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CORE COMPETENCY VISUAL GUIDES
and STORYBOOKS RESOURCE for
STUDENT SELF-REFLECTION & ASSESSMENT
with printable student work booklets
created by Chris Castellarin
The Story Behind the Creation of the
Core Competency Visual Guides and Storybook Resource for Student Self-Reflection and Assessment
Since 1995, I have been passionate about education and helping others improve their academic performance. I believe that with the correct tools and under the right guidance, everybody can succeed in the delivery of meaningful programs.
So with 28 full-time consecutive years of teaching experience, largely with early primary, I created the Core Competency Visual Guides and Storybooks Resource for Student Self-Reflection and Assessment when I realized that there was nothing out there that could give Kindergarten to Grade 3 students a clear, meaningful and visual understanding of what the various core competencies might look like in a real world setting.
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The  Core Competency Visual Guides  program was created over a period of three years and piloted for two of those years while undergoing further development. The on-line materials consist of twenty books, one for each assessment statement found within the six core competencies (communication, creative thinker, critical and reflective thinking, personal awareness and responsibility, positive personal and cultural identity, and social responsibility). In addition, an on-line Teacher Guide is also provided. Each on-line book contains an adult definition and a student definition of that specific core competency. There are a total of 20 core competency assessment statements and each statement is accompanied by three picture storybooks recorded to video (to allow for the option to complete the program three separate times during the school year - Fall, Winter, and Spring). Each storybook video has a running time of between 2 minutes to 15 minutes dependent on the length of the book. A total of 85 storybooks are being used with permission from the publishers. Each statement also contains three “quick review video shorts” enacting the behaviours associated with each statement in comparison to the three-point scale of emoji faces. Each video runs for 20 to 50 seconds. There is a table of content at the start of each book, a statement page, three pages of colour images to correspond with the three point scale of emoji faces, a statement worksheet page with black and white clip art images  (also located in the student work-booklets), a drawing worksheet page with three point scale reference, (also located in the student work-booklets), and a writing page for older and/or more capable primary students with three point scale reference (also located in the student work-booklets). All 20 statements, as well as, all storybook videos, images, short video re-enactments, and student worksheets are repeatedly accompanied by the questions, “How do you see yourself? Are your behaviours, actions, and words like that of a character in the (storybook, pictures, video shorts)”? All pages have voice recorded buttons for ease of reading or for independent student access. At the end of each book is a summary of the statements with three-point scale emoji faces. Lastly, an appendix holds a few supplemental picture storybooks recorded to video for optional or additional use.
About the Author and Creator of The Core Competency Visual Guide and Student Materials
Chris Castellarin has taught full-time in the public education system in British Columbia, Canada for 27 years consecutively. During his teaching career he has at some point or other taught every grade group between Kindergarten and Grade 5 (ages 4 to 11). But most of those years were focused on teaching students in Grade 1. Chris also spent a couple of years part way through his teaching career as an acting vice-principal and as a resource teacher with a focus on early intervention in literacy. He has served on more school committees and district committees than can be counted as either a member or as chair. Chris taught for 22 years with the Vancouver School Board before moving the Vancouver Island and joining the Cowichan Valley School District #79 where he has taught K/1 for the past 5 years.
Chris is the co-author of the Active Friends Peer Mediated Friendship Groups manual with Dr. Nancy Bradshaw (PhD). The manual was used in several schools in the Vancouver School District. He is also the creator of a Developmental Reading Assessment matrix and a Safety Plan document for use by classroom teachers, EA's and School Administration for use with children who have high behavioural needs and incidents of disruptive behavioural. Chris is also the creator of a 14 episode series on YouTube for the original K/1 CALM Curriculum. He currently has over 1000 educational teaching videos and storybooks on YouTube with over 1100 subscribers. Lastly, Chris has been dedicating the last six years to creating a website that contains every lesson possible for teaching grades K to 2 with 500+ webpages, including 200 morning activities pages, 78 word ending spelling lessons, 94 phonics lessons, 19 math units and 45 theme units, all containing hundreds of links to storybooks, videos, PDF worksheets, video recorded lessons, art, music, writing activities, guided reading, sight-word learning and hands-on science. He has delivered several in-service workshops within the Vancouver school system and been a mentor to new and pre-service teachers.
Chris holds a Master’s in Education degree from the University of British Columbia. A Diploma in Education from Latrobe University in Melbourne Australia and a Bachelor of Arts degree and Certificate of Liberal Arts from Simon Fraser University of BC.
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