J.T. Brown »

Our students are energetic, fun loving and respectful to others. They are kind to each other and to our students with special who are supported with a dedicated group of education assistants. Our students bring with them multi-lingual, and cultural traditions.  Almost 66% of our population are young males who are enthusiastic about sports. You will find soccer basketball, and hockey keen topics of conversation and students love intermural opportunities. Family values are important to our community and these values are reflected in our learners who come with strong connections to parents, siblings, and an extended family of grandparents, cousins, and aunts, uncles. It is common for the school to be the educational center for entire families. JT Brown is located in the southwest portion of Surrey BC. It has seen a fair amount of neighbourhood development in the last 10 years.  JT Brown prides itself on providing our 270 children a friendly small-town atmosphere to learn and grow. Our small size enables most of our students, opportunity to lead and give back to others around us. Fostering planning, organizing skills, leading events like Fit Kids, and fundraising for various charities, enable our students to appreciate others’ perspectives. Students are confident that they have a voice in what happens in their school. When asked what they enjoy about coming to JT Brown, they say:

• “It is a great place and it is like my second home:”
• “We are one big family that helps each other and we work together to make it better… I get a chance to do things and we all care about each other.”
• “Teachers are really nice.- they are respectful of all the kids and help they sort out my problems.”
• “There have been opportunity to help about the school running activities, assembling slide  shows for district presentations, keeping the sound system working for assemblies.”

Visitors comment on the welcoming feel the schools gives when they first arrive in the building. This reflects our school’s value: “We All Belong at JT Brown”.

Our students enjoy learning in a collaborative manner. There is always lots of discussion in classes and often a visitor will find students spread out in the open area working with each other. Students comment that some of the things they like the most is:

• “The kindness that the teachers treat us with. – It is friendly and teachers try their best to  help you out.” “When you need help you ask teachers and they are polite and they make sure you get help.
• ” They make sure you really understand and give you more opportunities to try again and show you get it.” “Creating projects with friends in class.”
• “Genius hour”

Our students come from families with rich oral traditions. The new curriculum has been redesigned to provide students great choice, voice and ownership of their learning while maintaining a focus on literacy.  Over the past 2 years, staff accumulated classroom and school-wide qualitative assessments including:

·       PM Reading Benchmarks,        ·       School-wide writing          ·       ELL assessments                             ·       ELLPATS In looking at these assessments we determined our students would be best served by enhancing literacy skills so they become proficient communicators. Having most students fully meeting or exceeding expectations in reading and writing will create confident, successful learners. The school is concentrating efforts to enrich children’s vocabulary fluency, reading comprehension, and inference making skills in our primary grades.  Intermediate teachers are focusing efforts to engage students in inference making and strengthening writing skills. Literacy research demonstrates there are gender differences in how we learn to read and what engages interest in writing. Our significant population of boys reminds teachers to be mindful of providing literature choices and writing prompts which capture boys’ interests and to implement a variety of reading strategies within classes to support all students reading and writing development JT Brown is very committed to the academic, emotional and social development of all students. We continue to dedicate efforts toward building and maintaining a strong collaborative and caring culture. All classes continue to be organized as combined classes based on the guiding principal that continuity of relationships with teams of teachers and working collaboratively is beneficial for all student’s social emotional learning. In order to be effective communicators, one must understand the unwritten expectations that underpin everyday personal interactions. Cultural, linguistic and organizational/situational dynamics influence our interactions. Assisting our students to be thoughtful observers, using fiction to explicitly reveal to students commonly held expectations are some strategies in place so childe can become more proficient social communicators.

In consultation with district support JT Brown staff have engaged in several collaborative projects. At present we are concentrating our literacy efforts with children to answer the following questions:

• How will the intentional use of literacy strategies in both reading & writing instruction build a common vocabulary  and assist our students in becoming passionate readers and writers?

We know from research, connected learners who feel they belong are better engaged in learning.  A group of teachers are pursuing the following questions:

•  Will using social thinking strategies and vocabulary help students recognize society’s hidden expectations when reading literature and enable students to make stronger inferences to  better understand of the subtext of a story?

• Participate in district assessment sessions and to share learning among school staff.
• Support ongoing professional teacher-directed learning.
• Continue to create and participate in structures that allow for collaboration.
• Create structures that allow students to share what they are able to do in creative and varied ways.
• Continue to encourage and celebrate innovative practice in the school.

JT Brown staff are engaged in many areas of professional learning and are implementing the learning into the work they do with children. Staff is looking at resources and technology to help foster and develop greater understandings of Aboriginal perspectives, formative assessment, the use of guided reading, and of incorporating picture books in intermediate grades. Teachers are incorporating formative assessment, co-constructing learning with children, and engaging in new curricular practices within their classrooms. Some teachers have received training in Daily 5, literature circles, and building writing skills. Teachers are using, Second Step, Zones of Regulation & Social Thinking to strengthen students’ SEL proficiency. All staff are using electronic portfolios to provide continuous communication of children’s academic & social emotional learning to parents. This past year has been a period of intense professional learning for teachers. Staff are engaged in professional learning groups examining: ·       how competency based Language Arts rubrics can be created and utilized to assist in communicating student learning to both students and parents in Fresh Grade. ·       How to strengthen intermediate students’ inferencing skills using literature as a lens for social peer interactions. All classrooms have been outfitted with laptops, cameras, projectors, i-pads, i-pods and document cameras to assist students in accessing digital resources. Teachers are using media resources such as Discovery Education, Learn 360, and apps like Book Creator, Explain Everything. Media resources and video are engaging students in their own learning and providing documentation of student learning to share via with families.