Mary Jane Shannon (MJS) is a school that is rich in its composition and cultural make up. As a staff and community, we embrace and highlight our individual differences and celebrate what we have in common. Our learners are kind, compassionate and come from a variety of experiences and backgrounds that we embrace and from which we build a sense of community. Our students are accepting and understanding of their differences and unique strengths. As a school community, we acknowledge our differences while at the same time, recognize the common threads that bind us together.
Mary Jane Shannon has both a breakfast and lunch program that provides opportunities for any students who need the nutrition to participate.
We also are a site for Backpack Buddies, a program to provide students and families with food on the weekends until students are back at school. Check and Connect is a program at MJS that supports student attendance by monitoring student absences and working with families to welcome the students to school by having students come into the building before classes start. Check and Connect is a program that services students to build connections and encourage regular school attendance. These students can have breakfast and play with friends before the school day begins. Mary Jane Shannon tries to ensure the nutritional needs of the students are met.
MJS plays host to numerous clubs, activities, and programs to try and meet the needs of the diverse community. We offer a variety of after school programs and along with the many student clubs and team sports, we work together to support our students to be successful and well-rounded at school and in the community. Furthermore, Mary Jane Shannon was the chosen site for L.E.A.P. (Language Acquisition and Enhancement Program) which teaches American Sign Language for deaf or hard of hearing students. This program started in 2020 and the program continues to grow every year! One of the students in L.E.A.P., signing a book she is reading:
In addition, MJS is host to The Nest, a room in which we have eight students from around the District who participate in the Social Development Program. As well, we have a Provincial Strong Start Program at our school to develop school readiness in our pre-school aged toddlers and young children.
Everyone belongs at Mary Jane Shannon. Our students feel that the adults are supportive, open and welcoming. Our school is at the heart of the community. Students enjoy spending time at school, oftentimes beyond school hours, where they feel connected to each other and have a place where they can be themselves. Whether they are playing sports or participating in an after school program, students love being at Mary Jane Shannon.
MJS is a really big and nice school and it means a lot to me. If you slip, the adults will take care of you! - MJS student
In the 2021-2022 school year, we underwent a school identity transformation and reimagined what was formerly the Mary Jane Shannon Strikers. One of our goals from this is to create school-wide language to help with creating consistent and clear expectations among staff and students. Another intention is to develop a positive school identity while honouring and spotlighting our students’ strengths and individual identities. We worked closely with all stakeholders in the learning community, including parents, students and staff and engaged in a year-long process and have landed on the acronym SOAR (S: Supportive, O: Open-Minded, A: Amazing, R: Respectful) as our new school-wide motto. We also worked with an Indigenous artist, Deanna-Marie Point, who re-designed our new logo. We are now proudly, the Mary Jane Shannon Thunderbirds.
At a school-wide assembly on May 31st, 2022, we unveiled our new logo to the school community. The commissioned artist, Deanna-Marie Point and our School District Senior Aboriginal Support Worker, Paula James, were all present at the ceremony. Ms. James gifted a blanket to Ms. Point, on behalf of the school. Please read more about how the Thunderbirds took flight by visiting this Surrey Schools article here.
We are appreciative of our school community and those who supported us on this journey so far. Our hope is that through this school identity transformation, our learning community will deepen their sense of self and identity in a positive way.
Literacy fundamentals, such as learning how to make meaning from letters and words, is a life skill. Our students work diligently every day on having a growth mindset when it comes to achieving their reading goals. Our learners take pride in their work and Personal Awareness and Responsibility - a core competency embedded across all learning in the curriculum, is at the core of supporting our students in developing their reading goals. Our learners set goals and are aware that learning takes time and patience.
This focus centres around learning about Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), how it can be integrated into classrooms to help increase learning focus and personal awareness. Our students can use different tools and strategies to support SEL. This year, the students continue to implement different principles to encourage the positive development of personal awareness and responsibility.
Class meetings offer teachers and students a forum for getting to know one another, discussing issues, identifying and solving problems and making decisions that affect classroom climate. Meetings are conducted in a circle, with a specific set of rules that govern the discussion. The teacher’s role is to create an environment in which the student’s learning, opinions and concerns are taken seriously. The student’s role is to participate as valued and influential contributors to the classroom community.
Each class is buddied up with another class. Buddy activities are designed to build relationships in the school by pairing older and younger students for joint activities. It provides activities that help buddies get to know one another, explore academic content in Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, Health, Art, Music, and Physical Education, and reflect on their experiences.
School-wide building activities, such as video announcements, assemblies, sports and activities, emphasize inclusion and participation, cooperation, helping others, appreciating differences, and reflection. They link the students, parents, teachers, and other adults in the school; help foster new school traditions and promote helpfulness, inclusiveness and responsibility.
These components help students develop respect for each other and take ownership for their learning and behaviour. Read more about Surrey Schools' SEL focus here.
This school year, our school introduced a staff-led Anti-racism Committee and student-led Social Justice Club. Our staff and students work diligently and passionately to change the lens on how we view and practice equity in our learning community. The Anti-racism Committee is a standing agenda item on our staff meetings and every month, our teacher leads report out on upcoming cultural events or current offerings for professional development. There are also times when we have had important conversations around how we conduct our school spirit or themed days and whether they reflect social justice.
One of the new initiatives we embarked on this year was transitioning our daily morning announcements to weekly video announcements. One of the catalysts for change was we wanted to be more mindful of our students’ language needs and particularly, how they access language. We host a Language Enhancement and Acquisition Program and wanted to involve the staff and students who are deaf or hard of hearing in a meaningful way. We have seen a big change in how our students are leading the announcements as they are highly involved and the messages centre around them. Below is a sample of one of our weekly video announcements.
I feel like a superstar when I read the weekly announcements!
Literacy has been identified as an area to spotlight for growth over the next few years. Reading underlies all learning and the skills needed for reading: phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, and comprehension, are fundamental for students’ language development. Our focus was on the early primary cohort.
We have identified literacy, particularly reading, as one of our school goals. We set out to work on the following reading goals:
The early primary grades have focused on the science of reading this year. Through learning about phonemic awareness and decoding, students are learning how to break down and segment words, starting with the understanding that each letter makes a sound and then applying sounds to reading materials.
Students read from their Rainforest Habitat book while presenting their biome to Kindergarten students.
In an effort to encourage students to read often and consistently, we started the Reading Caterpillar challenge. Students who read more than 150 minutes per month can put their name and favourite book title on a caterpillar section. Our Leadership students took the sections and added them to the body of a caterpillar which wraps around our school hallways.
Teachers work together in grade groups to gather formal and informal information regarding their students' reading levels. Our aim is for students to expand and stretch their thinking around Social Emotional Learning through our reading goals. Our goal is for students to use words to identify their emotions, use a strategy or tool to help regulate their emotions. Ultimately, our learners will engage actively as listeners, viewers, and readers, as appropriate, to develop understanding of self, identity, and community. We hope our students will be inspired and develop a life-long love for reading.
Our students' learning shows that our reading focus is positively impacting their ability to use decoding strategies. Teachers from the primary cohort indicated that students demonstrated growth in relation to our goals.
Overall, our students have shown growth in how they read by using strategies such as blending syllables into words, segmenting first and last sounds and blending sounds into words. The highest area of growth was in students' ability to segment sounds and this was the direct result of their daily practice of the reading strategies.
Growth in students' phonemic awareness was demonstrated in our January to May results:
Our students are engaged in a variety of opportunities where they can use decoding and phonological strategies to begin and make sense of what they read. Our teachers use open-ended instructional strategies, such as The Reading Train and Literacy Centres, for students to practice what they've learned.
Students in daily literacy centres to practice letter sounds:
We are proud of many of students who have made such great progress in learning how to read through segmenting sounds and recognizing patterns. The first steps of learning how to read is identifying letter sounds and blending letters. Our early primary teachers have embraced the science of reading and actively using instructional strategies to reach the goal of grasping foundational concepts of print to help decode letters and words. In addition, our students can use reading strategies, such as visualize, to extend their reading abilities. Evidence of our students' learning is placed in their portfolios to document learning over time. Based on evidence from our cohort, 70% of our learners have demonstrated that they can use foundational concepts of visual text to further their progress in reading groups. Of the 70% of learners who have shown growth, 27% has shown a growth of more than 2 reading levels.
Students practice daily on their own and with their class community, how to use the decoding strategies they've learned. They work together on segmenting words and apply the strategies they've learned in literacy centres. Through this whole class practice, students are watching and listening as they develop a positive and deeper sense of their own understanding of reading.
Below is a video of a whole class practicing their reading strategies in a daily group setting:
From survey results in the Spring of 2022, 64% of our students strongly agree that they have opportunities to connect with each other through conversations and class meetings. These opportunities give our students a chance to develop their sense of self and community. From the same survey, 93% of students feel they have a strong sense of identity at Mary Jane Shannon and 73% of students feel that there is a strong sense of community at school.
Evidence of our students' learning demonstrates that they are engaged as active viewers, listeners and readers. Based on teacher survey, 93% of our learners can effectively demonstrate that they can engage in reading opportunities to share their ideas with each other and practice being both viewers and listeners.
Based on evidence of our learning goals, our next steps will include:
Our goal for our students is to see them advocating for their needs throughout the school community and continue to S.O.A.R. through our literacy and social emotional goals. Our hope is that our students will develop a sense of safety and care that will last well beyond their time at Mary Jane Shannon.
We are the Thunderbirds and Thunderbirds SOAR!