 Yes. Thank you very much for that. And let's begin. The title for this section is called Supporting Your Child's Development and Use of Confidancies. And this is the second part of the two-part series and is the joint venture between Everton Regional Learning Consortium and the Alberta School Council's Association. I'm so happy to have you join me today for the end of the webinar. So for today or for this evening we hope that we achieve the following... Corey, I'm sorry to interrupt. We're having a real tough time hearing you. Okay. Let me just turn it up a little bit. Let's try it again. Oh, there we go. Can you hear me? Oh, okay. Thank you. Okay. Thanks for letting me know. So by the end of today's webinar you'll have deepened your understanding of Alberta's eight confidences, what competency development might look like in many classrooms across Alberta. And I see that we have parents from both the South and from Northern Alberta. So it's nice to see that. As well as practical strategies to support competency development at home. And so I'll provide you with practical strategies that have worked for me as well. And I bring to you not only my knowledge and experience as an educator, but also as a parent and a grandparent as well. From my perspective, if our children, my grandchildren develop the eight confidences that we'll look at today, they will have a much better chance of success in learning, living, and life. So it's important for me to get to know a little bit about who is participating today. So I can try to tailor the webinar to your needs. So my first question for you, and if you could use the letters here to share your answer. If you are a parent of elementary children, could you select A, if you're a junior high youth, B, and then a high school youth, that would be C. So we have Dawn is a parent of elementary. And A and C, elementary and high school, wonderful. As well, I see that Julia must be, I'm just waiting here. Oh, Julia, junior high in high school. Thank you so much. Okay. Next question. You participated in the first webinar, A, or you did not participate in the first webinar. I just give you a chance to let me know. Both of you participated in the first webinar. Wonderful. Great to have you back, and thanks for joining us again this evening. So as stated in the first webinar, I'd like to just review again our working norms. So again, be open to the ideas that I share. Come with a sense of curiosity and see this as an opportunity for learning something new. Or perhaps changing your existing ideas about how to support the development of competencies. Again, I encourage you to ask questions. Every question is a good question. And for myself, I sometimes need the answer to my question before I can move forward in my learning. So feel free to post your questions in the chat room or use your microphone. Again, you know about the emoticons, please use them. Let me know how you're feeling. Or if I'm going to slow too fast, they keep you engaged, but they also keep me engaged as well. So thank you for that. So in our last webinar, we addressed the following questions. What, why, who, when, where, and how. And certainly went into depth in terms of looking at each competency, looking at the attitude, skills, and knowledge related to each competency and giving you a bit of a deeper understanding of what they are. And so for this session today, we will again go deeper with the competencies. You can see the eight that are listed here in your handout. You received a handout that has copies of the competency cards that are available for you. On the front side, you'll see a bit of a definition of the card or of the competency story. And then on the back side, some indicators that help you to understand the scope of this competency. And I will be referring to these cards throughout the webinar. In our last webinar, we talked about confidence is being important for learning, work, and life. And competency development happens everywhere, not just in school. And you, as parents, are your child's first teacher. And continue to hold a very important teaching role throughout your child's life. Your role changes as your children grow and mature. And I would say, Julia, you see that as your children have moved from elementary to junior high and to high school. Both are emotional, they're physical, and their intellectual needs change. But you are critical at every stage to your child's success. My children, I have twin boys, they're 35 years old. And I still feel like I'm critical to their success. And certainly are very involved in their life and my grandchildren's life. So I would encourage you to become intentional about supporting the development of the eight competencies. And doing so will most certainly help towards paving the way for success. As mentioned, I will be sharing several strategies to support competency development that you can use at home. I think this is going to be another very fast-paced session. I'm trying to make it interactive as well. But I will be sharing many strategies, some that are not new, and you may already be using these strategies at home already. And if you are, take that as affirmation that you're on the right track and your child is already developing competency. Some of the strategies I will share with you may make you think, hmm, I'm not sure. Maybe that's not for you. But I ask that you please keep an open mind and try them before dismissing them. Or alternatively, I would like to suggest that you modify the strategy. You know your child best, you know your context best, and you know what's best for your child. So modification may be in order. The point is, and if I can use the analogy of a fridge, you may just, when you go grocery shopping, you always check your fridge before you go. So when we look at competency development, let's check our quotation mark fridge and buy into those strategies that we know we don't have in place already and just reaffirm that you already have some of these strategies in place. So I love this analogy. Let's check our fridge first. And we'll probably find that many of the things that I talk about this evening, you're already doing to some degree. At the end of our last webinar, I left you with these ideas to try at home with your child. Ask your child's teacher how they teach competency and what you can do at home. And that's a great first step. Ask your teacher, let's make sure that what you're doing at home is aligned with what they are doing at school. Talk with your child about what the skills and knowledge, about the skills and knowledge that he or she is developing and how they are useful in life. Be intentional about talking about those competencies and how they connect to the real world. Do things together that use one or more of the competencies. And we're going to talk more about this throughout the webinar. So let's get into some more detail around that. For the remainder of the webinar, we're going to look at each competency one at a time again. And as with the last webinar, the first one we're going to look at is critical thinking. And let's just review what we mean for what Albert education means by critical thinking. It involves the use of reasoning and criteria to conceptualize, evaluate or synthesize ideas. Students reflect on their thinking and improve it. They challenge assumptions behind thoughts, beliefs or actions. And they value honesty, fairness and open-mindedness. And so what strategies are used in school and what strategies can you use at home to support critical thinking? And the first one I'd like to talk about is the use of graphic organizers. You may have heard this word before. And teachers in classrooms all across the province are using graphic organizers regularly with their students. Graphic organizers help students evaluate or synthesize ideas and help them to reflect on their thinking and consider ways in which to improve. It really is a way to guide your child's thinking as they fill in and build upon a visual map or diagram. You can encourage your child to use graphic organizers, but your modeling of the use of graphic organizers is important as well. I use them in my personal life. They really do guide my thinking and help me to get to the conclusions that I want. So when we look at critical thinking, one of the strategies is compare and contrast different items. And this graphic organizer helps in terms of comparing and contrasting. It helps them to look at what's distinctly different about the two things, but also what makes them the same. A critical component when using a graphic organizer is to have your child explain their thinking. And you as a parent gently questioning whether there might be confusion or limited information. I've listed for you several examples of how your children can compare two different things. For example, comparing cats and dogs. Now, why would you do this? Is this really a real life kind of situation? Well, I think it is because your child may be thinking about or asking for a cat. And this will help your child to decide which cat to get as well as justify why they selected either a dog or a cat. They'll see what's unique about a dog, what's unique about a cat. And in the middle, they'll list some of the things that are the same. And in the end, it will help them to make that decision. That's one example of how to support critical thinking at home and how it is also supported in the classroom. Another strategy is to ask questions. And it's of course a strategy that teachers use all the time. They ask a lot of questions, but a lot of their questions are what we call closed questions. And very few of them are open-ended questions. Open-ended questions tend to support the development of critical thinking. Closed questions, on the other hand, can be appropriate depending on context, but often do not go deep in terms of critical thinking. Teachers in classrooms are working to become more intentional around asking open questions. Questions that require thinking, and in this case, critical thinking. Personally, in my experience as a parent, I was probably the person that asked a lot of closed questions rather than open-ended questions. What time is it? How did you like school today? And it generally ended up being more of a one-word answer. So I would encourage you to reflect on the kinds of questions you ask at home and even encourage your child to start thinking about the questions that they're asking. Are they closed questions or open questions? And let's just dig a little deeper in terms of understanding the difference between the two questions. Closed questions have the following characteristics. They give you facts. They're easy to answer. They're quick to answer. And they keep the control of the conversation with the questionnaire. And if you are the questionnaire, you have control of the conversation. If the teacher is the questionnaire, they have control of the conversation. It really doesn't lend itself to deep thinking. Open-ended questions, on the other hand, are likely to receive a longer answer. Open-ended questions look like this. They ask the respondent to think and reflect. They will give you opinions and feelings. And they have the control of the conversation over to your child or to the student in a classroom. And they really do support going deeper into the thinking. So let's just go through these questions one at a time. And you can give me your thinking around that. Do you think it's A, a closed question, or B, an open question? So what about this first one? Where do you live? A or B? What do you think? You can just write down A or B if you like. B, Julia put B, open, and just waiting. And welcome, Lee. I see you've joined us. Sorry, I missed you. I didn't know when that was, but welcome. And I see one response, Julia saying B, Don, or Lee, give me a minute more. Otherwise, we'll move on. And I'll give you my thinking in relation to that. Where do you live? In my mind would be a closed question because it doesn't only require one word answer. Just like Brenda asked us at the beginning of the webinar here, where do you live? We gave a one word answer. It didn't really require a lot of thinking. What about what time is it? Would that be A, a closed question, or B, an open question? Lee put A. And again, in my mind, this would be a closed question. Don and Julia, just looking for your responses as well. Let's go to the next one. Why is that so important to you? And would you think if you were asking that question, would that be A, a closed question, or B, an open question? Why is that so important to you? You might be asking that to your child. B's, I see. Lots of B's, yes. And I would agree. This requires some thinking on the part of the child. They may be sharing some feelings here and some opinions, and really going a little bit deeper in terms of critically thinking about why that might be so important. The next one. You are looking sad. What's up? What do you think? A, closed, or B, open? Absolutely right. B, open. I would agree. Again, this requires some thinking on the part of the respondent. Are you happy with your birthday presents? A or B? I'm seeing two B's here. And this actually is kind of a tricky one because you could have a one-word answer here. Are you happy with your birthday presents? The respondent might say yes, or your child might say no and leave it in doubt. But typically speaking, most would probably elaborate on that and go a little bit deeper. So then it would become an open question because it's a yes. I like my birthday presents because or and give some explanation as to why. And the final one. What did you do on your holidays? Would that be A, closed, or B, open? Yes. And I would agree. This is an open question. It does require some elaboration and explanation. And in this case, critical thinking. So thanks for engaging in the poll or in this, yes, in this poll. And let's move on then. Another part to this is that not only do we ask open questions, but also we need to think about how well we listen to the child's answer, your child's answer, and seek to understand what he or she might be saying. And sometimes it's important to ask follow-up questions such as, are you sure about that or how do you know about that? Or to ask a clarification question because you just are a little bit confused in terms of the response. And the other part of this would be what is your body language communicating? And this is not only for you to be aware, but also to teach your child to be aware of their body language. Body language is very powerful. And it can communicate interest or acceptance or frustration or disapproval. And if you want to have that ongoing communication, you need to think about that body language. So I guess to wrap this up, I don't want you to walk away thinking that we should never ask closed questions because there are times when closed questions are very appropriate. But when we think about it within the context of critical thinking and supporting the development of critical thinking, asking open-ended questions really does support that competency. Another idea for critical thinking is to organize items. And as both teachers and as parents, we do that. We ask our children to organize items. And the key to asking your child to do that is to have them explain the rationale for how the items were organized. This really helps them to think about their thinking. And so I've given you some suggestions here in terms of ways to organize items. And depending on the age level of your child, some may be more appropriate for younger kids and some are more for the older kids. For junior high and high school kids, organizing items for a grad should be great. And how would your child organize in a way that there's a good flow through all the items that people can easily find what they're looking for. And the key, again, is to have your child explain why they set it up the way they did. A real life practical approach to supporting competency development and critical thinking. And now the strategy is the idea of making estimations. An estimation is very much a part of the mathematics program of study. And your child is most likely involved in estimation activities in the classrooms on a regular basis. And when students estimate, they are thinking critically. On this slide, I've listed some ways in which you can engage your child in estimation activities. Real life practical examples. And again, just a reminder, have your child describe, justify, and reflect on their estimation strategies. Really think critically about the estimation that they came up with. Excuse me. So the next confidence use problem solving is just a quick review here. It involves selecting strategies and resources to move from what is known to what is sought, finding an answer to a solution. Students analyze situations. They create plans of action and implement solutions. They evaluate alternatives and their consequences. So once their plan is completed, think about how well they do. They approach challenges with creativity, flexibility, and determination. So in classrooms across the province, students are asked to problem solve on a regular basis, not only in math, but in other subjects as well. Social studies, science, physical education, art. In almost every subject, there's an opportunity for problem solving. And no matter which subject and what kind of problem, steps to involve to solving a problem are generally speaking very similar. And teachers teach students to varying degrees the approach that's outlined here on this slide. And again, there's a graphic organizer there to help you go through those steps and guide your thinking. As parents, you can use this approach to solve family problems as well. And I wouldn't say that you want to use it for every problem, but if there's something where it's an ongoing kind of situation that seems to keep cropping up, you might want to work through some of these steps with the individuals that are involved in the problem. It may be two siblings. And I think that one of you have more than one child, Julia, I think it was you. And they would work through it, or it may be between parent and children, and you work through it together. So the first step in problem solving is the problem identification. And knowing the real problem or issue is half the battle. And many families have difficulty with this piece because there tends to be blame to someone in the family rather than really identifying what the problem is. We also forget that there are two aspects to a problem, the emotional aspect and the task part of the problem. We need to make sure that we address both pieces because sometimes we wonder why the issue isn't resolved. And it's because a particular family member may feel that his or her feelings were not heard or addressed and will not agree to go along with the solution until the hurt feelings are dealt with. So the second step in problem solving is to create options to brainstorm what can we do to resolve this issue? What are some of the possible solutions to the problem? And have your children come up with those. Owning the options is part of the solution that they feel like they have some say in terms of how to solve this problem. So lifting those alternatives is important. And then choosing a solution from those alternatives. The goal is to find an option that each family member that's involved in the problem will agree to consider. And then decide whether or not you have the resources to carry out the alternative and then create a plan. It's important that you write down the plan and that the plan talks about who's going to do what and by when. Writing this down helps you to monitor the solution. And you can go back and say, well, this is what we said we were going to do. How are we doing in relation to that? The written plan is also helpful for identifying what might be next steps in the problem solving process. And it helps you to keep track of your progress. And the final stage then is to evaluate the success of the plan. And if you remember from our last webinar, problems sometimes aren't solved the first time. And it may mean we have to revisit the problem and try again. And that's really an important lesson in this whole competency as well. That it takes perseverance, it takes trial and error, and it takes tweaking and ongoing commitment to solving the problem. But if you teach problem solving skills to your children, you promote resiliency and success in life. So even though it seems a bit onerous to go through all these steps, it really does help to solve a problem or learn how to solve problems. And they soon learn how to solve problems on their own. Another strategy is to look for math mistakes in your community. And you can see here is one example of a math mistake. And you just point them out to your child and ask them to think about, well, what's wrong with this teacher? And explain their thinking to you. Here are a couple more. You see these oven bags. And you see the regular price and the sale price. What's wrong with that teacher? Well, of course, the sale was more than the regular price. Begin with the strawberries. Two for $5 or $1.99 each. Ask your child to explain what's wrong with that teacher. Great real-life kind of strategy to take a look at problems in real life. And another strategy would be to engage your child in project-based activities or project-based learning is what we call within school. Many teachers are now using the project-based learning approach. And it's really an approach where students are engaged in projects. They ask the question. They find resources and they conduct research to find a solution to that question. And it's really a real-life problem. And then they develop original answers and solutions to that. I'm going to be talking more about inquiry and project-based learning in the next webinar. So stay tuned for that. But for you in terms of what you might do at home, engage your child in real-life kinds of projects. Perhaps you're wondering what to do with your food waste. And if you don't have a recycle program where you did or if you want to use your food waste in your own garden, challenge your child to create a composter or some other device to turn food waste from your host into compost for your garden. And again, ask them to explain their creation and how it will benefit the environment. Great one for junior high and high school students. And you know, researching what's already there, how can we tweak that to make it work for your family is a great activity. Maybe you have mice living in your garage. I know that's an ongoing problem. I live on an acreage. Challenge your child to come up with an environmentally friendly and safe way to eliminate this problem. You might have, you know, designed a healthy menu that your entire family would enjoy. That would mean researching what everybody would want, researching if it's nutritious, all of those things, and then putting something together. And it's important to remind ourselves that other competencies are involved in project-based learning, but also many of the strategies that I've talked about already tonight. And I will continue to talk about using, as a parent of a child, we never use one competency in isolation. We're using two or three. And when we look at the activities that I've suggested here, I would say that we're probably using all the competencies. We have to manage information. We have to collaborate with others. We have to communicate our ideas. We have to problem solve. We have to be a critical thinker and so on. So this is a great real-life kind of example of how to support many competencies. The next competency is managing information. And this one takes many forms in classrooms, but let's just review what it is first. It's organizing and using information for specific purposes. They access, interpret, and evaluate share information from a variety of digital and non-digital sources. They are ethical and effective in how they use and share information. They value reliability, validity, and the integrity of the information. And so let's take a look at what that might mean in terms of how you can support it. This is a study from Stanford. And it was looking at how well high school students look at information critically and manage that information and decide if it's accurate and reliable. And so they share this photograph with them. It was the Fukushima nuclear flowers. And the caption under the photo said, Fukushima nuclear flower is not much more to say. This is what happens when flowers get nuclear birth defects. And what the students said, the result of that study said is students didn't ask where it came from. They didn't verify this. And they simply accepted the picture as fact. And that's something that's a bit scary because, of course, this is not fact. And how can we help our children to really take a look at all that information that is coming up, whether it's through the internet, whether it's through Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat or whatever it might be. And they need to really think about is that information valid, accurate, and reliable. And teachers also work on this in the classroom as well. And so here's some things that teachers use and that you can use as well. So when you read information, whether it's from ads, from social media, from internet sources, the first question you might want to ask is the authority. Who says it? Know the author and really just check into the author's credentials. Has that author said anything anywhere else? What is the background of that author? Is it part of a recognized institution? Really dig into that piece first. Then the objectivity around that is the information biased. And we know that much of the information that is out there is part of a promotion in terms of selling something. The world of pharmaceuticals really does do that well in terms of selling a particular drug and then sharing information in relation to that. So really important to think about perspectives. Authenticity, is the information authentic? Know the source again. This is related to the first one around the authority. Who's saying this? And really check into that. Google the author, Google the institution or the research group that's sharing that information and see if you can triangulate that information with other sources. Reliability is related to this as well. Is the information accurate? Often when you look at a web address, if it's .com and then you see again after that a .co, that often is a warning sign that this might be information that's not completely accurate. Consider the timeliness of the information. When was this information published first? If it's more than 15, 20 years, you may want to look at that a little bit with a grain of salt. The relevance is the information helpful. Think about whether you need that information or not. And then the final one is efficiency. Is this information worth all the effort? Think about the organization and speed of information to access. Another skill that's difficult for us as parents but also for our students is that whole idea of paraphrasing information that we read. And we know that our students are often involved in research. And they're asked to write things in their own words. And that's so hard because they look and they go, well, it says so well the way it is right now. I don't know how to change it. Here are some tips in terms of helping your child to put it into their own words. First of all, replace words and phrases and synonyms wherever you can. So rewording it by replacing words is the first good step. You can also reorganize the sentences and make new sentences in a way that still makes sense. Also, it's important to realize that some words and phrases cannot be changed. And they can be presented differently in your paraphrase. And finally, recheck to make sure that your paraphrase actually does make sense and does not change the meaning from the original text. So direct copying of information without citing the sources is actually illegal. We call that, you know, I lost the word right now. It is important to cite the source. And then if you're paraphrasing as well, make sure that you cite the source. And so that's part of the ethical and responsible use of this competency of managing information. Plagiarizing is the word for it. It just didn't come to me at the time. So the next one, creativity and innovation. The next competency, it involves generating and applying ideas to create something of value. Students recognize opportunities to apply ideas in new ways. And that's often a skill that needs to be taught. This is an opportunity. How can you make, how can you change this and present something new? Children are open to and play with ideas. They take risks and adapt to changing conditions. They are optimistic, take initiative and ingenuity. And so what are some strategies you cannot use at home? Well, first of all, create conditions for creativity and innovation. Teachers do this in the classroom and are working really hard to do this. They value curiosity, wonder and risk-taking at home. Value that in your child as well. Just really enjoy that curious spirit that you see in younger children. It seems to kind of slowly dwindle as they get older. Try and continue to nurture that. Honor diversity of ideas, thoughts and actions. And if you have more than one child, make sure to honor their different thinking and encourage them to think differently. Provide choice and foster rich opportunities to question and test ideas. And the question part again is really related to critical thinking, but critical thinking also lends itself to creativity and innovation. So you can see again how these competencies are interrelated. An idea and strategy that I talked about within the problem-solving approach is that idea of brainstorming solutions. And brainstorming for many different reasons is a great strategy for developing creativity and innovation. Some brainstormings where you list different ideas related to a question, a problem or a challenge. And some guidelines here are, first of all, defer judgment. Don't block someone else's idea if you don't like it. So no put down is really what teachers say in the classrooms. At this stage, every idea is a good idea and just list them all. Go for volume. Getting to 100 ideas is better than 10. No matter what you initially think about the quality of that idea, it doesn't matter. You're just going for volume. And you'll find that out of the volume comes creativity. One conversation at a time. And when different conversations are going on at the same time, no one can focus. So make sure you're all on the same page with this. Being visual is really helpful. Sketch the ideas if you wish. It will communicate them more clearly than words alone. And you inspire some crazy new ideas by doing the sketching. Build on other ideas. And this leverages the perspectives of different founding members and can be especially useful when you're actually stuck. Try to stay on topic. We've talked about that before and encourage wild ideas. That's where creativity comes from. Those wild, out there, take a risk kind of ideas. And when you're done with your list and you think everyone's done, just wait a few moments more. Because this is when we get really creative ideas and they start really coming. So give enough time for the brainstorming. It's a great strategy. It's fun to do as well. Another strategy that seems to be coming into play more and more often in classrooms is the idea of coding. And I don't know if your child has talked about coding or has come home and talked about coding. But it really, in its simplest form, is telling a computer what you want it to do. And it involves typing in step-by-step commands for the computer to follow. And why is this important? Well, it really is about creativity and innovation, but it's also about success in life. Because our world, sorry for the typo there, our world is increasingly run by software and we need more diversity in the people who are building it. More importantly, writing software is about expression, creativity, and practical application. It is the world that our children are going to move into and really is an opportunity, again, for success in life. Here's one way you can support coding at home. This is a website. The link is there for you. And it's a fun way, and you don't even need a computer to do some of these coding activities. But it is a great way for your child or children to get introduced into the world of coding. It really is a fun and engaging activity. And does support creativity and innovation. Next competency that we want to look at is communication. Huge competency, again, as well. Sharing ideas through oral, written, and nonverbal media. The students or children engage in formal or informal exchanges. And this is big as well. They consider culture, context, and how experience impact messaging. They demonstrate respect, empathy, and responsibility when communicating with others. And so looking at this one a little more deeply, the first thing I'd like to talk about is the whole idea of active listening. And whether you're the listener or your child is the listener, practicing active listening is an important piece. There are two pieces to listening, listening to understand. And that's just being present and really just really focused on what the speaker is trying to tell you or listening to respond. It's important to read whether or not it is a situation where it's just about listening to understand. And sometimes your child just wants to tell you something. Just wants to get it off the chest. They don't want to respond. In other cases, it is about they're telling you something because they want you to help them with it. So learning to distinguish between the two is important. But if you're engaging in active listening, there are some verbal signs of active listening that you could practice. And or your child can practice as well in pointing out the verbal signs for them to help them become better listeners is important as well. Try to remember first of all positive reinforcement but use it sparingly so as not to distract from what is being said or place unnecessary emphasis on certain parts of the message. So positive reinforcement is one of the signs of active listening. Another sign is remembering and saying out loud a few of the key points of what was said. And this encourages your child to continue speaking. You might want to ask relevant questions or make statements to help clarify what was being said. Or you might want to reflect or paraphrase on what is being said. And it shows you're interested and you understand what is said. And if you don't understand, again, clarify questions. And at the end, it's really important to kind of summarize what you heard. And this gives your child the opportunity to clarify anything that still might be confusing. There are also some nonverbal signs of active listening. And this is a generic list of nonverbal signs. And most active listeners do display these signs almost subconsciously. But raising it to the surface and becoming conscious of them is important. Just want to remind you that some of these signs may not be appropriate in all situations and across all cultures. And when we look at the global and cultural citizenship competency, it's important to think of some of these things. So the first nonverbal sign is that smile. Small smiles can show that you are paying attention and you're agreeing and being happy about the message that's being received. You can combine this in nod of the head and smile can be powerful in affirming that the message is being listened to and understood. Making eye contact, it's normal and usually encourages the listener to look at the speaker. But for some cultures, it may be intimidating. And for some children or sign speakers, it may be intimidating as well. So it's important to gauge how much eye contact is appropriate. Combine eye contact with smiles and it's important to have nonverbal messages to encourage the speaker. Posture. And again, we do this subconsciously. We lean in. We put our face in our chin, in our hands. We plant our head. Those are all ways of showing you're actively listening. Mirroring is another one. It's the automatic reflection of any facial expression used by the speaker and sends a sign of a attentive listening. Mirroring is really important if it is an emotional situation where sympathy or empathy is needed. And finally, try to avoid distractions. Avoid fidgeting, looking at the clock, rewatch, doodling or playing with your hair or maybe, you know, playing with your fingernails. So in terms of the competency of communication, intentionally practice both verbal and nonverbal signs of active listening and encourage your child to be aware of them as well. Collaboration. Involve working with others to achieve a common goal. Children participate, exchange ideas and share responsibilities. They respect competing views and nurture positive relationships. They're adaptable, willing to compromise and value the contributions of others. And collaboration is something you'll see a lot in classrooms of today. It's become a noisy place. Noisy in a good way. Students are no longer in roles sitting quietly and working alone. Increasingly, students are working in teams. They're collaborating on projects such as I shared with you before collaborating on assignments and on activities. And teachers engage in real-life collaborative activities to support the development of all competencies but in this case, collaboration. And you can support collaboration at home in many ways and you probably already do. The first one is to engage in play. And play with your child. And have your child play with other children or with your family members or from members of other families. And play can for you as adults and also for your children relieve stress, improve brain function, stimulate the mind and boost creativity, one of the other competencies, improve relationships and connection to others and keep you and your children feeling young and energetic. I think play seems to become a bit of a lost art. We structure our children with so many activities that there is no time for real play. And how can we set aside time for players and tips? That will help you out with that. Just establish regular play times for your kids. Take 20 minutes before dinner or every night or every Saturday morning. Remember that this time spent playing together is benefiting both you and your child. Give your child your undivided attention when playing. Turn off the TV. Turn off your cell phone. And make time to play without distractions. If your children are older, take them out for lunch. Make it a special time for getting to know each other and building those relationships. Having undivided attention makes your child feel special. Get down to your child's level. That may mean getting down on your knees or sitting on the floor. That's your child's intensity during play. Embrace repetition. And I can't tell you how many times Grandchild has wanted to hear the Hungry Caterpillar book. I'm sure it must have been 30 times already. But obviously, it may be boring to me, but it is not boring to him. He wanted to hear it again and again. And they learn through repetition. So let your child take the lead. Become part of the game rather than trying to dictate the play. In pretend play, your child gets to call the shots, make the rules, and determine the pace of the play. Don't force or play or try to prolong a game. The best way to teach a new skill is to show your children something, how it works or how a game works, and step back and give them the chance to try. So creativity comes in again. And it really makes the game your own. And the final caution would be to make the play age-appropriate and always consider safety important. Nothing ruins a game faster than a child getting hurt. Another strategy for collaboration is to assign chores. And I think back to when I asked my children to do chores around the house, and sometimes I felt like it was more work to get them to do the chores than it was for me to do it myself. I could do it quicker myself, and probably sometimes in my mind I thought I did it better myself. But we need to remind ourselves that this is an important skill that our children need to learn. And chores is part of collaboration. It makes them feel like they're part of the family unit. It gives, giving your children chores the old self-esteem. Getting a chore done and doing it well can give your child a major sense of accomplishment. And I know that my son has to vacuum every Saturday morning. And he sometimes got molded, but it looked pretty good when it was done. And he felt good about it. Teach the importance of completing the job. This will become increasingly more useful as your child gets older. And, you know, those of you that have junior high school children, you really see that. And I'll tell you that if this is something you teach your child that they need to get the job done, your classroom teacher will love you. And to emphasize the idea of keeping things clean and organized. It's easier to find things. You think clearly when things are organized and your environment is less cluttered. Getting your child into the habit of regularly picking up after yourself is a great way not only to build a good routine, but, again, will benefit them for the rest of their life. Hard to do. I know one of my sons was just when I, he never picked things up. It was always felt like I was helping him. But he's 35 now, and he does a much better job of that. He certainly learned it over time. That's the pattern of helping around the house. It'll become a habit that will be part of his life and will continue into when he becomes an adult. It really does help him get a sense of being part of a household team. So when your child asks why or she has to do a chore, explain that he's part of the family. And everyone in the family must do their share. But giving him the we're all in this together way of looking at things, he is more likely to see his work as part of something bigger. He is less likely to see household chores as something he's been singled out to do and forced to do, and he's the only one. We're all in this together. So here are some examples of chores that five to seven year olds can do. This is my grandson in this picture here. And he helped me pick potatoes out of the garden and managed to help us to clean the potatoes in the sink. He absolutely felt so proud to be helping Grandma out. And he really did a good job of it. And I'm asking him to do it on his own. He has to think about how he was going to make those potatoes clean. Examples of what eight to 10 year olds can do. And certainly as your children get older, the chores become much more complex. And you expect them to do them much more independently. So another strategy is the idea of self-reflection. And as the great philosophy says, an unexplained life is certainly not worth living. And teachers across the province are increasingly realizing the benefits of self-reflection and are intentionally setting aside time for students to reflect in their classrooms no matter what the topics may be. In classrooms, it can take many forms. Students write in journals. They complete exit or entry splits. They engage in focus group conversations or more. I would encourage you and your children to engage in self-reflection both individually and as a family. Self-reflection is the time we take out of our daily life and being intentional about taking out that time to reflect on our actions. All of us children and adults should self-reflect. Think about our weaknesses, our strengths, our relationships, and how we deal with other people. Whether in a family setting, in a community setting, or in an extended family setting. Self-reflection on how well we collaborate with others in our family is important. And really does relate to the competency of collaboration. To be truly effective, each member of the family should participate in the self-reflection and to talk to each other about their reflections. Here are some sample kinds of ideas in terms of what to reflect on when we look at collaboration as a family. And it may get you started in that. It may feel a bit stilted at first, but as you continue to engage in that self-reflection, it does really help in terms of increasing the sense of collaboration and how well, and how we can better collaborate as a family. So strongly encourage you to do that. The next competency is cultural and global citizenship. This is a big competency because it involves cultural, environmental, political, and economic systems. It involves First Nations-maintained Inuit, microphone, and other perspectives when taking action on local or global issues. Advocating for dignity and well-being of individuals is important, and our children have to learn to value equity and diversity and believe in their capacity to make a difference. So how can we support the development of that? A big one that I'd like to talk about is that whole idea of empathy. Empathy is the act of taking the perspective of someone else without making a judgment, and it's the act of recognizing the emotions and others and feeling with people, and again without judgment. So the visual there really does capture it. Opinion is the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy. So it requires us to suspend our engels and live in another's world. It requires profound purpose, larger than any selfish kind of understanding. So practicing empathy, you as the parent and encouraging your child to practice empathy, really does support the competency of cultural and global citizenship. Other ideas are forming new friendships and looking for friendships with people who are not your age or with friends whose first language isn't the same as yours or with people from different countries and different cultures or with different interests, hobbies or foods. Just think of what you learn when you interact with them. People from your community that you generally, speaking, do not interact with. Great way to support cultural and global citizenship and something practical that you can do at home or within your community. And the final competency is personal growth and well-being. And with this competency, it involves managing emotional, intellectual, physical, social, and the spiritual aspects of living and gain a big competency. Students at learning, career or wellness goals and work towards them. They drop on their strengths and develop interests, skills and talents. Students are reflective, gain that whole reflective piece, resourceful, part of problem solving, optimistic, and they strive for personal excellence. So I'd like to hone in on the whole idea of setting goals here. Something teachers do in classrooms again and something you can do at home. Setting meaningful goals or what we call smart goals really helps in terms of achieving the goal in the end. And smart goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. And so let's take a look at a goal here and decide if it's smart or not. And use the poll here. Here's the ball. I want to lose some weight before I go to Hawaii. Yes or no? Please use the poll to give me your response to that. What do you think? Again, the goal is I want to lose some weight before I go to Hawaii. Using your poll, yes or no? Would you say this is a smart goal? Yes or no? This is not a smart goal. And again, the criteria would be is it specific? Is it measurable? Is it attainable, realistic, or timely? And we would say yes or no? And I see two noes here. And I would have to agree that no. This is not a smart goal. And we can just take a look at why. First of all, is it specific? Well, not really, because it says some weight. Well, we don't know how much weight is some weight. So then it's not measurable either, because if we don't know how much weight we want to lose, we don't know how much to measure. Is it attainable? Well, again, we don't know when we're going to Hawaii. And we don't know how much weight we want to lose. So if it's 50 pounds, then we're going to Hawaii tomorrow. Well, that's certainly not attainable or realistic. Or the timing is the last one we haven't set, kind of a time frame in terms of when we want to reach the goal. So thinking about the smart aspects when your children set goals and helping them to create goals that are truly smart and actually help them to achieve that goal a little bit better. So another idea in relation to personal growth and well-being is the idea of walking or riding your bike wherever possible. And I know because I was a principal that many of the parents in my school that I was principal in would drive their children to school. And that's fair if your children, if you live 10 blocks away from the school, perhaps drive them the first eight or nine blocks and have them walk the last block. But wherever possible, walk or ride your bike. And the benefits are absolutely amazing. Students come to school happier and in a healthier state of mind. They approach learning with a clear head. They're focused. They're ready to learn. And in our society with increasing levels of obesity, this may help to reduce this trend. When you go out, if you can walk or ride your bike as a family, do so. It's fun. It's healthy. And really does have all those benefits that we talked about. It really is about personal growth and well-being. So just a couple strategies there. And that actually wraps it up for this webinar. And I want to thank you for the opportunity to share information about competencies and some strategies that you can try at home. I know that some of those, as I talked about, were already in your fridge, but you might want to tweak them. And some may be new for you. And I encourage you to try them. Of course, I wouldn't say that you'd want to try them all at once. This webinar is archived. Go back to it and try a few at a time. You introduce them and then go to the next one. Thank you for participating today. I hope you found it informative. And again, contact information is there. If you'd like to ask me any questions later on or invite me into your school to talk to your parents, I'd be happy to do that. So wishing you much success with this with your children and wishing you a wonderful rest of the evening. Thank you again. Terrific. That was wonderful, Cori. Thank you very much. Does anybody have any quick questions before we wrap up tonight? Dawn, I know you'd asked about slide 30. And I just wanted to make sure that you had gotten a link that was up there. I'm going to put that in there again for you. And all of the links from tonight's presentation have been sent out in your handouts as well. So if you need to reference any of those, that's where you can have access to them as well. All right. I see Dawn is typing a message here. Okay. She's specifically looking for the organizational chart that was shown. She can't find that on the link. That was on slide 30, Cori. And I will let you know. Okay. I'm going to go back to that. I wonder if I can do that quickly. Well, problem-solving strategy looks a mess in the community. Yeah. That's the graphic organizer for the problem-solving. I think I'm just about there. Slide 30. This one here asks your child to identify and share where they go. This is about the math wall. And shame that link would show you many different visuals in relation to what you might see in the community. She's saying before this one. Is this one you're looking for? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And so if you go back to when I first introduced graphic organizers, I believe I gave you a link there for all of the graphic organizers. Yes. On slide 19, there's a link there. And that will give you all the organizers. I can repost that as well, too. Slide 20. We were asking to access the first webinar. And absolutely, they are archived, I think, on the Alberta School Council Association. They are. But also, if you go to the evidence and regional learning consortium. Sorry. They're posted there as well, under the competencies tab and under parents. All right. Any more questions? All right. Well, that looks like that's everything. Thank you once again, Cori. I've been in on both of your sessions. And I've learned a tremendous amount and taken a number of notes. So my kids need to watch out because I'm going to be hitting them with some of these strategies here. I promise not all at the same time, though. All right. Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us tonight. And you have a wonderful evening. Good night, everyone.