Over the past week, we have been thrilled to have Garfield Gini-Newman from TC² The Critical Thinking Consortium and University of Toronto working with our teachers on building 'thinking classrooms' for our students.

Our professional development journey at St. Johnsbury Academy Jeju has been a resounding success, uniting educators from various grade levels and disciplines in our commitment to sustained critical inquiry.
Thanks to our partnership with The Critical Thinking Consortium (TC2).

Rounding off a busy week SJA Jeju with some PD with Garfield Gini-Newman and Laura Gini-Newman from TC² The Critical Thinking Consortium where the school community tweaked and fortified its learning towards deeper thinking, wonder and student inquiry.

We had an incredible day of growth and learning SJA Jeju with our professional development sessions with the outstanding TC2 team, Garfield Gini-Newman, and Laura Gini-Newman! 🚀💡 Thank you for inspiring us to tweak and fortify our practice while embracing inquiry and critical thinking.

It was truly a pleasure spending the week with SJA on Jeju Island in South Korea. The work of the teachers to plan for and support deep transferable learning for all students was inspiring. So looking forward to continuing the journey.

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Today our teachers had the opportunity to work on building “thinking classrooms” with Garfield Gini-Newman of the University of Toronto and TC² The Critical Thinking Consortium. We’re excited to continue learning with him throughout the year.

Grandson Theo caught up in the Barbie craze 😂❤️ instagram.com/stories/nikita…

‘The invitation to inquire is the start of learning’ Garfield Gini-Newman

What an inspiring morning with Garfield Gini-Newman! I’ve got pages of notes, ideas and inspiration.

Here’s one tidbit for you:

#teacherlife #inspiration #CriticalThinking

I love this tool from Garfield Gini-Newman's session on the #ThinkingClassroom in the TC² The Critical Thinking Consortium Leadership Conference. It's too easy to get lost in the weeds while teaching; this invitation to reflect on the alignment of our actions with our values and intentions is so valuable.

Then, let's start to play even more. What's different if we switch from 'effective WRITING' to 'effective COMMUNICATING'? What changes if we employ a mode and genre agnostic approach to this work? Can we focus on overarching communication targets rather than methods? 5/5

What I love about this approach is thinking about something like spelling and grammar. Once we figure out that good writers spell correctly and are grammar-proficient, let's just slide this into the task requirements column - not to be assessed, just do it. 4/

Start with just that question. Have students brainstorm criteria and establish pie charts for what effective writing look like. Then, let's throw all sorts of mentor texts at them and have them iterate their way through their pie charts. 2/

I'm absolutely buzzing after Garfield Gini-Newman's #AssessmentAsKindness session at the TC² The Critical Thinking Consortium Leadership Conference. Colin Calhoun and I were buzzing back and forth about the use of a pie chart as a learning launch to 'What does it take to be an effective writer?' 1/

I think Doug Ford is arguably the most corrupt Ontario Premier in recent history.

RT IF YOU AGREE #FORDmustRESIGN
#onpoli

Assessment as Kindness session with Garfield Gini-Newman was the perfect way to kick off CCTCA. “Assessment comes from Latin “to sit alongside” while evaluation is to sit in judgement.” Let’s not destroy students and classroom culture with flawed assessment practices.

Thanks to the teachers at SJA in Korea for your thoughtful engagement in exploring the possibilities for deep learning and transfer through sustained critical inquiry. SJA January Newsletter.pdf - Google Drive drive.google.com/file/d/1Du9Sf7…

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