School Goal Two
To improve student literacy across the curriculum for all students regardless of language program, with a particular focus on primary years, and foundational reading skills.
How can we improve literacy for all students? Which key literacy practices are valued as impactful across all grades?
As children become older and are not able to action their learning due to lagging reading skills, this has a detrimental effect on their self-esteem, and image of themselves as learners. Research affirms the importance of literacy, particularly in early years as a key marker for success and engagement. We are on a journey to learn about and use explicit teaching school-wide for literacy instruction, and we have observed a promising reduction in the number of children entering intermediate grades as non-readers (i.e. "emerging" proficiency on report card and/or District Literacy Assessment (DLA). We need to ensure that we use tools to assess both decoding and comprehension.
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:
- Professional book clubs on the subject of early literacy, and Science of Reading concepts;
- Conversations between Keating’s literacy team and that of other schools to compare/share strategies and results;
- Engagement in professional development and workshops;
- Provision of collaboration time, partially facilitated by building this into schedules;
- Continuing to offer and engage in diversity planning sessions;
- Compassion interviews with children (What kind of teaching helps you? How do you like to learn?) to gather Street Data. These interviews can be facilitated by Inclusive Education staff; and
- Creating a scope and sequence to guide effective teaching at every grade level.
Over the 2023-24 year, we will track progress on our initiatives identified in this year’s plan. And, specifically:
Using the combination of report card data, FSA results, and DLA results to gauge success, identify learning needs, and guide our practice as educators.
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. More specifically:
- From Adrienne Gear’s work, we will move away from the KWL (know-want to know-what I learned) to “Knew/New” - what you previously knew versus a new understanding.
