Frank Hurt Secondary
OUR CONTEXT
"Frank Hurt is a community that welcomes everyone and makes us feel important. I feel safe, seen and heard!"
Student
When you walk through the doors of Frank Hurt Secondary, you will be welcomed by one of our students, if not a group of students. You will see engagement, the sounds of productive interactions and feel like you are in a community that is proud.
As you walk the halls you may notice the age of the building, but that does not hide the youthful energy of the community. Students are engaged with adults who care, they work in cooperation to learn, resolve and succeed academically, socially and emotionally. Welcome to Frank Hurt.
Our Community works to :
- To improve student learning opportunities and student learning outcomes in literacy, numeracy and critical thinking skills.
- To support and develop programs and resources designed to maximize all students' learning potential and meet the diverse needs of our student population.
- To develop student attitudes and activities which enhance school safety, pride, spirit, appreciation for culture and diversity and personal and social responsibility.
- To improve interactions communication and involvement of students, parents, staff and the community.
- To develop programs and resources designed to maximize avenues of student learning, enhance student transition between high school and post-secondary learning and provide a basis for post-graduation success.
- Vision: To be a diverse, inclusive community of visionary learners which fosters respect and passion for lifelong learning.
Our mission is to build a caring community of learners that ensures student success!
OUR LEARNERS
Literacy is a fundamental life skill. It is the ability to read, write, think and speak, in a way that lets us communicate effectively and make sense of the world. Understanding (comprehending) the world around us is critical to all members of society. Comprehension is a skill that needs to be implicitly taught, practiced and put into action.
Evidence of our learner's strengths and competencies are referenced below.
Our Students can recognize an increasing range of text structures and how they contribute to meaning.
Literacy learning takes place across all subject areas. In this ADST example, students are drawing upon procedural text to guide and inform their work. Students transfer this knowledge to better understand how the mechanisms of a machine interact to create movement.
Our students can recognize and appreciate how different features, forms, and genres of text reflect different purposes, audiences and messages.
In this example a student uses a graphic novel to solidify understanding related to a social issue.
Our students can synthesize ideas from a variety of sources to build understanding.
Students access a variety of texts to make sense of big ideas and concepts. Through this process students deepen their understanding of the world around them.
OUR FOCUS
Each and every day, among the variety of learning experiences presented to our learners, our team of educators focused on thinking, reading, writing, and communicating in all curricular areas. Our aim is to build strong literacy foundations that are fundamental for students' participation in today's world.
Our student learning goal is:
- Apply appropriate strategies to comprehend written, oral, and visual texts, guide inquiry and extend thinking
All teachers, across all disciplines, provide students with learning opportunities designed to increase the literacy success rates of our learners. To highlight and determine overall successes, we monitor the progress of a cohort across different subject areas.
Students are provided with a number of resources, strategies and experiences intended to support literacy growth, including:
OUR NEXT STEPS
Evidence of our students' learning demonstrates that our literacy focus is positively impacting our cohort of learners. When surveyed and asked to communicate their students' progress using the provincial assessment scale, teachers indicated that all students demonstrated growth in relation to our literacy goal:
- Apply appropriate strategies to comprehend written, oral, and visual texts, guide inquiry and extend thinking
In our cohort of students, we found that 35 % of the students in emerging, 60% in developing and 5% were proficient. The largest increase was the movement from emerging when originally assessed to developing upon the final assessment.
Reading strategically to comprehend.
To help them make sense of what they read, our learners describe their thinking, ask questions and develop inferences about text. In the cohort, all students experience some level of success. Sixty percent of the students are now developing in their ability to comprehend text and use strategies to help them build deeper levels of understanding.
Students self-reflected upon their learning and articulated the following:
"I feel I understand better what I read now."
"I think I understand what I am reading - even though it takes me longer."
"Slower is better, take your time, it is not a race."
"I remember most of the information so I can share it."
Moving Forward
Based on the evidence of students' progress in relation to our learning goal, our next steps will include:
- Increasing opportunities for students to regularly use comprehension strategies in all curricular areas.
- Increasing the use of connections of text to student lives- relevant and timely.
- Further exploring how we can strategically support our learners in their understanding of the world through text in all its forms.
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.
