N
aramata
lementary
E
Principal: Todd Lindsay
3660 – 8th Street
General Delivery, Naramata, BC
V0H 1N0
Phone: (250) 770 7688
Fax:
(250) 496-5172
email: www.Naramataelementary.com
SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN (2014‐15) Naramata Context: Naramata Elementary School is situated in the village of Naramata along the eastern shore of the southern end of Okanagan Lake, about 15 Kilometres North from School District No. 67 (Okanagan Skaha) School Board Office in the City of Penticton. Naramata School presently employs one administrator, one administrative assistant, four teaching staff, two CEA’s and 70 students in three divisions. Although some of our parents work in agriculture in the fruit or wine industry, most of our parents work in nearby Penticton. Naramata, geographically, remains a distinct and unique community, with the school frequently being the focal point for the community. Our school community strives to maintain a safe, positive learning environment based on mutual respect and trust. It is a place where students feel a strong sense of belonging and are encouraged to develop and grow socially, emotionally, and academically. Our students achieve because they:  feel included and appreciated by peers and teachers,  are respected for their different abilities, cultures, gender, interests and dreams,  are actively involved in their own learning,  have positive expectations from others that they will succeed. We are also very proud of the strong connections between the school and the Naramata community and we must always remember the statement that “it takes a village to raise a child.” With this shared partnership between our students, staff, parents, and the community, the students of Naramata School are the ones who reap the benefits. The participation of all partners is critical to the operation of Naramata School and ultimately to the success of each of our students. Naramata School Improvement Plan 2014‐2015 INQUIRY QUESTION(S) Question 1: If we change the structure of our staff meeting to include reading and discussion the book, Catching Readers Before They Fall will teaching feel more confident supporting our struggling readers? Question 2: If teachers involved in Changing results for Young Readers work one on one with a child in their class will this child’s reading improve? Question 3: If our grade 4/5 class incorporates Random Acts of Kindness in class will we see an improvement in student empathy? RATIONALE: What evidence compelled us to ask this question? 
With our district moving towards a Response to Intervention model we as a staff decided to start to look at the Tier 1 area of this model. With Tier 1, the focus is on good classroom practices to support the majority of our students. Every year we feel we have students at the primary level who struggle with reading. As a staff, we wanted to explore new strategies to support these students. 
For the most part our students in this school do a great job around the social responsibility area. In past years staffs have explored a number of different programs to support students around social responsibility and character education. Programs such as Mind‐Up, WITS, RAK, Tribes, Social Detective and Leader in Me. The school has taken on different aspects of each of these programs however they have never been sustained for the duration of the school year to create a lasting school culture around social responsibility. Therefore students are often hearing many different approaches to solving problems. We know through research that having a common language used within the school can enhance student’s ability to solve peer conflicts independently. We would like to create a plan that will work for all teachers and create a school culture around social responsibility. Naramata School Improvement Plan 2014‐2015 ACTION PLAN STRUCTURES AND STRATEGIES: For all students and our most vulnerable learners. We will…  As a staff read Catching Readers Before They Fall by Pat Johnson and Katie Keier.  Three staff members will continue to attend Beyond Inclusion workshops and create dialog with other staff members during staff meetings.  Teachers involved in Changing Results for Young Readers will work with one student to explore new teaching strategies to support struggling readers. 
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Teachers involved in Changing Results for Young Readers will share their results and strategies with the whole staff during staff meeting sharing time. Change the structure of our staff meetings to only be about teacher learning. We will provide 45 minutes to read a chapter and additional time to discuss and reflect on our practice. Creating common language around teaching reading strategies for students who struggle with reading. This will fall them from year to year and when they work with our LAT or Special Ed Teacher. Teachers will work together to identify the social emotional aspect the staff would like to emphasis on from the different programs they have researched and experimented with over the last three years. As a staff create a yearlong plan to implement a social responsibility model for the whole school. ASSESSMENT PROCESS & TOOLS: What will we use to measure our success? 
With our goals around reading we are still in the exploring and learning phase of this goal. However, as teachers start to incorporate new reading strategies into their practice we hope to see an increase in the number of primary students who are reading at grade level using the provincial reading performance standards. We would also hope to see an upward trend with our FSA reading scores. 
We will measure success by having a school wide plan in place that will involve all classrooms. We will have learning events scheduled throughout the entire school year that will keep our social responsibility model alive in the school on a daily basis. We will have our grade 4/5 student leaders trained in peer conflict resolution and as well supporting the younger students with peer conflict. EVIDENCE KEY FINDINGS: What did we find out? 
We are still in the exploring and learning phase of our first two goals however, we have incorporated a number of different reading strategies over the course of our year‐long learning. Looking at our FSA results for reading you can start to see a trend of less students not yet meeting for grade 4. This is a positive trend that we hope to continue over the next couple of years. Naramata School Improvement Plan 2014‐2015 Naramata School FSA Historical Results: 2009‐10 (17)
EE ME NY
5
11 1
Reading
2010‐11 (6)(2 ex 2011‐12 (13)
EE ME NY
EE
ME
NY
1
0
3
1
9
3
2012‐13 (12)
EE ME NY
1
9
2
2013‐14 (14)
EE ME NY
1
11
2
2014‐15 (15)
EE ME NY
3
11 1
12
Naramata FSA Results 10
8
6
Reading
4
2
0
EE
ME
NY
2009‐10 (17)
EE
ME
NY
2010‐11 (6)(2 ex)
EE
ME
NY
2011‐12 (13)
EE
ME
NY
2012‐13 (12)
EE
ME
NY
2013‐14 (14)
EE
ME
NY
2014‐15 (15)
Grade 3 ‐ Performance Standards Results Stats will be added when this year’s results have been completed. We are still working on collating the last couple of year’s results. NARRATIVE: What successes and/or challenges are not reflected in the data? Our staff has made great gains this year in becoming a collaborative learning environment. Our staff meetings are now all about sharing and learning from each other as well as research. We have looked at our response to intervention for Tier 1 as a staff and are looking at how we can do things differently to support all learners with differentiated support. Through these talks we have come to recognize that we need some common language around our reading intervention prompts and that teachers working with the same student need to work together to create a common strategy for students who are struggling with reading. We also looked at what was best practice when doing running records while reading with students and how this assessment can really guide and direct the next steps for a struggling student. Another aspect that our staff is revisiting due to the new structure of staff meeting is looking our social responsibility model in our school and how we were all using different resources and language to teach the same attributes. This resulted in the entire staff collaborating on a yearlong plan to do some purposeful school wide learning each month on a new attribute. We still have some work to do around the plan and implementation but we are moving forward together which we hope will help reinforce the character qualities we chose as a staff. Naramata School Improvement Plan 2014‐2015 REFLECTION AND SUMMARY REFLECTIONS: What did we learn? How did it make a difference? Although we do not have empirical data yet I know through observations and anecdotal evidence that the teachers are more confident support our struggling readers. In turn I have seen an improvement in student reading level across the whole school. Our FSA marks are on the rise for reading as the number of students not yet meeting is in a declining pattern and I sense our grade 3 reading schools will be the same when those results are added. FUTURE PLANNING: Where do we go from here? We will continue to use our staff meeting time to make a commitment to being a learning team. This may take a different form next year and may not be a books study however it will be staff directed at the beginning of the school year. Naramata School Improvement Plan 2014‐2015