Tackling Destreaming in Grade 9

This September Ontario will no longer have academic and applied streams in grade 9 and have one single course, SNC1W. After years of this streaming practice and a failed attempt to destream in the 90s, many teachers are wondering how we can possibly run a destreamed class successfully. I have seen so much evidence that it is not just possible but students can THRIVE! If you are wondering about the why behind destreaming I suggest you start with Jason To. My first try at destreaming happened last semester. Last year I a ran a destreamed physics program, teaching the SPH4C and SPH3U curriculum in a combined class. I wanted this to work for all the learners in my classroom so I chose to try the Thinking Classroom approach.

But what is a Thinking Classroom?

Building thinking classrooms is inspired by Peter Liljedhal's work and is not an overnight project (I was fortunate to work with Peter himself at a conference this summer and he told me this!). Work to incorporate a few chapters at a time and once you get good at them, add the next. I started personally with Visibly Random Groups, Thinking Tasks and Multiple Level CYUs (Check Your Understanding). If you are new to thinking classrooms, check out Peter's book or you can see my summaries here in slide form or here in video form.

For a destreamed class approach I pulled together the following to help you see how I created and ran destreamed both semesters in physics this year...