Ray Shepherd »

Ray Shepherd Elementary is a K-7 school located in South Surrey and enrols 322 students.  It has been open since 1949 and many of our students have had parents or relatives who have attended this school.  There is a strong sense of community and we are fortunate to have active parent participation, with many parents volunteering to assist throughout the school. The staff, students and parents work together to establish a strong collaborative and caring culture.  Our mascot is the Hawk and we SOAR at Ray Shepherd (S – Show Respect, O – Observe Safety, A – Accept Responsibility, R – Resolve Conflict).  Parents are actively involved in our school and participate in many school wide events such as our Terry Fox Run, Welcome Back BBQ, Christmas Craft Fair, Chinese New Year Celebration, fundraising, hot lunch, fieldtrips, sports and so much more!  Our students care about each other and the community, and can be seen enjoying buddy activities, visits with Grandfriends in the community and supporting local and global initiatives with our Me to We team.

Ray Shepherd students and parents at our annual Terry Fox Run around the neighbourhood

The staff at Ray Shepherd proudly support many activities to enrich the leadership and learning opportunities of our students.  Some activities include chess club, art club, tech club, recycling teams, library and lunch monitors, athletics, Grade 6 Leadership and more!  They are also dedicated to ongoing professional development and enjoy exploring innovating learning practices to enrich the learning opportunities for our students.  The staff at Ray Shepherd exhibit a curious mindset and are committed to lifelong learning.

Staff participating in summer pro-d

Our school is a place of caring, and of creative and critical challenges.  Students enjoy collaborating together to explore questions they have and build projects  that further expand their critical thinking skills (STEM Challenges, knitting, sewing, primary and intermediate art clubs). 

Grade 2 Art Club

Spreading love in many ways

Our students are curious about their world and want to make a difference in it’s future. Throughout the past 5 years, the staff at Ray Shepherd have been exploring how creativity and positive behaviour supports can help to enhance self esteem and imagination.  We have also explored how best to utilize technology as a tool to improve learning.  While these continue to be areas of focus and reflection, we are now looking at new areas of inquiry that are in line with the Curriculum, district initiatives, and assessment and evaluation. Moving forward, we would like our students to be actively engaged in their learning and be prepared as learners in the 21st Century.  We want them to be partners with teachers/parents in their learning journey and develop the competencies to be successful in their future.  We want them to be the innovators, creators and change-makers of the future.  With this in mind we have one main growth area that we will focusing on:

Together We are Better: Making student learning a meaningful and engaging process for teachers, students and parents.

As we explore this area of growth and work together to build our understandings of our changing roles, we recognize that our world is changing at an unprecedented pace. To prepare our students, lessons must go beyond the “3 R’s” and foster 21st century skills. Skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity will be essential for students to take on the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Video: What is 21st Century Education? The past few years teachers have been exploring new technologies, enhancing their understanding of formative assessment, and building their understanding of the new curriculum.  As we move forward, we hope to continue to learn alongside our students and empower our learners to be actively engaged in the learning process.

Our learners are thinkers

Teachers create open-ended learning experiences that reflect the principles of BC’s curriculum which focuses on personalization, problem solving, creative and critical thinking and self awareness. We also encourage critical and creative thinking by having various activities, clubs and challenges throughout the year.  We have a chess club, art club and genius hour projects, just to name a few.  Students can be heard testing their innovations and reflecting and revising their projects as they learn.  We have had a school wide art show to showcase our masterpieces and have had a young entrepreneurs fair  to celebrate the business plans of our Gr. 6/7 students.  Our PAC sponsored Christmas Craft Fair is an extremely popular event where students design something to sell at the fair and our gym is filled with community members who support our students’ creativity. We are currently in the process of building a Maker Space room for students to create, build, test and explore their innovative projects.  This room is slated for a renovation and we hope that it will be in full use soon.

Student Leadership bulletin board

Our learners care about each other and the community

Students at Ray Shepherd SOAR to great heights to ensure that we have a safe and caring learning environment.  Our Me to We team has raised money for health projects in Haiti, clean water and education in Tanzania, business opportunities in Nicaragua and Masai villages in Kenya.  This year, their focus is on raising funds to provide clean water  to areas in rural China.  They have also collected food for the food bank, put together care packages for the homeless, organized Christmas hampers for those less fortunate and hosted a “Welcome to Canada” field trip for refugee families.  We have also had school wide events such as the Terry Fox Run and Jump Rope for Heart to raise money and awareness for cancer and heart disease. We have a number of classes involved in an intergenerational project called “Grandfriends” where students visit their grandfriends in a local home close to the school.   This project has been mutually beneficial as the students have developed strong bonds of friendship and caring with their grandfriends and the grandfriends, in turn, enjoy having visitors who are so caring and compassionate. The staff at Ray Shepherd believe that all students are important and valued.  We have open learning spaces for students to access such as the learning support room, learning commons and Rainbow Room so it not unusual to see students working in various spaces and with many adults throughout the school.  Teachers platoon, team teach and participate in various buddy activities so teachers know all students and our students mix with different grade groups so friendships build and bonds flourish.

Our school was featured on Global News outlining the wonderful work our students do to show compassion, inclusion and encouragement.  See news story below:

http://globalnews.ca/news/3473459/young-syrian-refugees-receive-warm-welcome-from-white-rock-elementary-students/

Students at their regular visits to the senior care home, visiting their Grandfriends

As we move through the 2017-2018 school year, we plan to pursue two questions:

• How can we make Communicating Student Learning (FreshGrade) a meaningful and engaging process for teachers, parents and students?

• How can we foster students’ social emotional growth and well-being through instilling intrinsic motivation, pride and ownership of the school, and leading by example?

Staff have participated in district and school based inservice on formative assessment and communicating student learning using FreshGrade.  All of our classes use FreshGrade, an online digital portfolio platform, to communicate student progress and reports.

• How can we make Communicating Student Learning (FreshGrade) a meaningful and engaging process for teachers, parents and students?
• How can we develop students’ core competencies (T,C,PS) by modelling and structuring personalized learning opportunities.  In doing so, how can we assist students in becoming more mindful (reflective) of the process of learning and less focused on the product?

We hope to seek continued curriculum inservice on personalized learning through district helping teachers and various experts in the field.  We have had meetings with our Zonal Helping Teacher and also District Principals to foster growth in this area.  We have also reinstated FreshGrade Fridays as an open forum for teachers to share and discuss the learning in posting assignments.  

We also have a team of 8 teachers who actively participate on a school plan and social-emotional learning committee.  The district offered dinner series have been great spaces for our team to discuss current issues and how we can effectively implement changes to better our students’ self-awareness of not just themselves, but also with each other and in the place they learn.

• We will continue to explore FreshGrade as a communication medium, while developing expertise in capturing and sharing authentic, meaningful learning over time.
• We will continue to encourage more parents and students to be active participants with FreshGrade portfolios.
• We are seeking feedback from parents through surveys on how we can make communicating student learning more meaningful and engaging for them.
• We are structuring in time in the day for students to capture their learning and reflect on it.
• We plan to embed the formative assessment practices in our instruction and actively involve students in the process.
• We have developed sentence starters for teachers, parents and students to use to reflect and comment on their learning.  These are being shared with parents, posted in classrooms and provided to all staff.  We plan to include them in our planners next year for quick reference.
• We have developed student sentence starter posters for classrooms so that students can easily access ideas on how they would like to reflect on their learning.
• We have developed graphic posters of the core competencies (C,T,PS) to be put on teacher white boards to reference while teaching and learning occurs.  The hope is that the language of the core competencies will be embedded in day to day activities and student learning.
• We will continue to seek inservice opportunities regarding assessment, personalized learning and curriculum.
• We will continue to emphasize learning opportunities that allow students choice and demonstrate a wide range of competencies.  Teachers will continue to explore innovative practices that involve critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity.
• FreshGrade Fridays with teachers leading the weekly discussion topics, starting with what does “One Good Post” look like?
• Focus on the Big 6 of Assessment for Learning: Clear Learning Intentions, Criteria, Descriptive Feedback, Powerful Questions, Peer and Self-Evaluation, and Student Ownership
• Parent Surveys on Communicating Student Learning (via Survey Monkey) and gaining insight on their feedback on what is working and what needs improvement
• Have Grade 6 students take on more of a leadership role in the school by starting conversations on virtues and taking more of a leadership role in the school, especially during unstructured times (recess and lunch)
• Staring a Student Council where students take the lead on problem-solving issues at schools and how we can be proactive by building positive school culture and climate
• Monthly assemblies hosted by students and their class for student recognition in participation in extra-curricular activities,  sharing and reinforcing of our school code of conduct, and special presentations
• Global Playday where students are provided with time to explore activities in an unstructured setting
• Physical Literacy initiatives in partnership with Sport for Life 

Board Trustee, Laurae McNally, at jump ball between Ray Shepherd and White Rock Elementary