Coast Meridian Elementary 25-26

At Coast Meridian, we have a focus on creating a love of reading with a variety of materials, including story, decodable texts and informational materials. Our students use their literacy skills to build their sense of personal and cultural identity, while valuing other perspectives.

Our goals at Coast Meridian include:

• learning to read for information and enjoyment
• learning to read for meaning and imagination
• deepening their understanding of the importance of identity
• learning that everyone has a unique story to share
• learning that stories can be understood from different perspectives

This Year's Initiatives/Focus:

This year, we helped to build our love of reading through different initiatives. These initiatives included:

Our School Wide Read

• Families were given a copy of the Heartwood Hotel by Kallie George, a Canadian author. The books weregiven with a welcome letter, and a calendar schedule for reading along.
• Each week, links were posted on our school website and Instagram page, to access our Coast Meridian Podcast. This podcast was a recording of our school staff reading the novel. Each podcast consisted of one chapter from the book. The podcast was released in conjunction with the calendar schedule. This podcast allowed students to access the story at home in another way.
• On weekends, a Trivia question was posted online. Students were asked to discuss the answers with their family members and bring in their answer on Monday mornings. A correct answer was drawn, and prizes were won!
• To finish off the community reading of the Heartwood Hotel, we had a virtual visit with the author who shared her writing experiences and inspired many to write their own stories.

My kids LOVE the school-wide read. The oldest reads aloud, we listen to it en route to activites, they get so excited hearing their teachers outside of the classroom, and even the teen gets into it!-Coast Meridian Parent

Social Emotional Learning Gatherings

• Each month, we meet as a school in our gym for a gathering. These gatherings were hosted by one or two classes, and involved the entire community, including parents if available.
• Our focus for each gathering was based on a picture book.
• The chosen picture book is accessible for all classes over the course of the month prior to the gathering.
• Each gathering consists of the reading of the picture book and sharing of the learning that took place over the month.
• Each gathering ends with a draw. One copy of the book shared goes to a lucky student who was nominated by a staff member for acts that reflect the message of the book read, a copy goes to a lucky classroom, and the third copy of the book goes into the library so others may take it out to read at home.

Noisy Family Reading

• Many classes have created a weekly schedule, asking a family member to come in a read with their child in the classroom setting. This creates a noisy, interactive, and fun atmosphere, allowing families a chance to come into the building, engage with the class, and access some books that they don't have at home! The younger siblings are welcomed to attend Family Reading and learn important pre-literacy skills like how to hold a book and turn pages left to right.
  

Our Cohort

This year, we collected literacy screening data from two student cohorts: Kindergarten (26 students) and Grade 1 (35 students). These students represent a diverse range of backgrounds and learning experiences. We also introduced a Grade 5 cohort; however, data was collected only at the end of the school year. This baseline information will be used next year to monitor student growth and progress over time. To support early identification and intervention, teachers implemented a new literacy screening tool designed to identify students who are on track to becoming proficient readers, as well as those who may require additional support.

Grade 1 students were assessed at the mid-year point and again at the end of the school year. At mid-year, 34% of students were performing at or above benchmark expectations. By the end of the year, this percentage had increased to 46%, representing a 12-percentage-point improvement. These results indicate positive growth in early literacy skills and suggest that a greater proportion of students were meeting or exceeding expected reading benchmarks by the end of Grade 1.

Kindergarten students were assessed at the beginning of the school year and again at the mid-year point. Teachers chose not to administer the end-of-year assessment; however, they indicated that, based on student progress throughout the year, they are confident that most students would have demonstrated significant growth.
This cohort showed a decrease in literacy readiness scores, from 23% at the beginning of the year to 8% at mid-year. It is important to note that the mid-year assessment is considerably more rigorous than the beginning-of-year assessment. At the beginning of the year, students are assessed only on First Sound Fluency and Letter Naming Fluency. By mid-year, students are assessed on Letter Naming Fluency, Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, and Nonsense Word Fluency, which require more advanced literacy skills. This increase in assessment complexity likely explains the decline in literacy readiness scores rather than a decrease in student learning or achievement.

Over the last few years Coast Meridian has had a specific focus on improving literacy skills.  School-wide report card data show that there has been an improvement in the overall proficiency level of students in reading, writing and speaking. The graphs show the growth over the last few school years with less than half (45.6 %) of students being proficient or extending and in  2023-2024 that increased to significantly more than half (58.2%) in 2024-2025.  At the time of writing this report 2025-2026 data was not yet available.

It’s fun and you work together. You learn how to work in groups and to agree on other people’s thinking and decisions-Grade 5 Student

At Coast Meridian, we celebrate our growth and learning. We are proud of our student progress.

Our students have demonstrated improvements to their literacy skills throughout the year. Students in our cohort have shown growth in the areas of:

• Decoding of an unknow text and comprehending
• Reading for information and enjoyment
• Deepening their understanding of the importance of identity
• Learning that everyone has a unique story to share
• Learning that stories can be understood from different perspectives

As we look forward to our next school year, we will continue to grow and expand our skills within these goals.

In the next school year, we plan to:

• Continue with a School Wide Read, with families, students and teachers involved - including copies of a novel distributed to families, an accompanying podcast to increase accessibility to the chosen book, a schedule for chapters read, a weekly trivia contest for students, classroom activities to enhance the passages read, and a concluding event for families.
• Expand our use of decodable books in the primary grades and the explicit instruction of word morphology in the intermediate grades
• Expand the standardized screening of student reading including a better understanding of students’ ability to decode and comprehend.
• Continue to hold gatherings that focus on a social emotional learning aspect, using a picture book to guide learning and understanding, hosted by various classes, demonstration of learning.  The books will have a particular focus on diversity and inclusion.
• Learn about and celebrate various cultural celebrations throughout the year.

When asked about the school-wide read a parent said: 

This was an amazing way for us to read. Please continue