School Goal Two
To improve student achievement in reading, writing, listening, and speaking by using a school-wide scope and sequence of literacy concepts and programs.
How can we continue to increase student success in literacy?
Literate students are able to explore language and story to learn more about themselves, their families and the role of Indigenous knowledge in their learning. Through ongoing development of listening and speaking skills, students can connect with others near and far which is fundamental to global citizenship. Strong literacy skills allow students to deepen subject-specific and cross-curricular understanding, thereby supporting increased academic success in all content areas.
This goal and focused inquiry question aligns directly to our district strategic priority in Literacy. Additionally, our intended approaches are deeply connected to First Peoples Principles of Learning.
First Peoples Principles of Learning
The Literacy Goal needs to ensure that:
- Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place).
- Learning is embedded in memory, history, and story.
Over the course of the year, the following will be our direct areas of focus:
- Integration of Indigenous literature, language and culture to support connectedness, reciprocal relationships and a sense of place, as we address the 94 Calls to Action;
- Ongoing focus on Call to Action #62 - Teachers will learn the tools to teach about Indigenous cultures, languages, including residential schools, and will learn to use Indigenous teaching styles, as outlined in the Indigenous Principles of Learning;
- Access to just right and culturally responsive text for all students;
- Access to Google ReadWrite and other assistive technologies where possible;
- Inclusion Support Team to engage weekly at Wednesday meeting in a review of the comprehensive support model (balance of push-in and pull-out support where necessary);
- Regularly scheduled School-Based Team meetings with teachers to plan for students with lagging skills, using an RTI model (Tier 1,2,3), differentiation of instruction and comprehensive support model;
- Provide ongoing opportunities to practice oral language storytelling through a First Peoples’ lens where learning is embedded in memory, history and story;
- Ongoing commitment to adding more and more diverse voices to our learning commons book collection;
- Supporting Heggerty (phonics and phonological awareness instruction) through teacher professional development and resourcing;
- Continuing to implement a science of reading model; and
- Ongoing development of comprehensive literacy support model (both push in and pull out support to respond to student needs).
Over the 2023-24 year, we will track progress on our initiatives identified in this year’s plan. And, specifically:
- DLA data review fall and spring (note trends, monitor progress, inform instruction, Pro-D development, instructional strategies, resources, learning support models);
- Report card data - June summative reports in ELA will be reviewed in fall in grade groups during class profile team meetings (learning support model will reflect the fall needs and will be on a 6-8 week review cycle);
- FSA Data will inform whole school instructional practices for literacy and guide our teacher and Educational Assistant professional development model; and
- Review other formative and summative literacy assessment tools to assess efficacy and relevancy.
- Summary learning, based on evidence gathered over the year, will provide us with key learnings to guide next steps for the 2024-25 school year and beyond.
