T.E. Scott Elementary
OUR CONTEXT
OUR LEARNERS
Literacy is a core life skill that is essential for effective communication. Reading and writing helps us to make sense of the world around us and to express our thoughts, ideas and expressions to others. As such, teaching effective literacy skills is central to supporting our learners as they learn to problem solve, share ideas, exchange information, and work both independently and in collaboration with others.
All teachers, across all grades, provide students with learning opportunities aimed at increasing the literacy success rates of our learners. To highlight and determine overall successes and gaps, we monitored the progress of a cohort of kindergarten students.
Our learners create stories and other text to deepen their awareness of self, family, and community.
Our learners read to learn
Reading is a building block of learning amongst many subject areas. Students read to make sense of their world and to learn about the perspectives of others. Questions are both answered and raised through reading. It is a foundational skill to learning.
Our learners write to communicate
Our learners express themselves in written form to communicate in various areas of learning. In Art, they wrote artist statements for works they created; in Science, they documented observations and findings; in Language Arts, they wrote stories, poems and plays; in Math they wrote to explain their thinking.
"When we first started to write spicy sentences, I found it hard and needed help. Now I am really good at it. I add spicy words to make the sentences more interesting. The more I read, the better I write." - Harnoor
Physical Literacy
Challenger Baseball
Literacy takes place in many different forms. In addition to how to read and write our students are learning about movement in ways to keep themselves healthy. Challenger baseball is an adaptive, inclusive physical literacy program that our students look forward to participating in every week at our school.
Our learners will develop and demonstrate safety, fair play, and leadership in physical activities. They will develop and apply a variety of fundamental movement skills in a variety of physical activities and environments.
Literacy Events
School Wide Read Aloud
Our students participated in a school wide read aloud. They read One by Kathryn Otoshi at a school wide assembly to acknowledge the importance of inclusion, being kind to one and other, and celebrate our readers at T.E. Scott Elementary.
Our learners engage actively as listeners, viewers, and readers, as appropriate, to develop understanding of self, identity and community.
D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything and Read)
A celebration of reading designed to remind students to make reading a priority in their lives. This whole school activity occurs at different days throughout the year, often with special themes such as flashlight reading, buddy reading and noisy reading.
Our learners will think critically, creatively, and reflectively to explore ideas within, between, and beyond texts. They will recognize and appreciate how different features, forms, and genres of texts reflect various purposes, audiences, and message.
Student Leadership activities focused on literacy
We have several leadership strands for our students at T.E. Scott. Some of these student leadership groups focus on providing opportunities for other students to practice literacy skills while having fun. We are proud of the achievements of these hardworking, community minded students.
Gamers Unplugged Leadership Group
This group researches interactive games that can be played without the need for electronics. Recognizing that games can provide learning experiences as well as positive social outlets, this group organizes game days for younger students during lunch times. The group identifies board games that have literacy components to them and then invites students to join in on the learning and the fun.
Our learners will apply appropriate strategies to comprehend written, oral, and visual texts, guide inquiry, and extend thinking.
Improving literacy competencies amongst our students has been identified as a focus for our school. The data below documents the literacy rates of our students at the conclusion of the 2020 /2021 school year.
June 2021 Early Primary (K-2) Literacy Snapshot
June 2021 Middle Grades (3-5) Literacy Snapshot
June 2021 Upper Intermediate (6-7) Literacy Snapshot
June 2021 Students Demonstrating Proficiency in Literacy
Data from the Middle Years Development Instrument (MDI) Survey for students in grades 4 and 7 reveal that our students are confident in their abilities to learn. The MDI Survey was developed by the University of British Columbia to understand trends in students physical health and well-being, as well as social and emotional development.
Grade 4 MDI Results
Grade 7 MDI Results
Grade 4 & 7 - FSA Results
The results of the 2021 FSAs show promising results. Amongst our grade four students, seventy percent scored as on-track or extending for literacy while eighty-one percent of our grade seven students scored in this category.
Evidence of our students’ learning demonstrates that our literacy focus is positively impacting our learners. Both formal and informal assessment data indicate that our students are demonstrating growth in relation to our broad literacy learning goals:
- Students will enhance their ability to read strategically to comprehend text
- Students will write with clarity
OUR FOCUS
We believe that all students benefit from a strong foundation and understanding of phonemic awareness. Daily interactive lessons reinforce the concept that spoken words are made up of individual sounds. This has led to an increase in reading success at our school.
Our students learning goals include:
Students will enhance their ability to read strategically. Specifically, we will see and hear our students;
- using cues from text to increase reading comprehension
- hear our students isolate phonemes
- hear our students blend and segment syllables
- hear and see our students substitute phonemes in words
Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate sounds in words. One of the most powerful and well-established findings in the research on beginning reading is the important relationship between phonemic awareness and reading achievement. Research indicates that it is the best predictor of the ease of early reading acquisition. Our students have been working since September on their phonological awareness skills such as:
- Rhyming: These are two words that have or similar ending sounds (some examples are; goat, boat, moat, float)
- Syllables: Counting syllables in familiar words
- Segmentation (first sound isolation): What is the first sound in mop? (mmm – making the sound of the letter and naming it)
- Segmentation (last sound isolation): What is the last sound in mop? (p – making the sound of the letter and naming it)
- Segmentation (complete): What are all the sounds you hear in mop? (m-o-p – making all sounds)
- Blending: What word am I trying to say? Mmmm-oooo-p. (Mop)
Intervention Strategies
Phonemic Awareness Focus
Our Learning Support Team has worked closely with classroom teachers on introducing a program on phonemic awareness. Modelling teaching strategies, and co-teaching alongside classroom teachers are some of the ways that our team has supported our teaching staff and our students. To highlight and determine overall successes and gaps, we monitored the progress of a cohort of kindergarten students.
A Window into Learning - Young Readers at T.E. Scott Elementary
Our students are provided with daily learning experiences to support their understanding of phonemic awareness. You will see below examples of students working on rhyming, syllables, segmenting, and blending.
The classroom teacher focus and practices phonemic awareness exercises with their class each day. They teach lessons focusing on eight phonemic awareness skills, along with two additional activities to help develop letter and sound recognition, and language awareness.
"Rhyming is fun, and rhyming with the dust bunnies is exciting" - Kindergarten student
Writing Process
The best evidence of a child's understanding of phonemic awareness is in their writing. Students write in their journals once a week. To begin, the teacher gives the class a writing topic, they share ideas as a group, and then the teacher will model a journal entry before sending them to write in their journal. The teacher will talk about drawing a big, bright, beautiful picture and tell the students use at least five colours. Drawing a picture that tells a story, practice writing their names with a capital letter followed by lower case letters, and then must share with a friend before sharing with their teacher.
At the beginning of the year, the teacher would scribe for each student, and want them to tell her about their pictures. Some students would use full sentences, and many would point and label. For those with letter sound knowledge, the teacher would encourage to label parts of their pictures, even if it was just with the beginning sound. From there they move onto writing a short sentence with one-on-one support. The teacher asks each student what they want to write, they count out how many words it is together, and the teacher then draws the lines for each word for them. During this process, they focus on listening to the beginning and ending sounds and then work on medial sounds.
From starting the year with just learning about letters, and their sounds we’re now using all that knowledge to help with our writing! I’m so proud of the kids and how far they’ve come. Their confidence in their letter knowledge and writing has grown and the growth that I’ve seen in so exciting. It’s fun to look back and see where they started in their journals to where they are now. - Kindergarten Teacher
Hands-On Learning
While reading, writing, speaking and making sense of their learning, students explore their critical thinking, while being creative with hands-on activities; such as literacy centres. Literacy centers keep students engaged and motivated as they explore, invent, discover, or create all while learning about letters and phonics. These activities foster connections to the literature, concept, or skill. After a teacher has introduced a new skill, literacy centres can reinforce that skill and concept by giving each student a chance to practice and apply that knowledge at a level that is appropriate for the student. Literacy centres in the classroom offer meaningful learning experiences where students work independently or collaboratively to meet literacy goals.
I love reading with our special star wand. It helps me follow and sound out the words. I feel really happy when I learn new sounds. I love reading with my family at home and my teacher at school - Kindergarten student
OUR NEXT STEPS
Evidence of our students’ learning demonstrates that our literacy focus is positively impacting our cohort of learners. When surveyed and asked to communicate their students’ progress using a district assessment scale, the teacher from the cohort indicated that all students demonstrated growth in relation to our four literacy goals such as:
- using cues from text to increase reading comprehension
- hear our students isolate phonemes
- hear our students blend and segment syllables
- hear and see our students substitute phonemes in words
Kindergarten students have been assessed using the district’s ELPATS (Early Literacy Phonemic Awareness Test) to help teachers identify learning gaps and plan instructional strategies. The results of the assessments below indicate a significant reduction of the number of Kindergarten children experiencing difficulty with phonemic awareness.
Growth was demonstrated in our January 2021 to January 2022 ELPATS results. When averaging results across all four goals, we saw a decrease in the percentage of students who are Emerging (-16%) and a decrease in those who are Developing (-18%). Similarly, we saw an increase in the percentage of students who are Proficient (+34%).
Moving Forward
Based on evidence of students’ progress in relation to our learning goals, our next steps will be:
- to continue to expand their reading comprehension and skills
- to continue to develop effective strategies for isolating phonemes (segmenting sounds)
- to increase student's confidence with blending and segmenting syllables
- to further explore effective strategies in substituting phonemes in words
I am learning how to read and write. I am proud and get excited when I learn how to read a new word!
As a learning community:
- we will continue to monitor and adjust our student learning plan to meet the needs of our students
- we will continue to facilitate growth by identifying what is working and what needs to be improved
- we will explore methods to further evaluate the impact of our plan and apply this feedback to adjust ongoing teaching strategies
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.
