Brookside »

Located in the Central  area of Surrey, adjacent to Brookside Park, the Brookside Community is a predominantly middle class neighbourhood.  Initially, the community was comprised entirely of single family homes, but the demographics began changing in the late 90’s when the school boundaries were altered.  More and more homes have basement suites with multiple families residing in a single family home.

There are over 20 languages spoken in the homes of our students other than English.  More than one third (33%) of our learners are designated as English Language Learners.

With the addition of the district program Surrey Academy of Innovative Learning in 2015, Brookside currently enrols 420 students.  We have 39 students with a special education designation, approximately 9% of the school population.  We have 12 aboriginal students.

The Surrey Academy of innovative Learning (SAIL) was introduced at Brookside last year.  The program started small with 2 multi-age classes k to 3 and 4 to 7.  SAIL is a blended learning program with an emphasis on Inquiry based learning and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art-design, Mathematics).  Students come from all over the lower mainland to attend the program.  This year we enrol 72 students in our SAIL program.  15 of the students in SAIL have special education designations, just over 20% of its population.  There is great interest in the program and we currently have a waiting list of over 80 families.

The school benefits from a very involved, supportive parent advisory council.  They work diligently planning many school events throughout the year to build strong community connections.  Fall BBQ, Halloween Howl, Santa’s breakfast,  Movie Nights and monthly hot lunches are just a few of the events our PAC host and volunteer their time for.

The school also benefits from active student service leadership teams.  They provide service to the school, the local community , and global aid organizations.

1. School-wide use of Fountas and Pinnell Reading assessment and intervention
2. RAD Reading Assessment Pre and Post
3. IXL Math
4. Island.net Numeracy assessment grades3-8
5. School Wide writes in October and May
6. Freshgrade Digital Portfolios
7. Teacher Observations
8. Student Self assessment and reflection

At our September Planning day teacher identified common areas of need in their classrooms through a scanning process.  As a guide for planning we used the Spirals of Inquiry framework to develop inquiry questions, hunches and plans of action.

The following collaborative Inquiries are currently in progress:

1. To what extent will explicit instruction of cognitive processes and embedding technology into daily learning activities improve students’ 21st Century skills- inquiry, problem solving, critical and design thinking, and collaboration?  (whole school) Plan of Action: Students and teachers need a structure/framework for reflecting and evaluating their performance (strengths and areas requiring further development).  Use Freshgrade to strengthen, develop and encourage students’ reflection (metacognitive awareness.  Use video footage and explicit feedback on Freshgrade to help educate parents on how their child is doing. Working on using a variety of tools to differentiate learning for students(IXL pilot, creating project frameworks that can be applied over and over, to build research skills and knowledge base of tools).  We will investigate more tools for differentiating learning (khan Academy).  We will model self-assessment and goal setting.  We will develop and practice peer and self assessment.
2. To what extent will training parents and students on the reflection component (metacognition) using the  feedback feature in Freshgrade digital portfolios, improve student learning? Plan of Action:  Teach parents and students what quality feedback looks like.  Provide parents with sample questions to guide their conversations at home with their child.  The questions will align with our curriculum priority practices and core competencies.  Teach students to reflect and be descriptive in their own self assessment in a positive way, to support goal setting and action plans.
3. How can we develop self-regulation coping strategies to help foster empathy in our students?Plan of Action:  We would like to move from just having access to “tools” (wiggle seats, head phones, worry beads, fidgets) to having students develop and use strategies independently and with purpose in our classrooms.  We want to embed self-regulation strategies as a critical component to developing set-aware-regulated individuals.  We will create a teacher resource library that is accessible to the whole school (Titles to include:  Toolkit For Promoting Empathy in Schools: www.startempathy.org, Calm, Alert, and Learning by Stuart Shankar, Mind Up resources, The Orange Shoes by Trinka Hayes Noble, Carla’s Sandwich by Debbie Herman, The invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig, Each Kindness by Jaqueline Woodson, A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Phillip C. Stead, Mama Panya’s Pancake, by Mary and Rich Chamberlin, The Summer My Father Was Ten by Pat Brisson, Mouse was Mad by Linda Urban, Hooray for Hat by Brian Won).  We will use the common areas in the school as an additional space for students to practice self-regulation strategies they are learning.  School wide initiative in February promoting random acts of kindness.
4. How can we change our writing instruction to ensure we are developing students’ core competencies of critical thinking, creative thinking and communication?  Plan of Action:  teachers attended Adrienne Gear’s Writing workshop and will implement her ideas and strategies.  Anchor books recommended in Adrienne Gear’s Fiction, Non-fiction and Writing Power books.  3 teachers attend the Faye Brownlie and Layton Schellnert Dinner Series and will share what they learn to support the inquiry.

For Inquiry #3 Taunya Shaw will provide support on our inquiry release day on March 28.  Teachers will share their understanding and resources of best practice in SEL and empathy building.

Plans are included in part 1 of Focus and Planning.  We have 28 release days staff will use to collaborate and work together on their inquiries.  We are using the structure set out  in The Spiral’s of Inquiry, and the Spiral Playbook, by Judy Halpert and Linda Kaiser.  We also have monthly learning lunches where we examine where we are in our learning and where we need to go next.  Teachers also have a book club on Embedded Formative Assessment, by Dylan William.