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École Peter Greer Elementary
Soaring for Excellence
Our Inquiry Process

September 2022

Staff gathered on the first day of school in September 2022 to review the focus areas we had established in the previous year. It was clearly evident that most staff felt we had more work to do in meeting our objectives for the five established priorities. They are:

Priority # 1  Continued reading success in grades 1-5. 

Priority # 2  Excitement for and with learning. 

Priority # 3  Student leadership and students helping each other. 

Priority # 4  Connections amongst staff, students, and parents.  

Priority # 5  Fun and laughter. 

Actions:

Priority 1 - Reading

We will continue our focus on core literacy skills in order to support the development of the core competencies.   We will do this using a Response to Intervention (RTI) model to support guided reading in every primary classroom.  Our team meets bi-weekly and collaboratively with classroom teachers, and district-based support staff to help facilitate informal discussions about student learning as well as more formal class reviews in October and again at the end of February.   We feel this approach/structure literally changed life trajectories for children and helped build collective efficacy within the school as classroom teachers benefit from the various sources of expertise on the team.  We also use this model/structure to determine support and resource allocations. 

Teachers in Grades 1-5 assess each student's reading level in October using the PM Reading Assessment for English and GB Plus for French.  Teachers enter this data into the Ed Plan Insight program and class summaries of this data is used by the SBT to guide our discussions about 'what is going on for our learners.'  The target for Tier 3 students (our most vulnerable) is to have them read one on one with an adult at school at least 7 times per week.  In order for this to happen, teachers, with support of the SB/RTI Team help them implement structures (i.e., Daily 5) to allow them to provide guided reading in every primary classroom. 

We want to express our gratitude to our teachers and School Based Team. Classroom teachers are constantly reading with their student, and we feel so excited when we walk from class to class and see small group instruction happening everywhere - this is how we give kids the next steps to their learning. And all support team members (basically everybody who is not a classroom teacher), we see reading with kids on a regular basis - this helps classroom teachers get to the “7 hits per week” with their tier 3 kids. This is the work that changes life trajectories and helps students reach their full learning potential and fulfill their passions with dignity.

    Priorities 2 – 5:

Students will acquire the tools to recognize and regulate their emotions, show empathy for others, show kindness to others, and establish and maintain relationships with others to support these goals.  We have a SEL Team that meets monthly to work on this priority.

 We will work alongside teachers to build structures and strategies whereby Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is integrated into instruction and daily practices. We will co-plan, co-teach, and co-assess self-regulation lessons, create resources, and explicitly teach SEL skills such as self-management, self-awareness, social awareness, strong decision-making, and positive relationship building.​

September 2021

At our first staff meeting this year, and after living with the pandemic for almost two years, all staff reflected on the theme of 'Hope.'  Teachers were asked to reposnd to the question, "What do we hope for this year?"  We collected the responses and then aligned them with the CASEL school-wide indicators​ for looking after the social-emotional needs of our learners and the lead leaners in our school (the teachers, and support staff).

Click here to view staff responses.

Click here​ to view our school goals for this year. ​

November 2020

At a staff meeting, teachers reflected on their instructional practices using the  framework of the Four Food Chiefs story.  Here is what they had to say: Teacher Scanning - Four Food Chiefs Responses.docx.pdf

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September 2020

For the second year in a row, our teachers, support staff, and Indigenous Advocates continue to meet to further our inquiry around re-imagining the educational experience for our learners, in particular in the area of Land Based Literacy.  Land-based learning where students routinely go outside represents a potential high-leverage  pedagogy that will affect student achievement, social-emotional and physical well-being, and understandings of environmental stewardship.  We continue to focus on exploring  how teachers can build expertise around First Peoples' Principles of Learning and apply them using  a land-based learning approach in a BC elementary school.   In a post-COVID-19 environment, greater  outdoor learning might be a more manageable and more appealing means of instruction for teachers to  consider. 

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Using the NOIIE (Networks of Inquiry and Indigenous Education), Spirals of Inquiry framework, we are:

  • using our October 2020 Implementation Day to engage with Wild Schools BC in a site-based day of learning around Land Based Literacy through the lens of First People's Principles of Learning.
  • taking e action by co-planning, co-teaching and co-assessing high quality learning tasks and opportunities
  • checking to see how much of a difference these new actions are making to learners

Update: September 2019

At our year-end Staff Meeting, we came together to discuss where we were at with regards to our School Goals.   We noticed that we were at a bit of a crossroads in terms of our school focus, especially since the full implementation of the redesigned curriculum. Our discussion centered on the following questions?

Do our current goals or 'areas of focus' as identified in the last 4-5 years, actually reflect the  'action' or 'work' that we are currently engaging in both in classrooms and as a school?

 We also agreed that the 'literacy' and 'numeracy' pieces are critically important and in many ways, the reason schools exists. The question is, instead of literacy and numeracy being identified as 'goals,' should we not simply assume they underscore all the work we are doing? Thoughts?

It is evident that we are still focused on the social-emotional piece.  Social-Emotional Learning continues to be a top priority in all feedback we receive from staff, parents and students.  The social emotional learning journey began in September 2016, when staff participated in and were trained in Play is the Way activities. Play is the Way is a program designed to support and develop social emotional learning.

 As a result of our discussions, we identified our goals for 2019-2021.  Click here to view.

Community Engagement

Part of the inquiry process in schools is making use of community partnerships.  Building connections with our community helps draw in viewpoints and expert feedback that in turn helps build the 'adaptive expertise' when co-planning activities and initiatives that strive to build deeper learning and learner agency for our students.   

We have partnered with Plant a Seed Foundation, Wild Schools BC, the BC Construction Association, the local Senior Care Home,  TD, Tolko, HCTF, Kel Lake Greenhouses, West Coast Seeds, Southern Interior Construction Association, and Okanagan College's Women in Trades Program to support inquiry based learning, which has been thriving in our Intermediate Learning Community.  

In September 2019, one of our classrooms started an inquiry project with the District of Lake Country Fire Inspector.

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Structures Supporting Inquiry

Many teachers are working with the Instructional Leadership Team and last year as well as this coming year, the Collaborative Learning Services consultants, as well as teams of teachers and administrators from other schools across the district who have learning communities.  Collectively we know this collaboration around inquiry is impacting the positive culture of our school.  We often wonder if there are other ways to 'measure' our success in the core competencies.  For example, how can we find a way to measure what we are hoping to achieve - increased student agency, the ultimate goal of what our work these days is focusing on?

The biggest impact accelerating inquiry in our school has been implementing structures and frameworks that allows teacher to co-plan, co-teach, and co-assess as this allows for high levels of adaptive expertise which ultimately leads to higher quality learning tasks and student engagement (i.e. school-wide Maker Day, Expo of Awesome, Showcase of Learning etc.).  These school-wide events helped teachers develop a growth mindset around inquiry.