Beaver Creek Elementary 23-24
OUR CONTEXT
Beaver Creek is located on the unceded and shared traditional territory of the Katzie, Kwantlen, Semihamoo, Tsawwassen and other Coast Salish Peoples, who have been custodians of this land from time immemorial.
Beaver Creek is a large, diverse elementary school in the Scott Road area of the Panorama / Sullivan community in Surrey, BC. Our school is committed to supporting families and providing opportunities for students to help them develop social emotional and academic skills to reach their full potential. Our students have a variety of opportunities at our school, including many extra curricular activities to explore their individual passions and interests. We feel passionately about taking care of our students and their families and knowing the stories of our learners, as well as their strengths and challenges, so we can support them, encourage them to grow and be their best selves. From the First Peoples Principles of Learning we acknowledge that learning involves patience and time and requires the exploration of one's identity.
Celebrations are a big part of the yearly calendar at Beaver Creek. Throughout the year we prepare for different events and learning opportunities that reflect and honour the culture and diversity of our community.
We are taking important steps at Beaver Creek on our journey towards Truth and Reconciliation and we continue to work towards the goal of decolonizing learning.
OUR LEARNERS
Our reading focus at Beaver Creek Elementary is centred around our learners. Over 88% of our students do not speak English at home as their primary language and we know that a language rich environment is essential for students to develop proficient communication skills and become lifelong learners. As a staff we inspire our students to read every day. We encourage students to find books that are interesting and on topic areas that they care about. When students are reading in the classroom they are given opportunities to connect with each other and the world around them.
"Learning is embedded in memory, history and story" ~ First Peoples Principles of Learning
Our Journey
In 2021/22 our staff committed to focus on Reading and collecting data to track progress for our Student Learning Plan. This commitment was driven by what our teachers were noticing in their classrooms as all students returned to in-class learning following the restrictions of the Covid 19 Pandemic. Reading has been a learning focus at Beaver Creek for many years. The Surrey School District has consistently supported literacy development by staffing Beaver Creek with a large team of Learning Support teachers who work with all students, and an Early Literacy teacher who works solely with early primary students to help them develop language and literacy skills. Our library learning commons is the hub of our school, centrally located and visited by students from all grades. Our students have opportunities to learn and practice reading skills each day and are supported by teachers committed to helpihg their students become proficient readers and lifelong learners.
Core Communication Competency: Acquiring and Presenting Information
Students communicate by receiving and presenting information. They inquire into topics of interest and topics related to their studies. They acquire information from a variety of sources, including people, print materials, and media; this may involve listening, viewing, or reading, and requires understanding of how to interpret information.
(BC Curriculum, Communicating Competency)
Our Learners
While reading is a school wide focus, we have been looking closely at a single grade cohort of students and tracking their progress since 2021/22. These learners are helping us to better understand the impact of many different reading initiatives and activities that are happening school wide.
At Beaver Creek our students are developing an understanding that language and story can be a source of creativity and joy
Our students are excited about reading. Our Library is the hub of our school. All students have regular opportunities to borrow and enjoy a variety of reading materials. Students are supported and encouraged to read at home, reading is celebrated and we have built strong connections with families to make reading an important part of daily routines.
At Beaver Creek our students can access and integrate information and ideas from a variety of sources and from prior knowledge to build understanding
Reading instruction at Beaver Creek includes providing students with direct instruction and practice posing questions, locating information, identifying main ideas and supporting details, using text features (such as diagrams and tables and organizing information.
At Beaver Creek our students are learning reading and comprehension strategies
Examples of these strategies include:
- using contextual clues and phonics
- making predictions,
- making connections
- visualizing
- summarizing ideas and information
- making inferences
What else do we know about our learners?
- They are connected to each other.
- They see themselves in a positive light.
- They try their best.
"I am smart, creative, nice, resilient, scared, shy, different, proud, nervous, unique, generous." - Grade 4 Student
"I am unique and kind from helping others and how I look inside myself." - Grade 4 Student
The students here are inspired to learn and come to school everyday expecting to be the best versions of themselves.
OUR FOCUS
Reading
Students use reading across all areas of the curriculum and it enriches our lives. Reading can look different over the course of the day and when we experience reading in different ways, we are given opportunities to strengthen and deepen our understanding.
At Beaver Creek Elementary our goals are:
- to foster a love of reading where it is valued and practiced at home and at school
- to support students to decode and make meaning of text
- to continue to develop reading and comprehension skills
Our Cohort
Our cohort of students are a diverse collection of students. They have a variety of experiences and abilities. They share a common experience of beginning their reading journey during the COVID 19 pandemic. We have tracked their progress beginning in 2021/22 when they were in grade 2 to 2023/24. Building off the work from the last two years, the student cohort of grade 4s have continued to engage in a wide variety of reading activities. Looking more closely at how our learners are doing revealed some exciting and interesting evidence.
Reading Progress
English Language Arts - Curricular Competencies – “Read fluently at grade level.”
Our data from the cohort, collected each spring in 2022 and 2023 showed the following:
- 2021/2022 - 52% of students meeting or exceeding grade level reading expectations
- 2022/2023 - 57% of students meeting or exceeding grade level reading expectations.
As we began the 2023/24 school year we were encouraged by the reading information we had collected from school wide reading assessments over the previous two years. The number of students reading at, or above, grade level had risen from 52% in the Spring of 2022 to 57% a year later. Given this progress we decided to continue with the same programs and interventions.
Students' Experiences
Our students are encouraged to read everyday and we all take time to talk about the value of reading. We wanted to share our students' reading experiences so we interviewed some students in our cohort.
Question: What do you like about reading?
"I like reading because it's like a movie, but in a book." ~ Grade 4 student
"I love reading. Reading is very interesting. Reading also makes me happy. Reading makes me know more." ~Grade 4 student
" In every book, there's a fun story and you feel like you're in it sometimes.
Question: What makes you a good reader?
"The thing which makes me a good reader is that I can visualize and connect with the story." ~ Grade 4 student
"I practise everyday but if I can't read a word I sound out." ~ Grade 3 student
Question: What can you do to get better at reading?
"I can read and practice every day and I need to focus to get better at reading" ~ Grade 3 student
"By reading the books you understand and like." ~ Grade 4 student
Ice Cream Reading Parties
One of the ways that we are celebrating a love of reading this year, is through our Ice Cream Reading Celebrations. Each month we hosted an Ice Cream Party for all the students that committed to read for 20 minutes for at least 25 nights of the month. 
Reading can look different over the course of the day and when we experience reading in different ways we are given opportunities to strengthen and deepen our understanding.
What does reading mean to us here at Beaver Creek?
“To me, it means learning new things. Basically, it is learning.” - Grade 4 Student
"Everything we learn helps us to develop skills." - BC Curriculum: Big Ideas - Career Education
We commit to bringing in a wide variety of novels and picture books that reflect our diverse community and showcase characters and stories from around the world.
OUR NEXT STEPS
Where are we now?
We are in Year 3 of our reading focus goal and we are committed to continue this work. We are seeing steady progress.
In order to better understand the impact of our efforts we have continued to collect dateline from our grade cohort. In June of 2024 we assessed our cohort and found that the progress they made over the past two years has continued.
- 2023/2024 - 80% of students meeting or exceeding grade level reading expectations.
Putting this in context, in 2022 we had 52% of our cohort reading at or above grade level, in 2023 we had 57% of our cohort reading at or above grade level and in 2024 we had 80% meeting this goal.
A Student Story
Kayla is a grade 7 Indigenous student of the Cree Nation and is moving to grade 8 in September, 2024. Kayla made significant progress in the 2023/2024 school year. She cared deeply about doing well. She received Learning Support. Kayla liked to read online. She often carried a book with her. She was careful about her choice of books. Often the main characters were working through life challenges. Kayla was deeply drawn to the storyline and able to make connections to her personal life and world. As her reading ability increased over the year so did her overall confidence. She made such significant progress she allowed herself to begin to take risks. With support from staff and family, Kayla chose a topic she was passionate about, the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. She researched about and wrote a speech and presented it at our First Peoples’ in Residence Assembly, inspiring others to stand together.
Next Steps
Being a Good Reader
Being a good reader is beyond simply being able to read the words on a page. Being a good reader means we can take what is in front of us and communicate it to others, share ideas, write down our thoughts and connections. As our cohort group makes the transition to intermediate, thoughts about reading evolve.
What does it mean to be a good reader? What does good reading look like? Sound like? Our next steps at Beaver Creek are guided by our students and the successes we have seen and also the areas that could use further development.
Question: What can you do to get better at reading?
To explore this question we will begin to concentrate on informed and flexible assessment practices.
Question: What kind of assessment strategy, guideline or criteria can we create to provide direct evidence of our student's reading?
In 2022/23 a group of teachers collaboratively created new tools that meets the specific needs of our learners and their grade levels.
I Can Statements (Proficient Readers Can) - Grade 3/4
- I can use phonics, word structure, and context clues to read the words.
- I can make logical predictions.
- I can reread and skim text for details.
- I can describe main characters, settings, and events from the story.
- I can retell the events in the correct order.
- I can answer questions from the text accurately.
- I can make connections to myself and others when reading a story.
- I can draw pictures with supporting details after reading the story.
- I can ask relevant questions based on what I am reading.
- I can give my opinion and support it with reasons from the text.
- I can locate the main idea and details from the text.
- I can read the text features (e.g. heading, illustrations, diagrams, charts, table of contents, glossary, index etc.)
- I can find the intended meaning of the text.
Sample Rubrics - Grade 3/4
These rich and collaboratively created assessment tools will evolve over time. They also offer opportunities for further collaboration and give us all a clear picture of where we are going next with our work around literacy and reading in the years to come.
We did not begin using these tools yet, but would like to in the 2024/25 school year.
We would like to continue to support students to become better, more confident readers. We are committed to continue implementing reading assessments and evidence-informed reading instruction that will help improve these results.
Next Year:
- We will continue to support and implement reading strategies and collect data for our cohorts next year
- We would like to expand our data collection to include another primary cohort
- We will continue to go deeper in our professional learning in order to support students improve reading
- We will explore new resources and assessment practices
Surrey Schools
Formed in 1906, the Surrey School District currently has the largest student enrolment in British Columbia and is one of the few growing districts in the province. It is governed by a publicly elected board of seven trustees.
The district serves the cities of Surrey and White Rock and the rural area of Barnston Island.
