Brookside Elementary 22-23
OUR CONTEXT
New and old experiences, both within and outside of school, expand our skill sets. Brookside Elementary is proud of expanding within the classroom, school and community level. We draw on each other to support students, families, school staff and community and understand the importance of respect, inclusivity, and positive behaviours in diverse, collaborative learning, and work environments.
Students working together to celebrate everybody in our school! Friendly Friday's, Cultural Assembly, and Black History Month.
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Learning through exploration, coding and experiments!
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Classes fundraising for the Food Bank.
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OUR LEARNERS
This year as our school goal has focused around developing stronger reading skills. We recognize that reading is a fundamental skill that serves as the foundation for all other subjects and areas of learning. It empowers students to become independent learners, critical thinkers, and effective communicators. By focusing on enhancing reading skills, at Brookside we aim to find innovative and engaging ways to empower our learners with the tools and strategies to enhance their love for reading.
"The Core Competencies are sets of intellectual, personal, and social and emotional proficiencies that all students need in order to engage in deep, lifelong learning. Along with literacy and numeracy foundations, they are central to British Columbia’s K-12 curriculum and assessment system and directly support students in their growth as educated citizens"( https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies).
The Communication competency is essential for finding satisfaction, purpose and joy. It encompasses the knowledge, skills, processes and dispositions we associate with interactions with others. Through communication, students acquire, develop and transform ideas and information, and make connections with others to share their ideas, express their individuality, further their learning, and get things done. Communication is key to reading. While reading we communicate with our community, our teachers, our students, our friends and ourselves!
At Brookside, through emphasizing reading the Learning Intentions we have focused on:
- The Big Idea: Language and text can be a source of creativity and joy.
- Curricular Competency: Engage actively as listeners, viewers, and readers, as appropriate, to develop understanding of self, identity, and community.
- Curricular Competency: Use a variety of comprehension strategies before, during, and after reading, listening, or viewing to deepen understanding of text.
- Curricular Competency: Use personal experience and knowledge to connect to text and deepen understanding of self, community, and world.
Language and text can be a source of creativity and joy.
We are striving to help students see themselves as readers and foster a love of reading. To encourage reading outside of school, we started a reading draw in September.
Each classroom set up different guidelines for students in their class to get a ticket. In many primary classes students needed to read 3-5 times a week at home to get a ticket for the draw. In many intermediate classes they were asked to read for 30 minutes a day or a set number of pages in order to get a ticket
Each week we do a draw of three students for intermediate and 3 students for primary and the students win a prize. The boxes are usually full and the students are very enthusiast to read for a ticket!
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Engage actively as listeners, viewers, and readers, as appropriate, to develop understanding of self, identity, and community.
Students cant read in partners, which can be a great way to build on students' understanding of texts. Not only does it allow students to focus on both being a reader and a listener, but it also encourages conversations and questioning that can help students gain insight into each other's perspectives of what they have read!
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Use a variety of comprehension strategies before, during, and after reading, listening, or viewing to deepen understanding of text.
Students can use reading strategies to deepen their understanding. Using comprehension strategies before, during, and after reading, listening, or viewing can greatly enhance understanding of the text. Readers actively engage with the text, process information more deeply, and improve overall understanding.
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Use personal experience and knowledge to connect to text and deepen understanding of self, community, and world.
Personal experience and knowledge are powerful tools for connecting to texts and deepening our understanding of self, community, and the world around us. By drawing on our own experiences, we can relate to the themes, characters, and situations presented in texts, allowing us to engage more deeply with the material and gain new insights.
Our Librarian at Brookside has focused on finding books to represent the diversity in our school. Through the books students can "see"themselves, connect to the characters experiences and connect to events in the story.
When we connect our personal experiences to a text, it often evokes strong emotions and memories. Our personal experiences can provide valuable perspectives and insights that enhance our understanding of the community depicted in a text. Connecting personal experiences to texts also allows us to broaden our worldview and gain a deeper understanding of the world beyond our immediate surroundings. Using personal experience and knowledge to connect to texts can be a transformative process. It allows us to delve into the emotional, intellectual, and social dimensions of a text, fostering a greater understanding of ourselves, our communities, and the world we inhabit. By bringing our unique perspectives and insights to the reading experience, we enrich our understanding and contribute to a more meaningful engagement with the text and its themes.
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Hear from the students at Brookside their thoughts on the importance of reading and what reading looks like, and feels like to them!
OUR FOCUS
At Brookside, we strive to create an engaging and supportive environment that nurtures the skill of reading and instills a lifelong passion for reading. We understand the importance of reading proficiency and its impact on overall academic success. Reading can encompass various strategies and activities which cater to the diverse needs and interests of our students. We have found that many of our students are reading below grade level and wanted to focus on how to build on their reading levels.
Our specific focus is:
- To build on students reading strategies to improve students’ comprehension, vocabulary development and phonemic awareness, and fluency and speed to improve their overall reading level.
We will see and hear our students:
- Actively monitor their understanding, make connections between new information and their prior knowledge.
- Asking questions to clarify concepts, and summarize or paraphrase key points.
- Interpret words, phrases, and terminology.
- Reading with ease and understanding the content without significant effort.
- Understanding the overall meaning or follow the flow of the information.
The cohort of students composes both primary and intermediate students. They have been focusing on reading strategies to build on, comprehension, vocabulary development, fluency and speed, and critical thinking.
Comprehension
Enhancing reading skills involves helping students improve their comprehension abilities. Teaching students how to understand and interpret various types of texts, whether they are fiction or non-fiction. Strong comprehension skills enable students to make connections and think critically about the information they encounter.
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Vocabulary Development and Phonemic Awareness
Building a rich vocabulary allows for effective communication. Expanding students’ vocabulary will enable students to comprehend texts more easily. Phonemic awareness is a foundational skill in reading and language development. It refers to the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds or phonemes, in spoken words. Phonemic awareness helps students understand the relationship between sounds and letter, which is essential for reading.
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Fluency and Speed
Fluent readers read smoothly and with expression, which enhances overall reading experience. Improving reading fluency involves increasing reading speed without sacrificing comprehension. Improving fluency allows students to engage with texts more efficiently, complete assignments more effectively, and consume information at a faster pace.
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OUR NEXT STEPS
This year, at Brookside we focused on the the goal of reading with direct focus on comprehension, fluency and vocabulary.
The students in the cohort took two assessments. The first one measures a student's recognition of words out of context, which demonstrates their instructional level for reading. This test consists of 8 graded word lists from Pre-K to 11th Grade. Generally, this test assesses a student's ability to decode words, without relying on context clues. Proficient readers read as accurately both in and out of context. This test helps to identify a student's independent and instructional reading levels.
The second assessment was an Oral Reading Fluency (ORF). If a student is scoring in the 50-75 percentile range, they are considered ON TRACK and are likely responding well to grade-level instruction (proficient). The students outside of that range will need some more observations/conversations/assessments to determine what they need as individuals with regard to their reading instruction.
The cohort gave the assessments in December and in May. In instructional reading the teacher saw an improvement in students be able to decode words and rely on context clues. ForORF there was an increase in students ability to respond to grade level materials.
Moving forward:
- As a staff continue to explore and learn best strategies to improve reading skills and teach a variety of reading strategies.
- Continue to find whole school, classroom and individual ways to encourage reading.
- Monitor and adjust our student learning plan to meet the needs of our students.
We continue to look forward to more reading adventures.
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.
