M.B. Sanford Elementary 24-25
OUR CONTEXT
MB Sanford Elementary: Where curiosity is nurtured, diversity is celebrated, and hands-on learning is at the heart of everything we do.
Our classrooms are alive with questions, exploration, and discovery. Students are encouraged to think critically, ask questions, and follow their interests.
Learning comes alive through hands-on experiences. Whether building, creating or collaborating, our students learn by doing.
We celebrate the rich diversity of our community and foster an inclusive environment where every student feels seen, heard, and valued.
At MB Sanford we believe every child deserves a joyful, engaging, and inclusive education. We are proud to lead a school where learning is an adventure and every student belongs.
OUR LEARNERS
Throughout the 2024-2025 school year, our learners were involved in multiple school wide and classroom setting experiences that exercised the curricular develop and application of their expanding word knowledge. In previous years, our team explored how intentional vocabulary instruction could improve numeracy. This school year, students continued to develop word knowledge by exploring morphology and grammar of subject specific terms across all curricular subjects. Students were encouraged to be curious about words, and were supported with strategies for studying new and unknown words. As well, students were provided with engaging opportunities for students to challenge themselves and exercise their developing vocabulary.
Our learners are storytellers
Our learners can use language to demonstrate creativity and joy.
Students in our primary cohorts were provided a variety of tools that they could use to create their stories and demonstrate their word knowledge development. Before the challenge of physically writing stories down on paper was expected, students were able to explore all the components of story such as setting, character, conflict, and resolution through play.
Students were provided opportunity to share their learning in other subjects through play. These learning experiences supported students with acquiring tier 3 subject specific vocabulary and deepened their understanding of the concepts.
Our learners can explore new words.
We implemented a school wide strategy for exploring new words. Words of the day were shared over the morning announcements and classes explored these words in a variety of ways that were developmentally appropriate.
Individual classes continued to use the same strategy for tier 3 (content specific words) that connected to their specific Curricular areas.
With the use of standardized reading assessments, teachers reported a common pattern of students demonstrating grade level proficiency with reading fluency and decoding skills, but comprehension scored in a range of developing or emerging.
October Assessments
| Fluency | Comprehsion |
Extending Above Grade Level Benchmark | 46%
| 23% |
Proficient At Grade Level Benchmark | 29% | 8% |
Developing Below Grade Level Benchmark | 23% | 23% |
Emerging Well Below Benchmark | 2% | 46% |
June Assessments
| Fluency | Comprehsion |
Extending Above Grade Level Benchmark | 48%
| 25% |
Proficient At Grade Level Benchmark | 34% | 29% |
Developing Below Grade Level Benchmark | 16% | 24% |
Emerging Well Below Benchmark | 2% | 22% |
OUR FOCUS
The BC Curriculum’s inclusion of word knowledge prepares children to share their knowledge, interact socially, and provides them with a voice to be heard and understood. Our student learning goal was a focus on supporting students’ skills to make sense of new words they could use to communicate ideas and demonstrate depth of understanding. We focused specifically on how vocabulary development could be seen in the stories of students in two of our primary classes. These students shared stories throughout the year during but not limited to the following activities: morning meetings, collaborative brainstorming sessions, group discussions, daily journals, and creative story writer’s workshop. As the year progressed intentional instruction was provided while playing with story and using loose parts. Students were guided to structure their stories with intentional planning and descriptions of their characters, the settings of their stories, and the beginning, middle, and end plot lines. Students created published final copies of their favourite stories and participated in author sharing circles where they provided feedback and celebrated the developed strengths in their writing.
OUR NEXT STEPS
Students in our cohort successfully created and shared their stories.
Teachers used Rubric from the BC Performance standards to assess students’ stories
Emerging Developing Proficient Extending
Final assessment of student creative stories | Emerging 12% | Developing 11% | Proficient 55% | Extending 29% |
Moving forward we intend to continue our focus on comprehension by using personal stories to access background knowledge and context. We found that given the opportunity our students have a strength for sharing their own stories. This skill can be channeled to supporting students to find context to make sense of new language and develop their comprehension skills.
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.
