White Rock »

White Rock Elementary is a K-7 dual track school in White Rock, BC, Canada, currently in its 90th year. The new building was opened in 2007. White Rock is located in an area with a mix of apartments and single-family homes.  The school is currently home to approximately 490 students. The community consists largely of young families, many with two incomes.

White Rock Elementary offers an Intensive Fine Arts choice program for K-7.  There are currently 214 students enrolled in our Fine Arts program. 

Our beautiful facility, with a music room, dance, drama and art studios are used on a rotating basis by all classes.  As well, the four pods outside of the classrooms are used for small group work and additional teaching space.  This level of activity and movement gives the school a very active feeling.  Teaching our students to prepare themselves for their day of learning and honing their skills for the workforce has been the focus of our work. Being near the ocean, our students also have the gift of experiential learning right outside our classroom doors steps away from the beach. We have a Seaquarium in our school in which our students take ownership of. With support of Friends of Semiahmoo Bay, our students look after sealife within the building.

Talk about our learners: Our students are inquisitive, curious, and courageous.  We have a very diverse population from different socio-economic backgrounds and our students bring with them, a wealth of background knowledge that has enabled them to apply those skills to their everyday learning in and out of the classroom.  Visitors to our school have commented on what a lively and welcoming place it is to be and that White Rock pride is undeniable when you walk into the building.  Students have embraced technology and inquiry-based learning and teaching as it allows them to pursue their passions and interests.  Staff have responded to this thirst and have thoughtfully designed programs that are engaging and challenging for every learner. 

The parents at White Rock work tirelessly helping to build a positive school community with special events and fundraising to support the school. The Parent Advisory Committee plays a very active role in building a positive learning community. Many parents volunteer on a regular basis both in classrooms and on field trips.  The PAC has organized many events including a Winter Craft Fair, Parent Socials, Pancake Breakfasts, hot lunches… and the list is endless!  They have also generously contributed to the purchasing of supplies and materials to support the implementation of the new BC Curriculum.  Technology (laptops, Ipads, robotics), sports equipment, Social Emotional tools, teacher resources and fundraising for our new playground are just a few items the PAC has contributed to.

Welcome Back Pancake Breakfast organized our Parent Advisory Group!

White Rock’s office and custodial staff work diligently to make students, parents, and visitors feel welcome and safe in our building. They are approachable, supportive, and great ambassadors of our school. Our Student Leadership Team supports many school initiatives such as spirit days, Me to We themed events, “Healthy Buddies”, organizing intramural games, lunch monitors, seaquarium crew and charitable activities both at local and global levels. Classes take ownership in organzing monthly school wide assemblies with important messages they would like to convey (eg: recycling, using theTHINK strategy).

The staff at White Rock Elementary generously involves themselves in a myriad of activities that make White Rock a very special learning environment. These activities include the Student Leadership program, athletic teams, recycling crews, library monitors, ongoing professional development, and exploration of innovative teaching practices. At White Rock, we are proud of our amazing, energetic and thoughtful learning community.

White Rock teachers are proud of and continue to dedicate efforts towards building and maintaining a strong collaborative and caring culture.  They consistently meet in grade groups at lunch and after school.  Teams of teachers work together to consider, explore, and reflect on issues and approaches related to shared questions and intentions in an effort to improve and develop their practices and in turn nurture and support student learning. Staff have demonstrated they are all life long learners.

White Rock learners demonstrate a level of confidence as they are often asked to perform in front of an audience.  We would like to see students increase their pride and ownership for their own work.  Students have started to share their thinking, for example, in Math, they are starting to show their learning pictorially, concretely, and orally.  We would like to see them move along this continuum and self-reflect and self-evaluate their work. 

Whole school working towards having a “Growth Mindset.”

Social Emotional Learning has also been a focus at our school for the last 4 years. Pulling teachers together: With the rise of awareness on social-emotional well-being and its’ impact on health and learning, White Rock teachers and students have put this issue at the forefront.  Recognizing that feeling good about yourself and others has a direct effect on our students’ mental health, teachers embarked on education and professional development activities around anxiety.  We had two Summer Professional Development days that were dedicated to mental health, as we invited Dr. Rumi Dosanjh, Dr. Rox Wand, David Carlson and Terry Cardell (counselors/clinicians’ names) to our school to facilitate two sessions.  Staff expressed interest in learning more as they have seen the impacts on student learning.

Students are adept at self-regulating, often reaching for noise-cancellation headphones or wiggle cushions without prompting. 

We have monthly school-wide runs and many of our classes have daily runs so students can regulate their emotions better when asked to focus in the classroom.  We also have monthly school-wide assemblies to gather our students, staff, and community to celebrate our success.  Our assemblies are student-led, from creating the agenda to hosting to presenting, our students take ownership and pride in speaking and sharing in front of their peers.  Our assemblies also focus on a theme that correlates to our school-wide language: THINK (is it Thoughtful, Helpful, Inspiring, Necessary, Kind?) and are organized by our teachers. 

This year, our focus for SEL is developing a growth mindset and using persistence, grit, and resilience, students will continue to move along the continuum.  Teachers are seeing positive results in student attitudes and behaviours.

Also, working alongside outside community programs such as the White Rock Mental Health Task Force team, the school has hosted a variety of parent and child yoga evenings led our very own White Rock parent.

Our students have embraced and have a holistic understanding of the arts.  There is no clear preference for only strand.  Our students are well-rounded and are more willing to take risks as they know that they are encouraged to do so.  Teachers have created safe-learning structures where students are not afraid to express their thoughts and creativity.  This is especially prevalent on their portfolios and in FreshGrade, students are better at self-reflecting and self-evaluating. 

School Learning Plan – A New Wave of Learners

As we continue working with the new Ministry Curriculum, district initiatives, and the changing needs of our students, we have identified one main growth area that we will focus on to help move our students forward:

How do we best support our learners to progress in their thinking and communication skills, and sense of personal and social responsibility?

We have identified our core beliefs:

      We are ALL learners

   Learning is enhanced through connection and collaboration

  A growth mindset, persistence, grit and resilience encourages risk-taking in a safe-learning environment

We would like to delve deeper into formative assessment, student self-reflections, and explore the digital literacies – specifically STEM, ADST, and Coding.  For this, teachers are engaged in their own individual learning, team collaborative inquiries, and workshops. Explaining our thinking

Working collaboratively together!

Explore the question: How can we use meaningful, timely and descriptive feedback to increase student ownership of their learning? 

We have a collaborative team of 6 teachers from a variety of grades who will hope to report out through their own portfolio as to how student learning has been impacted.  They have visited other schools, collaborated with one another and are working with their own students to help them articulate their own learning. So far this year, teachers have worked in teams to visit other schools and observe strategies on how to best give descriptive feedback.  We also have teachers who work at the school-level and direct their focus on the students right here, at White Rock.  Much thoughtful discussion have derived from these conversations as teachers are reflective in their practice and constantly sharing out the best instructional strategies they have observed and implemented in their own classrooms. 

A sense of pride has been instilled on our students as they take care of themselves, each other, and the community.  That pride directly correlates to the ownership of their own learning journey as teachers and students strive to emphasize progress, not product.  Regular reflections and conferences between teachers, parents and students are opportunities for rich discussions.  Through avenues such as student-led conferences, discussion boards on classroom Blogs, and comments on FreshGrade, teachers work hard to make sure that parents and students are well-informed.