Throughout this school year, we have had dedicated time at each staff meeting to think, learn, share and reflect about our school story.

We started our year with a staff survey to set our intentions for the year. We spent time at the end of this school year reflecting on what we accomplished and where to next.

This year, we focused on how we can support students in feeling connected to their learning.  Our hunch was students would feel more connected to their learning if they were provided with multiple entry points to share understanding and if we made explicit how this learning connected to the big ideas of our BC curriculum.

Here is what staff noticed and celebrated about what they tried in supporting students to feel connected to their learning:

Students felt more connected to learning when expectations were more visible, and I included more student choice.

I had success when I created lessons/projects where students had more choice in what they learn about and how they show their learning.

Student engagement increased when I created projects that were hands-on, connected Big Ideas to their learning and used lots of modalities for learning.

Here is what some staff noticed regarding the connection to learning and social emotional well-being:

I saw students with increased confidence due to their improving literacy skills and their behavior became much more positive, in class, as a result.

To some extent, guiding their learning and helping them make connections improved their social emotional well-being.

While there seems to be many other external factors impacting students’ lives and social emotional learning, I have noticed a difference in students’ excitement for learning and learning success.

Through our interviews with both staff and students, we have noticed improvements in student social emotional well-being. We also noticed that students have a growing repertoire of language they can use to speak about their own learning.  We want to continue to strengthen students’ connection to their learning and their ability to talk about next steps for their learning.

Our Next Steps:

• Continue to provide opportunities for collaboration so staff can work together to plan using B.C. Curriculum big ideas and how to provide multiple entry points for all students.  We have applied to be part of the district elementary collaboration project.
• Use part of our professional development days to explore and use the rich resources our district has available to us, Pillars of Literacy and Foundations of Numeracy.
• As a community, that we all learn about resiliency and what resiliency looks like in our learning.