Strawberry Hill Elementary

Every day at Strawberry Hill our team of educators provide a variety of educational experiences that prepare our learners for a world in which they think creatively and critically and communicate skillfully. To fully engage in the variety of learning experiences across all curricular areas, our students require reading skills to make meaning of text. Our aim is to focus on building our students' reading comprehension skills, so they are equipped with the tools necessary to make sense of the curricular content taught in all subject areas. 

Our students’ learning goal is to:

• Use reading, listening, and viewing strategies to make meaning of text

All teachers, across all grades provide students with learning opportunities aimed at increasing reading comprehension skills. To highlight and determine overall successes and gaps, we monitored the progress of a cohort  students from three of our primary classes (grades 2 and 3).

In our cohort, teachers explicitly taught reading strategies and used the gradual release of responsibility model. This model can also be described as the “I do, we do, you do” model.  Initially our teacher modeled how reading strategies are employed while reading and then through a series of steps, teachers relinquished more and more of the responsibility to the student, so our learners used the strategies independently. Teachers used instructional strategies such as read alouds, shared reading, buddy reading, book discussions as a class and in small groups, guided reading, and graphic organizers to help students organize their thinking about reading. Students were provided longer periods of time to read, which allowed them to gain vocabulary, increase their background knowledge, and to learn how reading material is structured.

Students are read to daily

Our learners read daily

Daily Five Literacy Framework:  This framework allows students to engage in reading and writing daily and for the teacher to meet with small groups of students to meet their diverse literacy needs.

Students sharing their favourite books.  Reading aloud to classmates.

Evidence of our students’ learning demonstrates that our focus on improving reading skills has positively impacted our cohort of primary classes. Our teachers tracked the progress of their students’ reading learning goals:

• Using reading, listening, and viewing strategies to make meaning of text

Growth was demonstrated in our September to May results. For our reading comprehension goal, we saw a decrease in the percentage of students who are Emerging (-4%) and a decrease in those who are Developing (-21%). Similarly, we saw an increase in the percentage of students who are Proficient (+20%) and an increase in those who are Extending (+8%). More descriptive evidence of learning that is specific to our literacy goal is highlighted below.

Using Reading, Listening, and Viewing Strategies to Comprehend

Our learners ask questions before, during and after reading, they make predictions, monitor their comprehension while reading, make connections, infer, visualize and explain transformation in their thinking to make sense of text they read. Our students describe their thinking, and develop conclusions using a variety of reading strategies. In our cohort, all students experienced some level of success. Sixty-five percent of the students are now proficient in their ability to comprehend text and use strategies to help them build deeper levels of understanding – compared to 25% who demonstrated proficiency earlier in the year.

The examples below show how our students are using reading comprehension strategies to make sense of text they read.  Students are visualizing and analyzing text.

The students used reading, listening and viewing strategies they have been practicing, to complete a reading response for each chapter, a setting map, and then write about how their thinking transformed after reading an info-fiction story about leatherback sea turtle’s.

Students were given the task to use loose parts in the discovery room to create a setting map of the novel, Diver. the story map showed the  journey of a leather back sea turtle from Costa Rica to Nova Scotia.  Students used the setting map to orally share the important events and story elements.

Student use questioning to make sense of text:

Student use connection to make sense of text:

Moving Forward;

Continue: 

 After seeing the growth our students have made with their reading, we will continue to use the gradual release of responsibility model to teach reading comprehension strategies, along with the following instructional strategies; read alouds, shared reading, buddy reading, book discussions as a class and in small groups, guided reading, and graphic organizers to help students organize their thinking about reading. Students need time to practice reading skills and we will continue to provide longer periods of time to read.

Area we want to go deeper:

 Our learners have shown that they are able to use reading strategies to make sense of text read. We would like to support our learners to dive in even deeper into their reading comprehension by making connections between the big idea of the text and to real world contexts.  What is the author's message and how does it relate to real world situations?  What is the text saying about life and society?  How does this text transform thinking?  We need our learners to analyze, think critically, and apply understandings beyond the text. 

 Explore:

 Through the Science of Reading research, we have learned the importance of intensive phonemic awareness and phonic decoding training.  Instruction in these skills leads to efficient decoding and fluency when reading, which ultimately leads to better reading comprehension.  In our next steps we would like to implement intensive phonemic awareness training and phonic decoding in all our classrooms.