North Surrey Secondary 23-24
OUR CONTEXT
Welcome to North Surrey Secondary School! I’m Stefan Stipp, the principal.
When you enter our school, you'll immediately sense the warm embrace of a community that thrives on diversity, inclusion, and kindness. 61 different languages are spoken in the homes of our students. Here, every individual is valued, and every heart is welcomed into our community. We strive to create a deep sense of belonging for all Spartans.
Academics matter at North Surrey, reflecting our dedication to nurturing intellectual curiosity and sound thinking. We want students to be able think like historians, writers, scientists, and mathematicians in preparation for their transition into an everchanging world of complexity.
Artistry thrives in our Fine Arts program, where music, dance, visual arts, and drama flourish. This creative haven provides a platform for self-expression, allowing students to explore their passions and talents. Come visit our school to see our students shine through beautiful art displays, engaging concerts, dynamic dance performances, and powerful plays.
In our well-equipped workshops, innovation and craftsmanship come alive. The robust Technology Education program offers hands-on experiences in various fields, from woodwork and metalwork to robotics and automotive technology, empowering students to translate imaginative ideas into tangible realities.
The culinary, foods and textiles programs provide students with opportunities to develop life skills needed to prepare food and clothing. They help students understand how their choices as consumers can be more sustainable, can contribute positively to the environment and can work to help combat some social issues.
Our Business Education, Information Technology, and Career programs equip students with vital skills for the professional world. Students learn about computer programming, video game design, economics, and entrepreneurship, while also gaining insights into personal finance, marketing, photography, and video production. Our career education programs guide students in exploring careers, future education opportunities, and developing skills.
Physical activity plays an integral role in promoting well-being and teamwork. At North Surrey, students build skills in a varies athletic persuits to build life-long habits of staying active. Our many sports teams allow students to engage in healthy competition, develop discipline, and embrace the values of perseverance and collaboration. Come watch our Spartans compete.
Our Modern Languages department offers students the opportunity to count themselves amongst the hundreds of millions of French and Spanish speakers globally. Throughout their years of study, students express themselves verbally and in writing with ever increasing fluency and confidence, all while learning about the world in which these languages are spoken, and finding their place in it.
The Library Learning Commons is a welcoming space for all our learners to embrace and explore their passions, interests, and needs. With a carefully curated collection of diverse resources the LLC strives to engage all members of our school community.
We focus on the Core-Competencies of communication, thinking and personal/social through thoughtfully planned activities and celebrations with subsequent reflections through out the year.
We have four caring counsellors to help students with course planning, and any personal issues that may arise.
We work hard to foster an inclusive learning community that ensures all students have the opportunity to grow and thrive at NSS. We support all students and their unique learning needs by tailoring their educational experience to individual needs.
As you walk through the halls of our diverse high school each student and staff member contributes a unique thread to the tapestry of our collective identity, and together, we form a dynamic and harmonious community. Let’s hear from some of our students.
OUR LEARNERS
To best serve our learners at NSS, we have engaged in a school wide inquiry process. First we created three relevant goals:
- Make meaning out of text,
- Problem Solving throughout the design process, and
- Nurturing creative expression and participation.
These goals work for NSS students because they’re broad enough so that each department in our school can engage in meaningful inquiry to improve student learning. They are congruent with the core and curricular competencies ensuring that the various inquiries are rooted in foundational goals of the BC curriculum.
With the goals established, each department worked to create an inquiry question which they have worked on (and in many cases refined) for the past two years. The table below shows the questions our departments worked on during the 2023 – 2024 school year.
Here are some examples of student progress related to the various departmental inquiry questions:
Our Technology Education department has been addressing the following inquiry question: How can scaffolding the design process increase problem solving skills and build resilience in student learning? The following examples of student show significant progress in this regard:
The student who created this game board used the design process to great effect. She solved various challenging problems along the way. She made it for her grandmother to replace one that was tragically lost in a fire the her late grandfather had built.
This boat wheel was designed by the student and crafted using the student’s skills from metalwork and woodwork. It’s a perfect example of the use of the design process to increase problem and build resilience because there were many challenges to overcome along the way leading to this extraordinary product.
Our Modern Languages department has been focusing on making connections to self, culture, or previously learned content knowledge. Teachers have seen decreased reliance on teacher assistance with reading, particularly in Core French and Spanish. They have also seen growing independence lead to increased confidence and engagement in the subject as demonstrated by the increasing number of students continuing to French 12 and attempting the DELF exam.
A final example comes from our Library Learning Commons which is broadly focused on making meaning of text. Our librarian has very deliberately changed the physical layout of the library and used an array of display strategies to make books accessible and inviting. She’s also continued to add books to the collection based on student wants and needs. The resulting improving circulation numbers are strong evidence that students are reading more. One can infer from this that they are making meaning of that text.
OUR FOCUS
The previously mentioned goals and inquiry questions represent the big picture of our staff working to improve student learning. Our targeted goal for this Student Learning Plan is making meaning out of text .
This goal is important because being skilled at making meaning of text applies across the curriculum and in the real world. Whether it’s instructions on how to build an Ikea shelf, a science textbook, dialogue in a play to be performed, or Canada’s income tax rules, making meaning of text is essential.
Obviously, the goal is also central to everything that happens in an English class and is highlighted in the following curricular competencies found in the English 8 -12 curriculum:
- Access information and ideas for diverse purposes and from a variety of sources and evaluate their relevance, accuracy, and reliability
- Apply appropriate strategies to comprehend written, oral, and visual texts, guide inquiry, and extend thinking
Specifically, our English department focused on, scaffolding the reading process to improve the student’s ability to read a variety of texts in order to make meaning and to make inferences.
English teachers focused on explicitly teaching reading strategies and providing frequent opportunities for students to practice them. Three teachers collaborated to develop the following tool which was widely shared with students in English classes:
Teachers developed graphic organizers that helped students focus on different reading strategies. They also taught specific strategies like annotation as seen in the following examples:
OUR NEXT STEPS
Evidence
The entire English department implemented these instructional practices and the results have been promising. Our English teachers across the board report improvement in students’ ability to make meaning of text and make inferences. Rather than just giving students challenging texts to read and interpret, teachers deliberately broke down the process by explicitly modelling and teaching tools. This scaffolding improved student engagement because students felt an increasing sense of competence when attempting challenging readings. It also led to quantifiable improvements in reading.
The following examples show student self assessments completed at the end of an English 11 course. Students had completed the same assessment near the beginning of the course. On the final reflections shown here, their teachers conferenced with them about their progress. The yellow sticky note shows each student progressing one step up the proficiency scale. Based on self-assessments corroborated by teacher judgments (like the two below), English teachers report that around 60% of students saw improvements in their ability to make meaning of text.
Next Steps
Not all students made progress in their ability to make meaning of text so there is still work to be done. English teachers plan to continue with their rigorous scaffolding process and to add focus on teaching different reading strategies to those students who are not improving but that will likely not be the focus of our Student Learning Plan. Our staff have decided that a focus on self-regulated learning would greatly benefit our student so we have plans to teach a variety of tools across the curriculum to that end.
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.
