École Riverdale Elementary
OUR CONTEXT
Welcome to the Ravens' Nest! École Riverdale Elementary is a school located in the heart of Guildford. We are a large, dual track English and French Immersion school that is home to a wonderfully diverse group of students and families. Just over half of our learners are in the Early French Immersion Program. These students come from both our local catchment, and neighbouring communities such as Fraser Heights. Students in the English program reside largely in our neighbourhood, affectionately known as “Birdland.”
The school district provides programs to our community that serve to support students’ intellectual and emotional development. These include:
- a breakfast program
- a lunch program that serves one third of our students
- Community Schools (CSP) programs, such as Girls in Action, Game Ready, and the after school BLAST program.
We have a dedicated PAC that provides both financial support and many fun opportunities for our students and our families. They recently raised over $220,000 for a new school playground.
Riverdale is a great place to be. We have a wonderful staff that is committed to students' social, emotion and academic well-being. That starts in the classroom where teachers engage students in a variety of activities to support their learning. You will see students reading a variety of texts, engaged in numeracy routines, or working on projects that teach them about local and global communities. In the learning commons you will see many opportunities for students to build, design and make what ever their imagination holds. In the gym you will see students engaged in not only physical education classes, but intramurals and a variety of school sports. We recently place 2nd and 3rd in our Badminton play days.
The Ravens' Nest is home to many happy Ravens.
OUR LEARNERS
Here at École Riverdale Elementary (aka The Ravens' Nest) we are a community of learners that are focused not only on our academic success, but also our success as socially responsible members of the school and larger community. Students enjoy being at school and are deeply connected to their teachers and support staff. We want our learners to be strategic in how they solve the problems they face. We share in the idea of a growth mindset and know our learners are capable of anything they set themselves too.
Students as Creators
Students like to engage in active, hands on learning experiences. They also love experiences where they can express themselves through performance and art. Recently we hosted an art show around our 'non-negotiable' of uniqueness and all students created a performance piece as well as a piece of art that uniquely represented themselves.
Calm, Alert and Learning.
We know that our learners learn best when they are calm, alert and able to regulate their emotions. Our teachers use a variety of programs and strategies to teach our students how to mange complex emotions and big feelings. Part of our school learning plan is teaching students about their how their brain works and what they can do in these moments to calm themselves. Second Step is one program that teachers are using with our students to teach these strategies. Students learn how to name the emotion they are feeling and why they are feeling it. They then are taught, and can choose from, a number of 'calm down' strategies.
OUR FOCUS
In the Spring of 2020, at the onset of COVID, teachers and staff recognized the need for a school wide initiative that focused on student conduct and emotional support. We recognized the need for structures or mechanisms that would support teachers and staff in managing students in and around the school. We also recognized that our teachers and staff needed more tools and strategies to deal with complex student behaviour.
We are focused on the following Core Competency: Personal and Social Competency
Under the Personal and Social Competency we are focussed on Social Awareness and Responsibility which includes the facets of:
Building Relationships - Students need build and maintain positive peer relationships. They become aware and respectful of others’ needs and feelings and share their own in appropriate ways. They adjust their words and actions to care for their relationships.
Resolving Problems - We know that students need tools to identify and develop an appreciation for different perspectives on issues. They continued to learn to show empathy, disagree respectfully, and create space for others to use their voices. They need to generate, use, and evaluate strategies to resolve problems in all areas of the curriculum.
The first step we took was to implement Positive Behaviour Interventions and Supports (PBIS) to be implemented school wide and support by district behaviour team and teacher professional development. The first step in implementation was to identify school wide positive expectations. We decided on six "non-negotiables" that are explicitly taught to students in class. You will notice they are focused on the students themselves and also how they interact with others.
Riverdale Ravens are:
Kind and show it to themselves and others.
Honest and know that trust helps build and maintain relationships and keeps us true to ourselves and others.
Empathetic and see things from different perspectives.
Respectful and take care of our school and learning environment
Resilient and overcome the challenges we face.
Unique and we value the diversity that each of us brings to our school community.
Non-Negotiable June2.pdf
In a school that implements PBIS we want to teach students what these non-negotiables look like, sound like, feel like. Our goal is to have every student in the school be able to identify a non-negotiable and be able to say what it is and give an example from their own experience.
This past year we connected a non-negotiable to a month and teachers spent some of their instructional time focused on a non-negotiable and at the end of the month we had a virtual assembly where all divisions contributed to a PowerPoint and shared their learning.
The Core Competency we are focused on students developing is Social Awareness and Responsibility, namely building relationships and resolving problems appropriately. Our students continue to grow in these competencies.
OUR NEXT STEPS
Over the past two years we have been working as a school team to make our positive expectations clear and tie them to our sense of school community.
Staff have commented that students are beginning to be able to identify a non-negotiable and give an example of how it relates to themselves and how it helps build relationship with others.
As our non-negotiables are linked to our school house colours, students and teachers have commented on feeling a deeper sense of community here at Riverdale. This was best felt at our recent Raven's Day Sports Day.
Looking Ahead
Moving forward teachers are looking to embed our 'non-negotiables' into different areas of school life and curriculum to give students more opportunities to see how they reside in community and throughout history and our world.
We know that students continue to:
- need tools to identify and develop an appreciation for different perspectives on issues
- to need to continue learn to show empathy to others
- need instruction on how disagree respectfully and come to consensus
- need to create space for others to use their voices
Ultimately students need to generate, use, and evaluate strategies to resolve problems. We look forward to continued growth in all of our students!
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.
