Hazelgrove Elementary 22-23
OUR CONTEXT
We acknowledge that our school, Hazelgrove Elementary, resides on the unceded and traditional territories of the Kwantlem, Katzie and Semiahmoo First Nations.
STORM
We are the Hazelgrove Hurricanes and we believe the attributes spelled out in the STORM matrix reflect who we are and what we value.
S is for Safety. Make sure your actions don't hurt others.
T is for being a Team Player. Think about others and how they would like to be treated and be supportive of other students.
O reminds us about the importance of being Organized. It's important to take care of your belongings and be ready for learning everyday.
R stands for being Respectful. It is important to have positive interactions with adults and other students and treat them with kindness and dignity.
M is for Mindfulness. Mindfulness is thinking about our own thoughts and feelings. Self awareness is a key ingredient of mindfulness.
Hazelgrove is a large dynamic elementary school in the heart of the Clayton community in Surrey, BC. Our school is committed to help students continue to develop social emotional and academic skills to reach their full potential. Our students have a variety of opportunities at our school, including many extra curricular sports and clubs to explore their individual passions and interests. We believe that if we know the stories of our learners, as well as their strengths and stretches, we can encourage them to grow and be their best selves. We acknowledge the First Peoples Principles of Learning that learning involves patience and time and requires the exploration of one's identity.
OUR LEARNERS
Our learners are at the heart of our work around reading at Hazelgrove Elementary. Our students are inspired to read every day. Students are encouraged to find books that are interesting and on topic areas that they care about. When students are reading in the classroom they are given opportunities to connect with each other and the world around them.
Learning is embedded in memory, history and story. " ~ First Peoples' Principles of Learning
Our Journey
From 2018 - 2022 our student learning planning centred around SEL (social and emotional learning). This focus was important during the pandemic, and continues to be an integral part of our school and classroom teaching. We have many excellent SEL programs in place at Hazelgrove, which will remain in place, and so we realized that it was time to shift our focus.
In September 2022 we began to take another critical look at our students' learning needs. As teachers discussed what they were seeing in classrooms there was a consensus that we wanted to move forward with a focus on reading.
Core Communication Competency: Acquiring and Presenting Information
Students communicate by receiving and presenting information. They inquire into topics of interest and topics related to their studies. They acquire information from a variety of sources, including people, print materials, and media; this may involve listening, viewing, or reading, and requires understanding of how to interpret information. They present information for many purposes and audiences, and their presentations often feature media and technology. (BC Curriculum, Communicating Competency)
Our Learners
While reading is a school wide focus, we will be looking closely at two primary grade cohorts. These students are helping us to better understand the impact of many different reading initiatives and activities that are happening school wide.
At Hazelgrove our students are developing an understanding that language and story can be a source of creativity and joy
Our students are excited about reading. We are fortunate to have a variety of home reading books which are accessible and well used by our primary students. Our library learning commons is the hub of our school. All students have plenty of opportunities to borrow and enjoy a variety of reading materials. Students are supported and encouraged to read at home and we have built strong connections with families to make reading an important part of daily routines.
Primary students are returning and signing out daily home reading books.
Reading aloud to children creates positive connections with reading. A consistent routine of reading aloud helps improve your child's vocabulary and reading development, fosters a love of reading, and creates wonderful memories. " Surrey Schools One website: "Reading Aloud at Home Tips for Success"
In this photo, our teacher librarian is reading aloud to students in our library learning commons.
At Hazelgrove our students can use developmentally appropriate reading strategies
We know that reading skills are the foundation of learning. Hazelgrove students learn and practice reading strategies daily to make meaning of text.
In this video, one of our primary teachers is leading a phonics lesson.
At Hazelgrove our students can use a variety of reading comprehension strategies
Students in primary and intermediate grades practice making connections to stories in order to gain a deeper understanding of what they are reading.
This photo is an example of how students make connections when they read to help strengthen their understanding of text.
OUR FOCUS
Reading
Students use reading across all areas of the curriculum and it enriches our lives. Reading can look different over the course of the day and when we experience reading in different ways, we are given opportunities to strengthen and deepen our understanding.
At Hazelgrove Elementary our goals are:
- to foster a love of reading
- to support students to decode and make meaning of text
- to strengthen reading strategies so our students become more fluent and efficient readers
Developing and strengthening phonological awareness is integral to the success of our student learning plan. Phonological Awareness is the ability to notice and manipulate the sounds of spoken language. This includes phonological sensitivity (an awareness of individual words, syllables within words, rhyme, alliteration, onset/rimes) and phonemic awareness. These skills are learned through explicit teaching and playful and thoughtful experiences with language, including plentiful opportunities to hear, speak and see words. (Surrey Schools One website: Phonemic Awareness)
Our Cohort
Our two cohorts of students are a diverse collection of primary students. They have a variety of experiences and abilities. They share a common experience of beginning their reading journey during the COVID 19 pandemic.
Students' Learning Experiences
Question: What do you like about reading?
I like when you read a story and there is another chapter, and you really want to read more!” – grade 2 student
"“Sometimes I learn interesting stuff” ~ grade 3 student
Question: What do good readers do?
They think about what will happen next in the story” ~ grade 3 student
They know mostly all of the words, they can tell by the pictures, and they need to practice and understand the words” ~ grade 2 student
Question: How do you become a proficient reader?
Keep on reading and get harder books” ~ grade 3 student
Practice all of the words in the whole entire world and you can tell a lot by the pictures or you can tell by the words and imagine it” – grade 2 student
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OUR NEXT STEPS
Where are we now?
We have initiated this new direction for our school this year and are committed to continuing to focus on our reading goal next year. We are already starting to see progress.
In order to better understand the impact of our efforts we collected baseline reading data for all students in May of 2023 and are highlighting information from our cohort and school.
Reading skills (student results for Primary Cohort A and B and whole school)
When we take a close look at the data from our two grade cohorts and the whole school, we noticed:
- 81% of our students in Cohort A are proficient or exceeding expectations in reading; 19 % are developing or emerging
- 63% of our students in Cohort B are proficient or exceeding expectations in reading; 37 % are developing or emerging
- 66% of our whole school is proficient or exceeding expectations in reading: 34% are developing or emerging
This information tells us that our students have strengths, but we need to continue to focus on reading strategies in order to ensure more students are reading and comprehending at grade level.
A Student Story ...
We asked our staff to share with us stories of students on their reading journey this year.
One of our teachers shared with us the story of Adrian, a grade 2 boy who has been turned on to reading this year. Adrian started grade 2 a little behind in his reading skills and a little reluctant to pick up a book. He didn't know all his phonics sounds from grade 1 and he wasn't reading at home regularly. In class the teacher put in a number of universal literacy instructional strategies and interventions for Adrian and his classmates, including getting him into an online reading program at home, talking to his parents about home reading routines and ensuring he and his classmates had access to a large, varied library of books in the class, in home reading kits and in our school library. In the class Adrian received direct instruction in phonemic awareness and the teacher worked with the students individually and in small groups. There were also regular read alouds, including the first introduction to a novel and the teacher really promotes reading with the children and shares her own love of books, shopping at book stores and going to the library.
By mid year Adrian had made huge gains and was beginning to see himself as a confident reader. He was reading at home regularly and both he and his parents shared about how excited he was to read at home. He wasn't limiting himself to a single genre of book and you could see his joy of reading. He visited the library every day and his desk was full of books. This positive reading habits and love of reading has continued until the end of the year and Adrian is ending his grade 2 year as a proficient reader.
At the beginning of the year I didn't like reading at all. The books were not interesting for me. When our class started going to the library, my friend inspired me with graphic novels. So then I started to read them a lot and like them. My parents and teacher said my reading improved a lot. Now I like reading and I do it a lot. I go to the public library with my mom and dad and now I'm reading chapter books. I read one chapter or for one hour every day. My reading got better because I practised." ~Adrian, grade 2
 | Adrian, grade 2, reading an excerpt from a favourite graphic novel. |
Moving Forward
The evidence gathered so far indicates that there's still room to improve student reading skills at our school across all grade levels. We are committed to continue implementing reading assessments and evidence-informed reading instruction that will help improve these results. By shifting our focus to use reading strategies we hope to see improvement in student reading skills across all grade levels.
- We will continue to support and implement reading strategies and collect data on our cohorts next year
- We will go deeper in our professional learning in order to support students improve reading
- We will explore new resources and assessment practices
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.
