Relevancy Video Transcript
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hello everyone and welcome back to two
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white
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settler educators in this chapter
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we are going to be exploring the r of
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relevancy why it’s important to get to
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know your students take it away joanna
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great so relevancy is important for many
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reasons
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um and it provides such a realistic and
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grounded meaning
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to your lessons and in your course
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incorporating real
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world local or current topics and
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examples in your lessons
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will keep your students engaged help
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them remember the main idea or take away
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message from the course
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and it’ll also allow them to see
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curriculum in the we’re in the real
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world
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so relevance goes hand in hand with
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relationships because you need to
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understand the who
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what when where and why of your students
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before you can even begin to make
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relevant connections to your course
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so if you have flipped through our book
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and you’re starting on relevance
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i would suggest that you go back to
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relationships and
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listen to what we’re talking about
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relationships before you
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um go into relevance because you’ll
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you’ll need to have made connections
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with your students
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in order to tailor your course to their
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needs
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so once you’ve done that there are some
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ways that you can prepare your content
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to be relevant
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you can research current events which
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are happening during the time of the
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course
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that are related to where your students
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are learning from and incorporate those
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ideas
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and examples so for example this year we
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had
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the presidential inauguration we had the
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storming of the capital
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we had um lots of things going on with
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the pipeline
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we had the covid pandemic
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there were so many events and there was
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the black lives matter movement
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so those things are are really important
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to you know
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build into your classroom and and make
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sure that you’re
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you know doing doing some relevant
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things you know check out tick tock see
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how it’s going
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um think about incorporating more
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digital apps
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into your into your learning because
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students are very um
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very intuitive when it comes to
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technology now so and they really
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appreciate that
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interactivity yeah and i’ll let i’ll let
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haley go here because she has a great
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uh reference this this example
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is very relevant to the times of the
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culture
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and the media that your students are
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going to be watching and listening to
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outside
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of school uh the kind of theme for our
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i teach grade seven math right now and
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uh we are all online due to the covid
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pandemic
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and a lot of my grade seven students
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have been watching the star wars tv
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series the mandalorian
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and so i decided to make my course a
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little bit more relevant
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and engage the students a bit more i
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adopted
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a baby yoda doll and now i have a class
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mascot for my grade 7 math class
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the reason i did this is i wanted to
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help the students engage more
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and allow them to come out of their
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shell a little bit more on this
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um on zoom and turn turn on uh
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on their cameras and be engaged with
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what we’re learning
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while respecting the need for that
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classroom environment
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rather than just focusing on the content
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so baby yoda has been a lot of fun to
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have in our class this year
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joanna can you talk a little bit more
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about um how you incorporated the black
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lives matter movement into your
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into your classroom that was a really
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interesting activity
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yeah so we actually were reading a novel
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called blended
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at the beginning of the year by sharon
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draper
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and it’s um it’s an amazing novel
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and throughout there’s examples of
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stereotyping and prejudice
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and a lot of um embedded racism through
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throughout the novel
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and so naturally the the students wanted
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to discuss
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black lives matter and they wanted to
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know more about it so
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we ended up really doing like this this
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really cool debate
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and and writing activity and multiple
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discussions
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and they were the most engaged that they
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had been
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the entire year because we weren’t
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talking about this
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abstract concept or like a what if we
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were actually discussing something that
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was happening
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to them um right now and then
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from that we tied in the residential
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school experience
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so then we did um a research project on
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on residential schools and and the
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stereotyping and prejudice and racism
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that is embedded in in the canadian
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school system
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so that was i think um
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really important for for the students
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and they learned so much
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and they they did an amazing job so i
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was really proud of them
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yeah but you know they’re heavier topics
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but they’re important topics and
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our kids deserve to know about that yeah
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i couldn’t
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couldn’t agree more one one really good
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resource
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if you’re looking to see and have your
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kids share the kind of media that
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they’re interacting with
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that joanna and i have used is uh called
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seesaw
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and we’ll put the link into uh the text
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of the
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the press book but it’s awesome because
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it’s multimodal
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and you can just ask your students what
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kind of videos are they watching what
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um images do they enjoy and you can
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gather that information before
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you even start your class so that you
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have some examples and content to build
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off of
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yeah and if we’re talking about digital
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platforms
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when we’re thinking about relevant
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assessment
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and authentic assessment practice
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freshgrade is an assessment tool that’s
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a digital portfolio
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and it is absolutely wonderful for all
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students
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but especially our students whose
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learning needs requires them to show
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their
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knowledge and understanding in
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multi-modal ways
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and this information can be uploaded by
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video by picture by audio recording
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and they can also share this their
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learning and their understanding with
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their parents
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through this platform so it’s a really
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great way to also
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not only be relevant but build community
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and connection within your learning
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community and always staying on top of
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what technology is out there
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and how you can demonstrate and
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represent your students learning
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yeah okay thank you so much everybody
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for
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this chapter of two white settler
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educators exploring
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the topic of relevancy
