Walnut Road Elementary 24-25

Literacy is a key focus for all of our learners as it plays an instrumental role in the ways in which our students experience and engage in the world. It is our desire that each learner meaningfully develops reading, writing, thinking, listening, and speaking skills in order to facilitate effective communication and understanding throughout their lives. Continually working to develop the literacy skills of our learners, with a particular focus on writing, is our main focus.  

Our student learning goals, as they relate to writing, include:

• Using writing and design processes to plan, develop, and create text for a variety of purposes and audiences.
• Using the features and conventions of language to express meaning in their writing and representing.
• Exchanging ideas and perspectives to build shared understanding.

All of our learners, across all grades, are provided with a variety of creative and relevant opportunities in the area of writing development. These opportunities include various strategies and processes that work to support this. In order to discover both the key successes and areas for further growth in this area, we monitored the progress of a cohort of early intermediate students in relation to the student learning goals listed above.

Writing and Communicating

Our students actively engage in the writing process in all areas of the curriculum. In doing so, they use various planning techniques such as brainstorming, drawing, and communicating with their peers to draw inspiration and a solid base for their writing piece. With this foundation in place, they then begin the process of expressing their thoughts through various written forms such as paragraphs, poems, essays, or newspaper articles. This process is consistently being refined through various revision processes such as peer editing and conferencing.

Hands-On Learning

Our learners love to explore and create! They value the creative process which includes thinking outside-the-box,  brainstorming various possibilities, refining their ideas through trial-and-error, asking questions, communicating their thinking with others, being open to feedback, and putting their ideas into action. Learning takes place both inside and outside the classroom and the possibilities for growth and development are endless.

Through actively engaging with our literacy focus, specifically as it relates to writing, evidence of our students' learning demonstrates that our cohort of learners have been positively impacted by this focus as the majority of students have demonstrated growth in relation to our three literacy goals, particularly in the area of building shared understanding through the exchanging of ideas and perspectives:

• Using writing and design processes to plan, develop, and create text for a variety of purposes and audiences.
• Using the features and conventions of language to express meaning in their writing and representing.
• Exchanging ideas and perspectives to build shared understanding.

Our results indicate that in relation to our three writing goals (as stated above), the most significant growth continued to occur for our students who were developing in these skills at the beginning of the year. By the end of the year, some of these students demonstrated proficiency in the writing and design progress, in their ability to use the conventions of language in meaningful and creative ways, along with their ability to refine their writing through peer collaboration. It is also important to note, however, that approximately 25% of students are not yet proficient in our three writing goals, including a slightly higher percentage of emerging learners in the month of May as compared to last year. With our rapidly growing population at Walnut Road, we welcomed more students into the school this past year, several of which are English Language Learners.  As a result, this slight increase in our emerging learners as compared to last year, is not a complete surprise and highlights the continued importance of supporting these learners in their English language development.

Our learners use writing and design processes to plan, develop, and create text for a variety of purposes and audiences.

Student learning evidence is gathered in a variety of ways. For example, in one method, student strengths and challenges in relation to writing samples are identified and comments are provided. The following assessment is based on writing conferences, conversations and student work:

In their work related to writing a persuasive paragraph for a class newspaper,  77% of students were able to use writing and design processes to plan, develop, and produce a high-interest persuasive topic about a current passion. There remains 23% of the cohort, however, who require further attention and development in this area. As such, focusing on the writing process, along with developing skills and confidence in using the conventions of writing, will remain a priority moving forward. 

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 work that has been focused on during the past three years related to: using writing and design processes to create various pieces of writing, understanding and applying the conventions of language, and exchanging ideas and perspectives to build understanding, with a particular emphasis on supporting our English Language Learners within this process.

While literacy will always remain a key priority in our daily instructional practice, moving forward into the new school year, our Student Learning Plan will shift to a numeracy focus. The decision to focus on numeracy has been a process grounded in thoughtful consideration, consistent collaboration and conversation, and most importantly, knowing our learners. We are excited for the opportunity to devote thoughtful and focused time to the development of our students' mathematical understanding and thinking as we continue to respond to the needs of our learners in meaningful and tangible ways.