LAUNCH Learning (Leading Advanced Understanding Through Connected Hands-on Learning)

LAUNCH Learning
(Leading Advanced Understanding Through Connected Hands-on Learning)

Chris van Beurden
Science Teacher
LAUNCH Learning
Guelph Collegiate-Vocational Institute
519-824-9800 x 481
christopher.vanbeurden@ugdsb.on.ca

Description of how you shape the learning experience –what you are doing that is of focus in the this short sharing

LAUNCH is a 4-credit, integrated program for grade 9 students that focuses on developing the learning skills necessary to helps them discover pathways to their own success in an academic curriculum. Run in semester 1 at the Guelph Collegiate-Vocational Institute, courses include SNC1D, ENG1D, CGC1D, & PPL1O. Two teachers, who share the school day with students, provide support and an opportunity to engage in an innovative, integrated curriculum. Lessons and units are structured to deliver curriculum goals in addition to the development of essential skills such as organization, study habits, collaboration, self-advocacy, goal setting, and accountability. Students engage in hands-on, experiential learning through field trips, collaborative activities, and community engagement.

Some of the results/impacts

• Through a series of field trips to different areas of Guelph, students engage with members of neighbourhood groups, the Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition, and the City of Guelph Planning Department to get a sense of the diversity within the city.  They analyze assets and challenges of each community relating to the physical development (e.g. transportation options, land uses, food security), natural environment (e.g. parkland, urban forests, storm water management), and social aspects (e.g. access to services, community space, public art, support networks).  Ultimately, students collaborate to develop creative solutions to the challenges they have identified.
• Students organize an Amazing Race for other classes at GCVI.  LAUNCH students learn about effective planning, collaboration, and accountability.  The teachers scaffold the process in order to move toward student-directed engagement, learning, and project development; this process allows students to experience and cope with time pressures, mistakes, conflict, and real deadlines.  Ultimately, this is a formative activity to prepare students to develop a Healthy Living Symposium for grade 8 students at a local elementary school.
• While LAUNCH is a program designed to help students transition into high school, it is recognized that we are also helping parents transition into a different role as their child(ren) grow.  We spend significant amounts of time communicating with parents and students about the realities of the learning process (e.g. it is difficult, frustrating, time consuming, inconvenient, requires mistakes and failures), and how this is just as important as learning outcomes.

 

Benefits and what you are working on learning to apply or modify.

• We are using LAUNCH as a “learning lab” for teaching strategies based on professional development and research to assist other teachers in our school and the UGDSB to improve their practice.  We attempt different methods of teaching, and share the results with the staff at PD days, staff meetings, and through informal conversations.
• We are determining ways of formally integrating learning skills development into existing lessons through how they are presented/communicated to students (i.e. no lesson or test is ever exclusively about course content).
• We developed a set of Big Ideas for the program based on learning skills:  

A. The process of learning is of equal importance to the products of learning.
B. Teamwork, collaboration, and mutual respect for one another are essential for life-long success in education, career, and relationships.
C. It is important to discover your strengths and use them to improve the world around you.  It is equally important to discover your challenges and strive to overcome them.
D. Great achievement involves risk and resiliency; it is your responsibility to rise to your own vision of greatness.