William Watson Elementary

Each and every day, our learners are presented with opportunities to focus on thinking, reading, writing, and communicating in all curricular areas to allow our learners to build strong literacy foundations that are fundamental for students’ participation in today’s world.

Our students’ learning goals include:

-Understanding, interpreting and reading strategically with comprehension

-Communicating their understandings and learning through writing with clarity

Our learners across all grades experience 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 two cohorts for each goal area.

In all areas of learning, students read.  They read about art, music, sports, culture, history, geography, and life sciences.  Reading connects them to the world and introduces them to new learning.  Reading allows for a deeper understanding of the world.  Through examining texts, letters and words the act of reading is a significant part of development in making sense of the world, fitting in to the world and making social and emotional connections to the world.  Reading both fiction and non-fiction is an important part of this process. 

Our learners wrote and engaged in communication practices that are specific to different areas of learning.  Students wrote short personal impromptu expositions, poems, plays, non-fiction essays, narratives, responses to their learning and understanding, reflections, and self assessments.  They documents observations and findings.

Evidence of our students’ learning demonstrates that our literacy focus is positively impacting our learners.  Teachers reported that students demonstrated growth in relation to our literacy goals using PM Benchmark, Fountas and Pinnel, and the BC Provincial Proficiency Scale, 

-Reading strategically with comprehension

-Writing and Communicating with clarity

Reading strategically with comprehension

To help them make sense of what they read, our learners ask open-ended questions, describe their thinking, and develop conclusions using a variety of reading strategies.  Students continued to make gains in this area.  

92% of students are now proficient in their ability to comprehend text and use strategies to help them build deeper levels of understanding – compared to 62% who demonstrated proficiency earlier in the year.  

An early primary teacher reflected on one particular student, "This student came into the class with a good idea of books.  She took a little while to warm up to the idea of independent reading and as her reading strategies developed she started to love reading.  I want the children to love reading; it opens up the world to them.  When a student starts to ask for more difficult books I know they feel proud of their accomplishments, and most importantly, I know they are developing a love of books."

Moving forward with Reading for Comprehension

Based on evidence of students’ progress in relation to our learning goals, our next steps will include:

-continuing to increase opportunities for students to regularly use reading strategies and thinking routines that guide their thought processes and support them in developing deeper understandings of text (print, visual, and digital)

-continuing to implement reading strategies to allow learners to become well rounded readers.

Communicating their understandings and learning through writing with clarity

To help learners communicate their understandings and learning through writing with clarity it is expected that learners will write clear focused personal writing for a range of purposes and audience that demonstrates connections to personal experiences, ideas and opinions. Students continued to make gains in this area.

63% of students are now proficient in their ability to organize their thoughts prior to writing, use connecting words in their text, provide a clear beginning middle and end to their personal writing - compared to 42% who demonstrated proficiency earlier in the year.

An intermediate teacher commented that, "Writing is important and impacts opportunities later in life with writing grants, applications, reports....  Our students need to learn that writing can and should be fun.  Language, both oral and written provides opportunities to play with words and develop vocabulary.  Writing allows students to express their critical and creative thinking.  When teachers work from a strength based focus through conferencing with students about their writing students are able to be more reflective about their own writing and this develops a love of writing as students see their own strengths within their writing."

Moving forward with Communicating their understandings and learning through writing with clarity

Based on evidence of  students’ progress in relation to our learning goals, our next steps will include:

-continuing to increase student opportunities for writing with purpose

-continuing to implement writing strategies that break down the writing process

-exploring and digging deeper into the aspects of the writing process

Instructional strategies we implement will build on students’ social, academic and athletic successes by expanding opportunities to work collaboratively in groups and continue to engage in hands-on activities that are specifically aimed at developing students’ reading, writing, and communication skills