Chantrell Creek Elementary
OUR CONTEXT
We are a culturally rich and vibrant multicultural community where students staff and parents are engaged in the learning that takes place in Chantrell. We believe and value working together as a community to support our learners. Our students are creative, musical, energetic and empathetic.
Everyone belongs, differences are accepted and celebrated. "Learning about ourselves and others helps us develop a positive attitude and caring behaviours which helps us build healthy relationships." (BC Ministry of Education, Physical and Health Education)
We have a positive and caring school community and we believe all learners can be successful. "Students acknowledge their strengths and abilities, and they intentionally consider these as assets, helping them in all aspects of their lives." (BC Ministry of Education, Positive Personal and Cultural Identity)
We have a strong, supportive, involved parent community.
Our music program fosters respect and understanding in all of our students. A strong arts education benefits all students , communities and societies by contributing to the development of well rounded, educated citizens. (Ministry of Education, Fine Arts Education, Goals and Rationale)
We see the value in our Outdoor Learning Spaces that are part of the Chantrell Creek School Community. Students explore who they are in terms of their relationship to others and their relationship to the world (people and place) around them. (BC Ministry of Education, Positive Personal and Cultural Identity)
Staff are caring and committed to ensuring student success.
OUR LEARNERS
Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is the process that supports adults, youth and children in developing skills that are necessary for school, work and life. This includes self awareness, self management, responsible decision making, relationship skills, and social awareness. These skills are embedded in all subject areas in BC's curriculum.
As a staff, we are fully committed to helping our students with SEL. We feel this is important because we want all of our students to
- Improve conflict resolution strategies and use words to solve problems
- Take responsibility for their actions and learn from them
- Be Empathetic
- Develop Perseverance
- Self Regulate
- Include others
- Take risks in a social setting (eg. choosing a new friend and standing up for others)
- Communicate and express their feelings
- Be Honest and and seek help when required in a social setting
Below, we celebrate our learners' successes and strengths.
Our learners work together and collaborate to achieve a common goal. They develop and demonstrate respectful behaviour when participating in activities with others.
In this Language Arts activity, our students are working on a story writing activity together. They understand the importance of taking turns telling their stories and listening to others' stories. Our learners plan, create, write, and share their stories to exchange ideas and perspectives. They are learning to use language to identify their feelings, opinions, and preferences. After our learners have had this opportunity to work together, they document their stories independently. Through these collaborative and playful experiences, they are discovering how language works.
Our learners support each other within our school community. They are aware of their strengths and abilities in different ways.
In this collaborative activity, our early learners are working with shapes, colours, positions, and strategies to complete a puzzle. They are thinking critically as they concentrate, pay attention to detail, and problem solve. After completing this activity, our students identified caring behaviours among classmates. They identified the importance of listening, speaking with a kind voice, being patient, and having fun when working and playing with friends! Overall, our learners understand the importance of being accepting of all students and knowing that we all have strengths in different areas.
Our learners interact positively with each other. They are socially aware and learn together about the environment .
These primary students are observing changes in nature, using a variety of words to describe the texture, colour and consistency of mud. They also are working on keeping themselves calm and focused as they use various tools when learning outside. Through these experiences and exposure to nature and the outdoors, our learners are developing important curricular competencies related to Science. They are learning to ask questions about the world around them, make observations using their senses, use tools safely, and discuss their observations in calm and respectful ways.
OUR FOCUS
Every day, our learners are presented with opportunities to practice and demonstrate their Social and Emotional skills and capabilities. Our team of educators provide our learners with these essential skills to set them up for success in today's rapidly changing world. To identify students' overall strengths and areas for growth, we tracked respectful behaviour and strategies for developing and maintaining healthy relationships in two cohorts of learners. These cohorts represent a diverse range of learners that are representative of our school's population.
The SEL competencies we focused on in relation to respectful behaviour and strategies for developing and maintaining healthy relationships are
- Self Management - managing emotions and behaviour to achieve one's goals
- Relationship skills - forming positive relationships working in teams and dealing effectively with conflict
Below are examples of our students' classroom experiences as they relate to respectful behaviour and strategies for developing and maintaining healthy relationships .
Self Management
To help students understand that being respectful requires them to pay attention to their own behaviour, our cohort of learners completed activities together and focused on being positive, setting goals, helping each other, persevering, and taking responsibility for completing required tasks. 
In all areas of learning, staff provide students with opportunities to engage with each other appropriately, share ideas, and work together to reach a common goal as a group. In this example, students are sharing the results of our STEAM challenge with others. They understand the importance of respectful behaviour while working together to meet the challenge of making a slinky move three steps in different ways.
Relationship Skills
Healthy relationships are important to children's learning and development. By establishing successful relationships with adults and other children, our learners develop a foundation of capacities that they will use for a lifetime. Positive relationships help students connect with others, build positive friendships, grow into team players, develop self-confidence, and increase their motivation for learning.
In all subject areas, students are provided with cognitively stimulating learning experiences and support for developing positive relationships with other children. Learning opportunities across all subject areas encourage students to cooperate, collaborate, share ideas, appreciate differences, provide support to peers, make positive choices, and find ways to compromise. In this Arts Education example, our cohort of students painted together while demonstrating respect for the environment. Students responded to a prompt and painted in an outdoor learning area what they saw around them. Together, students took creative risks to communicate and document their appreciation for the natural world: the blueness of the sky, the different shades of green, the variety of plants and trees, and the many different bugs in our community. Our children are learning to respect the environment because they know, understand, and appreciate what is at stake.
OUR NEXT STEPS
Our students are working on developing their SEL skills and capacities. In our focus area, we are working towards all students demonstrating an increase in their ability to:
- demonstrate respectful behaviour in class and in the school community
- develop and maintain healthy relationships with their peers and adults
Data collected from K/1 teachers in June 2022 show us 70 % of our students are demonstrating respectful behaviour.
Kindergarten Data | |
4/37 | Emergent 11% |
7/37 | Developing 19% |
26/37 | Proficient 70% |
Grade 1 Data | |
0/26 | Emergent 0% |
3/26 | Developing 12% |
23/26 | Proficient 88% |
Data collected from Grade 6 teachers in June 2022 show us that 57% of our students are developing and maintaining healthy relationships
Grade 6 Data | |
6/49 | Emergent 12% |
12/49 | Developing 24% |
28/49 | Proficient 57% |
Our Staff is committed to helping our learners improve in all aspects of Social Emotional Learning. This will be our collective focus in 2022/2023. Our educators at Chantrell Creek value different abilities students have, their cultural differences, varied learning styles and provide strength based formative feedback to improve student learning. We value input from our parents, believe in working together and are always looking at a variety of ways to engage parents in their child's learning.
We will look at using The Second Step Program which is a resource specific to SEL
We will use the September 2022 Administration day to solidify our plan for using SEL in the classroom and school as an area of focus and also look at other SEL Curricular Competencies that we want to focus on as a group.
Revisit our SEL focus at our monthly staff meetings
Set up a SEL Committee to monitor growth and successes in the 2022/2023 school year
Next Steps Updated Fall 2022
What Trends are we Noticing/Emerging
Chantrell Creek had one of the highest participation rates ( 35% of our school population) in blended learning which meant that students spent part if not all of the 2020/2021 school year in online learning. In staff meetings, grade group discussions, our staff believe that this did have an effect on their mental health.
All of our staff do a variety of actives to support their students with:
effective coping skills;
being advocates for themselves;
interpersonal skills;
anxiety;
self esteem.
Our grade seven cohort group has focussed on "Healthy Happy Brains" through the curricular competency , Mental well-being - Describe and assess strategies for promoting mental well being for self and others.
An example of the work being done by our Grade 7 students complete with criteria is below.
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.
