Learning and Teaching at Tessa is a celebration

Learning and Teaching at Tessa is a celebration.

At Tessa, we celebrate each of our transdisciplinary themes.  It is a celebration to the Learning and Teaching of approaches to learning, inquiry, concepts, language and the learner. 

The transdisciplinary model inherently promotes student agency. It encourages the integration of many ways of knowing, and perspectives from all members of the learning community, to make sense of a world that has become “too big to know.”

Our transdisciplinary themes or units last for 8 to 9 weeks. Last Friday, November 1, we had our first End of Unit Celebration on “Who We Are” unit. Parents are invited to come and see the final projects of their child. The celebration is in respective classrooms and could be presented in a performance or documentation of what the student learned throughout the exploration of the central idea, lines of inquiries and key concepts. 

In each unit, teachers at Tessa incorporate the importance of approaches to learning skills. These are a set of skills that we use when we are involved in learning. They come grouped into five sets: Thinking, Social, Self-Management, Research and Communication skills. They naturally have growth mindset occurring within them, since they cover many different behaviors, self-control as well as thinking and communication strategies. 

In other words, the Learning and Teaching celebration invites the learning community and the learner to present a summative assessment of the essential skills, concepts of inquiry to show the progression of sub-skills. Some examples of sub-skills such as critical, creative thinking, listening, speaking, emotional intelligence and mindfulness. In each transdisciplinary theme, the learner gets to improve in all these skills in the wholeness of Learning and Teaching.