M.B. Sanford Elementary 25-26
OUR CONTEXT
Thank you for visiting!
Please click on the video link below to learn more about M.B. Sanford Elementary:
Welcome to M.B. Sanford Elementary
OUR LEARNERS
Learning is a collaborative and life-long process that involves time, engagement, curiosity, and the contributions of all members involved in the education of our children. A key component of this learning process is the development of literacy skills, which includes the ability to read, write, speak, and think in a way that allows us to communicate effectively and make sense of our lived experience. The BC curriculum plays a key role in supporting our learners in the development of these skills as it paves the way for collaboration, problem solving, sharing of information, and expressing individuality. Evidence of the diverse, creative, meaningful, and inspiring ways in which our students engage in the literacy learning process are highlighted below:
Our learners can engage in a variety of oral storytelling processes.
Oral storytelling is a powerful and engaging way of creating connections with one another through the sharing of ideas and experiences. In the example above, we gathered as a school community to share our reflections from our First Peoples in Residence week. Several students shared about their learning during this time and expressed gratitude to the Indigenous Cultural Facilitators who shared their knowledge and lived experience with the students. Oral storytelling creates the space for connection, understanding, and joy within our school community.
Our learners can use language in creative and playful ways to develop style. 
Language is both playful and creative. When students have the opportunity to explore and play with language, it creates opportunities for engagement and understanding. In the example above, students are creating a story using various loose parts. While creating, they have the opportunity to share their story with their classmates, continuing to add detail, description, and new events. Even before writing words on a page, language has the ability to powerfully connect with our learners as they explore its creative and far-reaching possibilities.
Our learners understand the power of exploring their identity and taking pride in who they are through both images and written language.
A core value of our school community is creating an environment in which each person feels valued, a sense of belonging, and free to celebrate who they are. Creating this safe space is a daily focus that can be fostered in a variety of ways. In the example above, students wrote about "The Best Part of Me". Through descriptive language, they explained why they loved this part of themselves. Students also included a photo that accompanied their writing to bring it further to life. Exploring our identities and taking pride in who we are can be nurtured in a variety of creative and meaningful ways, creating a pathway for students to celebrate their uniqueness and value.
OUR FOCUS
Within our community at M.B. Sanford, literacy has been an area of focus over the past few years. Literacy skills help our learners engage and interact with the world around them in the present and in our evolving future. When meeting with staff early in the school year, a common theme that kept coming up for teachers was helping our learners develop stronger reading comprehension skills. Teachers shared that they noticed improvement in the decoding skills of our students, but noticed they had difficulties with understanding what was being read. Following these conversations, we identified reading comprehension as our primary focus for this school year.
Our student learning goals as they relate to reading comprehension, include:
- Exploring stories and other texts to help students understand themselves and make connections to others and to the world.
- Synthesizing ideas from a variety of sources to build understanding.
- Recognizing and identifying the role of personal, social, and cultural contexts, values, and perspectives in texts
Across all grades, learners at M.B. Sanford were provided with a variety of opportunities to develop their reading comprehension skills. In order to discover both the key successes and areas for further growth in this area, we monitored the progress of two cohorts of intermediate students in relation to the student learning goals listed above.
Students within these cohorts began the school year learning about different reading strategies in slow, carefully segmented lessons. Students learned about visualizing, questioning, connecting and predicting with new strategies being introduced weekly. Teachers read aloud picture books to their students to help them put what they learned into practice. Through this type of scaffolding, students began to grow more comfortable with using these strategies. As the school year progressed, these teachers further supported the development of their learners’ reading comprehension skills through small group instruction. As the learners within this cohort began to expand their understanding of these strategies further, they learned how to apply these strategies in different cross-curricular contexts (such as in Social Studies and Science). The reading comprehension strategies that our learners developed will help them across all areas of the curriculum moving forward.
Reading and Communicating
Our students actively engage in reading in all areas of the curriculum. In order to continue refining their skills in this area, students use various strategies such as making connections, asking questions, and inferring, to deepen their understanding of the material. In doing so, students develop a deeper connection to the content with their continued practice of these strategies. This then lays the foundation for a richer, more fulfilling reading experience.
OUR NEXT STEPS
Through actively engaging with our literacy focus, specifically as it relates to reading comprehension, evidence of our students' learning demonstrates that our two cohorts of learners have been positively impacted by this focus as most students have demonstrated growth in relation to our three literacy goals, including:
- Exploring stories and other texts to help students understand themselves and make connections to others and to the world.
- Synthesizing ideas from a variety of sources to build understanding.
- Recognizing and identifying the role of personal, social, and cultural contexts, values, and perspectives in texts
Students were assessed on their reading comprehension within their Foundational Skills Assessment (FSA) in October. Their reading comprehension was assessed again in June, as students completed a different practice FSA. The data is as follows:
October | June | |
Emerging | 60% | 25% |
"On Track" (Developing/Proficient) | 35% | 65% |
"Above" (Extending) | 5% | 10% |
The data indicates our students experienced significant growth over the course of the school year. When speaking with teachers about this positive growth, they expressed the power of small group instruction. One teacher shared that students can connect with each other more easily in this manner. Another teacher believed that the ability to differentiate within these small groups is what led to this improvement. The teacher added that “everyone progressed in their own ways, allowing for them to develop at their own pace and take ownership of their learning through meaningful conversations.”
Moving Forward
Based on the evidence of our students’ progress in relation to our three learning goals, our next steps will include:
- Continuing to build upon the literacy work that has been focused on over the past two years which includes oral storytelling and reading comprehension. We plan to shift towards using writing with a particular focus on applying the conventions of language, and exchanging ideas and perspectives to build understanding,
While our learners demonstrated substantial growth in the area of reading comprehension, the results of our latest assessment still show a significant number of learners that are at the Emerging level. To help support the growth of all of our learners, we feel a focus on writing will help promote active engagement with different texts. In addition to this, developing writing competencies will help our learners develop their metacognitive skills even further. We value this opportunity to spend deliberate, focused time enhancing our students’ writing skills as we address their learning needs in authentic and observable ways.
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.
