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North Park Wilson School
Inspiring Learning
Teaching and Learning
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​​​​​Our goal is to support students as they develop the adaptive skills needed to be active, engaged citizens in the future. Understanding and affirming creativity in its many forms is a cornerstone of our learning to teach through the arts.

Teaching Thr​​ough the Arts

As a Centre of Excellence Through the Arts, we want to use the power of art to develop our students’ thinking dispositions. In order to turn our beliefs into actions, staff identified five key artistic habits of mind that are developed within and through the arts and can be utilized across the curriculum to deepen thinking and learning.
  • ​Risk-taking: Learning through the arts invites students to take risks, and experiment with new techniques and approaches as they learn to express their unique identities.

  • Communication: Students learn to decode the artist’s meaning and to encode original ideas in their own work.

  • Embracing a range of perspectives: Our diversity is our strength and a common theme in all of our learning.

  • Building creative and collaborative communities: Our teachers use artful learning processes and artful ways to represent understanding.​

  • Critical thinking and analysis:​ Through a combination of explicit and inductive approaches to learning, we encourage students to focus on the process not the product as they construct meaning from their experiences.

Learning Through the Arts

Teachers
Teachers work collaboratively with students. Instruction is a combination of explicit and inductive approaches. Inquiry oriented instruction with a focus on process not product often requires the teacher to work as a facilitator alongside students as they construct meaning from their experiences.

Explicit instruction of strategies and skills needed to explore topics, and flexible scaffolding as students work toward clearly identified outcomes, are keys to student success. Formative assessment, including clearly outlined criteria and specific feedback, guide student learning. Teachers consciously plan cross-curricular units that utilize artful learning processes and artful ways to represent understanding.

​Students 
Our students are at the heart of teaching and learning. Teachers work diligently to engage their students and connect learning to students’ needs, interests and cultures. Student voice and choice is valued and encouraged. Students are supported as they develop confidence in their abilities to think and express themselves through the arts. 

​Community

Working through our School Community Council and Parent Council, parents participate in the decisions that guide the direction of our work as a Centre of Excellence Through the Arts.​ Community members are part of the planning committees for major events. These events include curriculum evenings, our annual arts festival and other special events throughout the year.

Artist in Residence

In 2016, North Park Wilson was granted its first Artist in Residence position through the Saskatchewan Arts Board. Working alongside a professional artist, teachers develop and enact a UBD unit that intentionally integrates artful thinking and representations with other curricular areas.