Core Competency Examples

BC’s Core Competencies fit naturally into home learning! Here’s a quick refresher on each competency, with examples of how students might use them in everyday learning.  

 Communication 

 Communicating (Exchanging Ideas & Information) 

 

 

 Speaking & Presenting: A student uses a slide deck (or another format) and clear, spoken language to explain the lifecycle of a cedar tree to siblings or the teacher on Seesaw. 

 

 

 Digital Communication: A student writes a well-structured email, blog post, or Seesaw post summarizing a historical event. 

 

 

 Visual Representation: A student creates a comic strip, graphic organizer, or other visuals to explain the plot of a story or novel they read. 

 

 

 Collaborating (Working Together) 

 

 

 Group Projects: A student collaborates with siblings to build a science model, listens to and incorporates everyone's ideas into the final product. 

 

 

 Feedback: While working on projects with siblings, students share ideas or suggestions about things they like or ways to improve them. 

 

 

 Thinking 

 Creative Thinking (Generating New Ideas) 

 

 

 Invention & Design: A student designs a new gadget from recycled materials, testing prototypes to improve the final product. 

 

 

 Creative Writing: A student writes an alternate ending to a story or composes an original poem from the perspective of a historical figure. 

 

 

 Flexible Problem-Solving: A student runs into a roadblock during a coding project and tries three completely different workarounds to find one that works. 

 

 

 Critical and Reflective Thinking (Analyzing and Evaluating) 

 

 

 Media Literacy: A student analyzes two different news articles about the same event to identify potential bias or missing viewpoints. 

 

 

 Self-Correction: After completing a math assessment, a student reviews incorrect answers, identifies where they made a mistake, and rewrites the steps correctly. 

 

 

 Data Analysis: A student collects data about people’s favourite sports, graphs it, and shares conclusions about what sports are preferred and why. 

 

 

 Personal and Social  

 Personal Awareness and Responsibility (Self-Regulation & Well-being) 

 

 

 Goal Setting: A student sets a goal to read for a certain number of minutes each day and tracks their progress in a journal. 

 

 

 Emotional Regulation: A student recognizes when they feel overwhelmed by a challenging task and practices strategies to self-regulate (e.g., taking a short break and using positive self-talk to try again). 

 

 

 Time Management: A student writes and follows a daily and weekly agenda that includes schoolwork, break time, extracurricular events, and fun! 

 

 

 Positive Personal and Cultural Identity (Understanding Self) 

 

 

 Heritage Exploration: A student creates a family tree or a digital presentation exploring their cultural heritage, traditions, and family values. 

 

 

 Self-Reflection: At the end of the school year, a student reflects on their progress toward a goal set in their Student Self Assessment (SSA), identifying how they met the goal and what they learned.  

 

 

 Social Awareness and Responsibility (Community & Environment) 

 

 

 Empathy and Inclusion: A student notices a friend is struggling to join an activity and invites them in, making sure they are included. 

 

 

 Global Citizenship: A student researches a global issue (like clean water access), shares about it, and organizes or participates in a fundraiser to help solve the issue. 

 

 

 Environmental Stewardship: A student organizes recycling at home, participates in a local recycling program, or takes part in a community clean-up day.