! We would love to recognize the efforts of educators who have found innovative ways to nurture thinking during this unique time with a special edition of our Certificate of Achievement in Critical Thinking—our Class ACT award.

We know how much it has meant to previous recipients to be acknowledged for their unwavering commitment to creating thinking learning environments. I hope that recognition like this might be a small token of appreciation and lift the spirits of those who have been working so hard for all our young people.

Nominate candidate(s) by completing this short online form by Monday, June 1, 2020.

If you’d like to explore ways that we might help support your thinking as leaders or teachers, please don’t hesitate to be in touch with me or with our Director of Professional Learning, Victoria Campoli.

Also, we are still hoping to release some of our publications as ebooks. Thank you to all of you who got in touch with me last week to share your wishlist for titles you’d like to see available electronically. If you didn't get a chance, there’s still time. Feel free to peruse our list of titles and send in your input!

Please feel free to pass this message along to your colleagues or post on social media.

Take good care and stay safe!

Sincerely,



Usha James, Executive Director
The Critical Thinking Consortium
www.tc2.ca
Twitter:
@TC2thinks
@UshaJames

For questions about facilitation and professional learning, please contact Victoria Campoli.

For questions about resource development, please contact Andy Nesbitt.

For all other inquiries, please contact our administrator.

May 20^th Message from Usha James, our Executive Director

Dear TC² Partners, Colleagues and Friends,

My team here at TC² is constantly sharing stories of educators—teachers, consultants, principals, superintendents, and directors—who have pulled out all the stops to ensure that remote learning does not merely focus on dry content or busy work. Instead, these educators are demonstrating creativity, innovative thinking, and resourcefulness to try to ensure that learning from home is engaging and nurtures competency and high quality thinking. That’s no easy feat! We are in awe of their efforts and we know that they have made this time more meaningful (and bearable perhaps!) for students.

We would love to recognize the efforts of these educators during this unique time with a special edition of our Certificate of Achievement in Critical Thinking—our Class ACT award.

We know how much it has meant to previous recipients to be acknowledged for their unwavering commitment to creating thinking learning environments. I hope that recognition like this might be a small token of appreciation and lift the spirits of those who have been working so hard for all our young people.

Nominate candidate(s) by completing this short online form by Monday, June 1, 2020.

The award recipients will be recognized at our (virtual) Annual General Meeting on Wednesday, June 24, 2020. For more information about all our awards and past recipients, visit the Acknowledging excellence page of our website.

We’re also excited to announce that we have posted 4 additional infographics that are Ready-to-Share with Parents!

If you haven’t checked out our growing collection of materials to support teachers and parents, please take a look. We’d love to hear what you think.

Last but not least… don’t forget about the wonderful collection of books we have that could support your planning and thinking about how to develop a rich approach that nurtures thinking in any subject area. Check out our current sales and specials. We are in the process of exploring converting some of our print publications to ebooks with downloadable and printable student activity sheets that can be accessed by teachers on any device. We’d love to know which publications you’d find most valuable as ebooks. Share your input by responding to this email or connecting with me directly at usha.james@tc2.ca.

As a non-profit doing what we can with the funds we have, we are always looking for partners who might be able to support the development of resources. Please be in touch if there’s something we can create or develop for you.

Please feel free to pass this message along to your colleagues or post on social media.

If you are using any of our resources, we’d love to hear how it’s going! Please drop us a line by email or tag us on Twitter @TC2thinks. Take good care and stay safe!

Sincerely,



Usha James, Executive Director
The Critical Thinking Consortium
www.tc2.ca
Twitter:
@TC2thinks
@UshaJames

For questions about facilitation and professional learning, please contact Victoria Campoli.

For questions about resource development, please contact Andy Nesbitt.

For all other inquiries, please contact our administrator.

May 13^th Message from Usha James, our Executive Director

Dear TC² Partners, Colleagues and Friends,

Mid-May already! Time sometimes seems to be going so slowly and at other times racing by. We have heard from many of you that by this point many students and teachers have settled into a routine of some sort. We’re also hearing about emerging challenges such as:

• Fatigue and frustration from parents and family members who are doing their best to cope but are feeling the pressures of supporting student learning at home;
• Ongoing need for manageable but rich and engaging activities for students in Kindergarten to grade 3;
• Concern about potential decreases in student engagement with online learning as the weather warms up everywhere;
• The need to prioritize learning as end of the school year approaches and the need to select the most important competencies to focus on for the balance of the year;
• Ongoing questions about assessment and reporting that accurately capture and helpfully convey what students have learned;
• Continuing inequities and the need for differentiation to ensure adequate support for all our students.

We'd like to offer some support.

We’re excited to announce that we have posted 7 new infographics that are Ready-to-Share with Parents! Educators have told us that these rich ideas could also be very useful for teachers of younger children in synchronous or asynchronous learning. Teachers, please check them out!

Leaders: Would you like to work with us to fund the adaptation of the parent activities for teacher use during and after remote learning? If so, please be in touch (contact info below).

We will be adding more one-page infographics on a variety of topics that could be shared in newsletters to families or on district or school websites.

I will admit that we are new to the world of creating infographics. I know we have lots to learn about design but we were focused on providing you with high quality materials as quickly as possible. We’d love to hear your reactions and advice!

We’ve also been working with teachers and leaders in several districts to help them rethink assessment and to work through the difficult task of prioritizing learning for the remainder of the year to focus on the most important competencies. We have learned a great deal from listening closely to educators’ concerns and collaboratively developing:

• innovative assessment approaches
• frameworks to support leaders and teachers in decision making
• criteria that can be used to:
• enhance and build thinking communities online
• prioritize learning
• design powerful instruction
• provide meaningful assessment and feedback

For ideas about how to assess student learning and invite students to self assess, check out resources on our Ready-to-post Student Materials page and also our Tips for Teachers page.

As a non-profit doing what we can with the funds we have, we are always looking for partners who might be able to support the development of resources. Please be in touch if there’s something we can create or develop for you.

Please feel free to pass this message along to your colleagues or post on social media.

If you are using any of our resources, we’d love to hear how it’s going! Please drop us a line by email or tag us on Twitter @TC2thinks. Take good care and stay safe!.

Sincerely,



Usha James, Executive Director
The Critical Thinking Consortium
www.tc2.ca
Twitter:
@TC2thinks
@UshaJames

For questions about facilitation and professional learning, please contact Victoria Campoli.

For questions about resource development, please contact Andy Nesbitt.

For all other inquiries, please contact our administrator.

May 6^th Message from Usha James, our Executive Director

Dear TC² Partners, Colleagues and Friends,

I hope you are all well and that you’re finding some time to enjoy the sunshine. This week in addition to letting you know about new resources we’ve posted to our page (see below), I would like to share a recent experience.

Last week I had mentioned that we were hearing some wonderful stories of innovation, perseverance, and leadership. In my note this week, I thought I’d share one story with you. I’m sure many of you will see yourselves in the enthusiasm of these educators and their willingness to take on the challenges and opportunities of remote learning. You might find some inspiration or have ideas to share or perhaps it will spark some thinking about what powerful learning looks like for educators in these circumstances.

Recently, I worked with Grade 3-4 teacher Melanie Charboyer and her principal, Kellie Wrigley, from George O’Neill Public School in Superior Greenstone District School Board (Ontario). Melanie has a routine with her students that includes a weekly schedule and regular synchronous classes (she’s using GoogleMeet). She’s even differentiating by creating smaller intentionally constructed groups for those synchronous sessions. But she was noticing that her practice was slipping back to being mostly about content and that some students were finding it even more difficult to stay engaged. She was inspired by some of our Critical Challenges ideas online for primary students and had used them with her students and noticed the increase in their engagement and learning but wanted to do more.

Last week during a synchronous class meeting, she had some newly sprouted pumpkin plants growing behind her desk and she showed them to her students. They were starting a unit in science on soils and she showed them the soil she had bought and talked about what she was experimenting with to support the growth of her plants. Suddenly the kids came alive: I grow pumpkins too! We grow aloe vera! Melanie responded, I’ve always wanted to grow aloe vera but it never works for me. Immediately, students were jumping in, Oh, let me show you my garden!

With her background as a kindergarten teacher, Melanie knows the power of building on students’ curiosity and interest. She arranged for each student to receive a little package with a bit of soil, a plastic cup and some seeds. She learned that many of them were already planting with their parents and heard their excitement at receiving this little package of their own.

This was a promising start for her but she knew it wasn’t enough. She wanted to connect to the curriculum directly, focus on important competencies and take a critical inquiry approach that would sustain their engagement and deepen their learning. Her principal, Kellie, booked some time for the three of us to meet and collaborate virtually. Kellie wanted to be a co-learner but was also interested in being there as I coached Melanie so she could think about her own leadership and approach to coaching teachers.

When we met, I asked Melanie what competencies or abilities she was thinking of focusing on with her students. She had noticed that students were not providing fulsome answers when responding to questions, not providing enough detail in their answers. To get at the underlying and transferrable competencies, we discussed why they might be having trouble with that. What is the underlying ability that we could help them grow? She decided it was about carefully observing details along the way while learning, and tracking or documenting those details so that they could later select them for their writing.

We spent an hour thinking through the curriculum, thinking about her students’ strengths and considering the unique challenges and opportunities of the current learning environment. By the end of the hour, we had developed:

• an overarching critical inquiry question: What are the top 5 pieces of helpful advice that you would give someone trying to grow pumpkins right now?
• a structure for a digital Thoughtbook (an ongoing place to record all the tips they were learning through their own investigations and hearing about their peers’ experiences) that they would select from later to answer the overarching critical inquiry question
• three different thinking strategies that would help them develop their observation abilities (5Ws, Circle what you notice, 5 senses)
• a structure for her synchronous sessions with students from now until the end of June. She would start each session by inviting them to share their observation from the week, praise and name their strengths in observing and invite them to build on each other’s observations. Then she would introduce a new thinking strategy and teach them how to use it by sharing her screen and having them practice while she filled it out. Finally she would give them the mini challenge for the coming week to help them practice the strategy.

Kellie, the principal, was a co-learner and also able to make connections to the practices and challenges of other teachers in grade 4-5. Most impressively, she took an inquiry stance toward her practice, noticing what she had been focusing on in coaching teachers and thinking how she might revise her coaching approach

I was so impressed by their eagerness to learn for the sake of their students’ learning that I asked if I could share their story with you. Every educator’s story is different because every context and group of students has its unique characteristics. But I think we might all share the concerns about student engagement, about how to prioritize learning and focus on competencies, and about how to make meaningful connections to students and their lives that build relationships and centre well-being. How do we ensure meaningful learning is happening in this unique time? It is a question that we are all asking and I hope this might spark some thinking or interest in sharing your story.

If you’d like to explore ways that we might help support your thinking as leaders or teachers, please don’t hesitate to be in touch with me or with our Director of Professional Learning, Victoria Campoli.

For ideas about how to assess student learning and invite students to self assess, check out resources on our Ready-to-post Student Materials page and also our Tips for Teachers page.

We’re also excited to announce that we have started posting resources that are Ready-to-Share with Parents! We have posted two resources that help parents build their understanding of how they can support student thinking at home. We are trying to make sure they are in parent-friendly language with practical and manageable ideas.

Funded by the Superior Greenstone District School Board in Ontario, we will be adding a series of one-page infographics on a variety of topics for parents that could be shared in newsletters to parents or on district or school websites.

As a non-profit doing what we can with the funds we have, we are always looking for partners who might be able to support the development of resources. Please be in touch if there’s something we can create or develop for you.

Please feel free to pass this message along to your colleagues or post on social media.

If you are using any of our resources, we’d love to hear how it’s going! Please drop us a line by email or tag us on Twitter @TC2thinks. Take good care and stay safe!.

Sincerely,



Usha James, Executive Director
The Critical Thinking Consortium
www.tc2.ca
Twitter:
@TC2thinks
@UshaJames

For questions about facilitation and professional learning, please contact Victoria Campoli.

For questions about resource development, please contact Andy Nesbitt.

For all other inquiries, please contact our administrator.

April 29^th Message from Usha James, our Executive Director

Dear TC² Partners, Colleagues and Friends,

Last week I had mentioned that we were hearing that assessment is on many people’s minds. Districts are taking different approaches to expectations around assessment and evaluation and have been asking for our advice and support. How do we ensure the principles of effective assessment continue to guide online learning? How do we focus our assessment on the most important competencies we want our students to develop? How do we differentiate our assessments to attempt to address issues of equity that are arising?

We’re excited to announce that we have developed 12 new resources to support teachers thinking about how to engage in assessment during this time of remote learning.

Funded by the Conseil des écoles catholiques du Centre-Est (CECCE) in Ontario, these resources (posted on the webpage in English) provide practical tips for teachers on how to adapt, develop, and refine assessments so that they are meaningful in online environments.

We’ve also added two new professional learning resources – an article about powerful instruction and assessment adapted to address online environments and a wonderful infographic illustrating important considerations for digitally enhanced learning. Thank you to the Renfrew District School Board for the request and support to develop these resources.

If your district or school is interested in booking a webinar or other form of virtual support to walk through the assessment materials, or any other material we’ve posted on the webpage, please don’t hesitate to be in touch (contact info below).

Although many challenges remain and some teachers, students, and families are still grappling with the barriers and inequities that are surfacing, we’re also hearing some wonderful stories of innovation, perseverance, and leadership. I’ve had the privilege of joining some administrators on virtual classroom visits where they have shared teacher efforts to connect with, engage, and provide meaningful feedback to students.

It’s exciting to see principals beginning to be able to shift their focus a little from the demands of getting remote learning up and running to supporting teachers in their quest for providing powerful learning opportunities. Administrators are definitely learning with and from teachers and it’s wonderful to work with them and help them consider how they might best support teachers who are clearly in a learning mode themselves right now. If you’d like to connect about how we might help with supporting leaders’ thinking or hear about what other districts are doing, please feel free to send me a note.

As a non-profit doing what we can with the funds we have, we are always looking for partners who might be able to support the development of resources. Please be in touch if there’s something we can create or develop for you.

Please feel free to pass this message along to your colleagues or post on social media.

If you are using any of our resources, we’d love to hear how it’s going! Please drop us a line by email or tag us on Twitter @TC2thinks. Take good care and stay safe!.

Sincerely,



Usha James, Executive Director
The Critical Thinking Consortium
www.tc2.ca
Twitter:
@TC2thinks
@UshaJames

For questions about facilitation and professional learning, please contact Victoria Campoli.

For questions about resource development, please contact Andy Nesbitt.

For all other inquiries, please contact our administrator.

April 22^nd Message from Usha James, our Executive Director

Dear TC² Partners, Colleagues and Friends,

We’ve spent the last five weeks consulting with districts, listening to your requests and trying to do whatever we can to develop and convert materials to support you as you teach remotely. Thank you to all of you who have reached out, who attended our Zoom sessions and who have shared our posts on social media. Your voice has been so helpful in steering and refining our efforts.

We are continuing to develop materials requested and funded by districts across the country and we will continue to post them as they are completed. We’re hearing that the greatest needs that are emerging are in the areas of:

• Assessing effectively while students are learning from home, including providing powerful feedback and guidance and ensuring evaluations are meaningful and valid
• Differentiating for students with varying needs and encouraging participation and engagement of all students
• Supporting parents, particularly of primary students and developing practical, feasible and meaningful learning opportunities that parents can reasonably support.

As a non-profit doing what we can with the funds we have, we are always looking for partners who might be able to support the development of resources. Please be in touch if there’s something we can create or develop for you.

We’re also thrilled that so many of you have decided to continue to support teacher and leader learning during this time. We are working with educators virtually from Kamloops, Winnipeg, Nipigon, Ottawa, Niagara, the Greater Toronto Area and elsewhere to support the transition to remote learning and help them in their efforts to ensure that online teaching and learning continues to invite and nurture student thinking. The focus on competencies is more important than ever and we’re honoured that you’re asking for our support. From webinars and staff meetings to individual and small-group planning sessions, please don’t hesitate to let us know if we can help you in any way.

I thought I’d send a list of all the things we’ve converted on the webpage to date. Please follow the links to get more detailed information about the resources listed below, including the grade levels they are suitable for.

What's on our webpage, “Materials to support student learning online” (tc2.ca/online)

English/Language Arts

• Listening and learning from Elders
• Select the best format for a message
• Find the main idea
• Suggest what stories need to be heard
• Listen to and learn from oral stories
• Ask great questions
• Identify the techniques used by effective speakers
• Rework a spoken message for an intended audience
• Write for an intended audience or purpose
• Use feedback to improve your writing
• Identify the qualities of a great story
• Retell a story using a different format or storytelling practice

• Describe trends in data: Which data set should be considered linear?

• What can you do to make your home more energy efficient?
• How effectively do electric vehicles solve the problem of gas-powered vehicles?
• Is this an eco-system? (also Social Studies)
• What goods and services does this ecosystem provide? (also Social Studies)
• How can the value of the goods and services of this ecosystem be measured? (also Social Studies)

• Assessing historical commemorations
• Judging continuities and changes

• Introduction to critical thinking
• Introduction to intellectual tools
• Evaluating sources
• Developing research questions
• Integrating sources

• Introductions and conclusions
• Supported-opinion essay
• Science lab
• Persuasive advertisement

• Assessing my understanding of the task
• Assessing thinking during an online or in-class discussion
• Assessing student use of criteria
• Competency self-assessment (blank template)
• Habit of mind assessment (blank template)
• Assessing multiple perspective taking
• Self-assessment: Reasoned Judgement
• Self-assessment: Considering Multiple Perspectives

• Contrôler l’avancement d’un processus de résolution de problèmes
• Évaluer des commémorations historiques
• Juger des éléments de continuité et de changement
• Écouter les aînés et apprendre d’eux
• Résoudre des « vieux cas » historiques
• Fonder nos conclusions sur des éléments de preuve

• Guides to Student Success: A learner centred alternative to traditional rubrics
• Structuring rich online discussion: An asynchronous U-shaped discussion

I also encourage you to check out our Picture Sets and History Docs for hundreds of downloadable images and primary sources along with ideas for critical inquiry questions you can pair them with.

If it feels like a lot to navigate, we’ve posted the slides from our Zoom sessions that offered a “guided tour” of the webpage.

Don’t hesitate to be in touch (contact info below) if you have any questions or ideas, or would like to learn more.

Please feel free to pass this message along to your colleagues or post on social media.

If you are using any of our resources, we’d love to hear how it’s going! Please drop us a line by email or tag us on Twitter @TC2thinks. Take good care and stay safe!.

Sincerely,



Usha James, Executive Director
The Critical Thinking Consortium
www.tc2.ca
Twitter:
@TC2thinks
@UshaJames

For questions about facilitation and professional learning, please contact Victoria Campoli.

For questions about book orders, please contact Jacqueline Rajarthnam.

For questions about resource development, please contact Andy Nesbitt.

April 15^th Message from Usha James, our Executive Director

Dear TC² Partners, Colleagues and Friends,

I hope you had a lovely long weekend. If you were celebrating holidays, I hope you were able to forge some new traditions in these unusual times.

We continue to hear from you about what you’d like to see next and we’re doing our best with the funds we have to convert and develop resources and offer them freely to all teachers.

Newly added to our webpage, “Materials to support student learning online” (tc2.ca/online)

Ready-to-post materials that focus on teaching competencies (e.g., Judging continuities and changes) and learning from Indigenous sources (e.g., Listening and learning from Elders).

Check out our:

• NEW lessons for Social Sciences/Social Studies (History, Geography, etc.)
• NEW English / Language Arts lessons

Coming soon:

• Resources to support parents and activities for primary children
• More tips for teachers with a focus on ASSESSMENT

Please feel free to pass this message along to your colleagues or post on social media.

Wherever you are, I hope spring is becoming more assertive in showing its signs and that you and your families are all staying healthy.

Sincerely,



Usha James, Executive Director
The Critical Thinking Consortium
www.tc2.ca
Twitter:
@TC2thinks
@UshaJames

For questions about facilitation and professional learning, please contact Victoria Campoli.

For questions about book orders, please contact Jacqueline Rajarthnam.

For questions about resource development, please contact Andy Nesbitt.

April 8^th Message from Usha James, our Executive Director

Dear TC² Partners, Colleagues and Friends,

The last week has been challenging and stressful for so many of you and yet you have inspired me with your Herculean efforts to support students. Districts everywhere have been trying to move heaven and earth to uncover inequities around technology, trying to get devices into students’ hands and finding innovative ways to extend internet service to those who don’t have it. Teachers have been connecting with families by phone to check in and re-establish connection. Educators at all levels have put in long hours to develop plans to help learning continue, pushed their own learning about digital platforms and navigated uncertainty around guidelines about online classes, assessment and evaluation and much more. I’ve seen messages about teachers using their dishwashers as whiteboards and answering student questions late into the night on online platforms.

In addition to the nightly salute to our healthcare workers, I’d like to add a moment of gratitude every evening for teachers. A toast, a sing-a-long, a happy dance… we’ll find something that will make you smile!

Since my last email a week ago, we’ve heard from many of you who are excited about our new webpage with ready-to-post materials to support student learning from home. And we’ve been listening to what you’d like to see next.

We are excited to share the addition of free FRENCH materials to our new webpage, “Materials to support student learning online” which can be found at tc2.ca/online!

As we continue to add materials, we’re now hearing requests for materials to support K-3 students, resources for parents, and ready-to-share lessons to help students engage thoughtfully in online forums. We’re on it! I look forward to sharing our progress with you in my email update next Wednesday and we’ll continue to use social media to let you know as soon as things are added.

We also held three free 30-minute Zoom sessions this week to walk people through the webpage. Don’t worry if you missed them, we plan to host more and are hoping to post a link to a “guided tour” of the webpage shortly.

We have developed a Menu of Supports we can offer through online sessions or resource development. Don’t hesitate to be in touch (contact info below) if you have any questions or ideas, or would like to learn more. Please feel free to pass this message along to your colleagues or post on social media.

Thank you for everything you are doing. Please take time to take care of yourselves as well as you’re taking care of everyone else.

For questions about facilitation and professional learning, please contact Victoria Campoli.

For questions about book orders, please contact Jacqueline Rajarthnam.

For questions about resource development, please contact Andy Nesbitt.

April 1^st Message from Usha James, our Executive Director

Dear TC² Partners, Colleagues and Friends,

Since my last email two weeks ago, we have been working around the clock to get ready to support educators across the country as we all transition to online learning. Thank you to so many of you for reaching out to let us know what you need and hope for. We have spoken to various districts across the country and have been hearing from you by email and twitter. Please continue to reach out! True to our roots as a consortium of partners, we want to ensure we are creating resources and support opportunities that meet your needs.

We are excited to announce our new webpage, “Materials to support student learning online” which can be found at tc2.ca/online!

We know that educators have come to rely on us for high quality materials that take a thinking approach to teaching and learning. You can be confident that in the transition to online learning we will never sacrifice educators’ goals of nurturing student thinking and building important competencies. Everything you find here is true to our mission of supporting efforts to create thinking learning environments and opportunities.

On this dedicated webpage you will find:

• ready-to-post student learning and assessment materials across various grade levels (elementary and secondary) and subject areas (e.g. English, Math, Science) that include:
• PDF or fully editable powerpoint lessons that students can independently work through
• background briefing sheets to support their learning
• activity sheets in Word format that students can write or type in and send back to you to demonstrate their thinking
• notes that you can cut and paste into your online platform with instructions (from you to your students) about each lesson
• tips for teachers including adaptable and practical ideas to promote:
• critically thoughtful discussions online
• thoughtful engagement with various text forms containing your course content including videos, textbook selections, articles, and other online content sources
• materials that are ready-to-share with parents including:
• how to help children make good decisions
• how to support and nurture thinking through play and everyday activities
• how to engage with your children in meaningful ways that nurture thinking when reading with them

If you have requests for lessons that you’d like to see converted to direct-to-student, ready-to-post materials, please let us know! We would be thrilled to discuss how we might work together to convert the lessons you love from our other collections like Tools For Thought, Critical Challenges, History Docs, Picture Sets, print publications, or other parts of our website – or to collaborate with you to develop new materials. Please don’t hesitate to be in touch to let us know how we can support you!

We have also started to work with districts and schools to schedule online sessions for educators and leaders to support them in a variety of ways.

• Providing online personalized support for smaller groups of educators who are interested in spending time planning lessons or units
• Helping with immediate challenges such as converting current lessons/materials to an effective and rich online format
• Running and making available recorded webinars on specific topics
• Providing support to centrally assigned staff (consultants, coordinators) to assist them in being responsive to emerging needs

Please stay in touch as things evolve and your needs become more clearly defined. We know things are moving fast and many people are scrambling at this point. Just know that we are here to support you in any way we can and are happy to take on tasks that ease your burden and develop supports that align with your most pressing needs.

Please feel free to pass this message along to your colleagues or post on social media and don’t hesitate to be in touch (contact info below) if you have any questions or ideas.

I thank you again on behalf of our most vulnerable family members and friends, for all you are doing as critically thoughtful individuals to protect yourselves and others. I sincerely hope that you are able to take some time to focus on your wellbeing as well.

For questions about facilitation and professional learning, please contact Victoria Campoli.

For questions about book orders, please contact Jacqueline Rajarthnam.

For questions about resource development, please contact Andy Nesbitt.

March 18 Message regarding COVID-19 from Usha James, our Executive Director

Dear TC² Partners, Colleagues and Friends,

As COVID-19 continues to impact educational communities and the families of students and educators, I hope you are all staying safe and healthy. At TC², we are closely monitoring and attending to public safety guidelines outlined by Chief Public Health Officer of Canada, including ensuring any TC² facilitator returning from regions at risk or feeling unwell stay at home for the recommended period.

We know that you are also continually reviewing the evolving situation and that plans are changing on a daily basis. We are committed to being flexible, to adjusting and adapting to wherever your plans might take you. We understand that these are unique times.

If you have sessions booked with us for professional learning, our facilitators will be reaching out to you to see how we might support you by:

• adapting any sessions that were booked as face-to-face learning opportunities to make them accessible to educators virtually from home
• developing new online support opportunities available to educators to meet their needs
• providing one-on-one support by phone or videoconferencing for educators who would like support with developing online learning for their students
• providing virtual personalized coaching for educational leaders
• rescheduling sessions
• thinking collaboratively about how to frame powerful professional learning once it resumes

We are also thinking about how to best support teachers in these difficult times. We know how stressful it might seem to convert rich, meaningful learning to an online environment with short notice in regions where schools have been closed. We want to remind you that you might not have to reinvent the wheel. We have thousands of ideas that can be adapted to your context available at www.tc2.ca.

We’ll also be sending out easy-to-implement critical inquiry questions or thinking strategies that you can post along with any content that your students will be accessing from home. We also have materials that might be helpful for parents as they support their children’s learning and will pass these along as well. We hope these ideas and strategies are helpful and we are open to suggestions if you think of other ways we can help! We’ll be back in touch as the situation evolves. Please don’t hesitate to be in touch (contact info below) if you have any questions or ideas.

On behalf of our most vulnerable family members and friends, thank you for all you are doing as critically thoughtful individuals to protect yourselves and others. I sincerely hope that you are able to take some time to focus on your wellbeing as well.

Take good care,



Usha James, Executive Director
The Critical Thinking Consortium
www.tc2.ca
Twitter:
@TC2thinks
@UshaJames

For questions about facilitation and professional learning, please contact Victoria Campoli.

For questions about book orders, please contact Jacqueline Rajarthnam.

For questions about resource development, please contact Andy Nesbitt.