Chimney Hill Elementary 24-25
OUR CONTEXT
Chimney Hill is located on the shared territory of the Coast Salish First Nations in the Newton Sullivan area of the Surrey School District. Our community of learners reflect diverse abilities and backgrounds that contribute to a rich learning environment. The school is central to the Chimney Hill community. We believe that children, staff, parents, and caregivers working together in a collaborative spirit, help to co-create our connected and rich learning environment. We are grateful that we are able to work, learn, and play on these lands.
OUR LEARNERS
Literacy is a foundational tool, learning experience, and life skill that all learners enhance on their journey in everyday school experiences. Building their vocabulary, and highlighting their individual experiences while building new learning community experiences, enhances their confidence in themselves as humans, learners, and readers.
Each of our learners bring their own unique experiences that can be a valuable part of their learning environment. Learning through a variety of experiences can further enhance their literacy tools, reading fluency and literacy confidence.
Our learners use developmentally appropriate reading, listening, and viewing strategies to make meaning. Our learners engage in various learning activities including story workshop, a variety of word work activities, and tactile learning opportunities to make meaning. Our learners use personal experience and knowledge to connect to stories and other texts to make meaning.
Some of our intermediate learners engaging in fiction, non-fiction, a resources text, and a digital resource to enhance reading fluency and comprehension in their classroom.
OUR FOCUS
OUR FOCUS
Every day, our learners bring their own experiences when learning which require thinking, reading, writing, and communicating in all curricular areas. Our goal is to help our students develop a strong vocabulary and background knowledge that will support a strong literacy foundation to be lifelong learners. Using these skills students will build on their confidence to practice and demonstrate their literacy skills and capabilities that apply to their own personal experiences.
Our students’ learning goals include:
- Developing reading fluency, proficiency of sight words (and vocabulary) through phonemic and phonological awareness, word patterns, and word families.
- Deepen understanding of text through a variety of comprehension strategies before, during and after reading, listening or viewing.
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to hear and identify sounds in spoken words. Phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of how well children learn to read during the first two years of reading instruction. Where assessment results demonstrate limited phonemic awareness, our evidence consistently shows that with careful and intentional intervention, substantial gains are made, even with our most vulnerable learners.
Reading Fluency
At our school, we are looking to build students' reading fluency through promoting language and vocabulary development through daily reading experiences as well as real life learning opportunities. These reading experiences and daily real life interactions are the building blocks that our learners need to begin to make meaning and build understanding of the materials they read.
Reading Comprehension
Comprehension refers to the ability to understand written words. It is different from the ability to recognize words. Recognizing words on a page but not knowing what they mean does not fulfill the purpose or goal of reading, which is comprehension. Comprehension adds meaning to what is read. Reading comprehension occurs when words on a page are not just mere words, but thoughts and ideas. Comprehension makes reading enjoyable, fun, and informative.
Student Learning Experiences
We have a large new ELL population in all grade areas at our school with English being a new language. These learners and classrooms have a variety of literacy instructional strategies that build upon vocabulary, conversational skills, the structure of decoding and phonemic awareness through daily real life learning experiences, small and large group instruction, decodable books and shared reading times.
Student learning experiences during this school year included an increased focus on building oral language, vocabulary, understanding phonological awareness, alphabetic principle, explicit teaching and increased recognition of sight words, verbal reasoning and language structure. Small group instruction with an emphasis on foundational literacy skills including letter sounds, letter recognition and a broader understanding of written and visual text.
Our teachers are consistently building background knowledge and vocabulary in an effort to develop comprehension within the classroom.
We know that learning takes patience and time and we embed this practice into our teaching, our learners and our assessment. We also acknowledge that learning is embedded in memory, history and story, so we incorporate multiple opportunities to use story workshop, outdoor education, oral storytelling and historical lessons to encourage our learners to have a holistic approach to learning.
Our cohort had an early primary focus and included Grade 1 and 2 students, from 7 different classrooms. Our teachers met every two months to share their successes and strategies, and plan our next steps together.
OUR NEXT STEPS
DIRECT EVIDENCE
Evidence of our students’ learning demonstrates that our literacy focus is supporting a positive impact in all our learners. Based on the data collected, growth is indicated as outlined using the provincial assessment scale. Growth can be seen in our following literacy goals:
- Reading Comprehension (Sight word recognition/PM Benchmark)
- Phonemic Awareness
- Learning Experiences
Phonemic Awareness
Growth can be seen through explicit teaching and providing various ways for children to reinforce their phonemic awareness skills including, songs and chants, mystery morning messages, tactile activities such as using playdough, various word work stations as well as small and whole class games.
This example shows a students writing progress over time using their phonemic awareness and sight words.
Learning Experiences
Providing real life learning opportunities have been an integral part of vocabulary development. Weekly nature walks have allowed for our beginning ELL Learners to practise their English Language skills as well as build on environment rich words they are surrounded by and also use on a daily basis. Story workshop is also a vital part in allowing children to create, listen, and retell stories using their experiences, voice and language. STEM and group activities have been a vessel for the children in class to practice and build on communication skills that encourage their use of daily vocabulary through listening and sharing their ideas.
Here is an example of a student using a learning experience through story workshop to enhance their reading comprehension and vocabulary skills.
Our Next Steps
- continue to grow and expand our cohort in the coming year
- continue to work with reading fluency and comprehension
- further analyze and work towards the 32% that are still developing/emerging these skills and strategies
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.
