Priority Areas of Focus
Literacy & Numeracy Focus
Sustainable professional development in both literacy and numeracy continues to be an area of focus at École Edwards. Our rapid growth, coupled with new staff each year has presented challenges in sustaining the momentum and increasing teacher capacity. In order to address these challenges we have invested in staffing 2.0 FTE learning coaches for both our English and French Immersion programs. Our coaches serve as a source of job-embedded professional learning. They work alongside classroom teachers, learning from one another and challenging assumptions in order to better support our students. In addition to aligning our human resources with the jurisdictional goals of literacy and numeracy, we will have time for grade level professional learning facilitated by in-school experts, admin or third parties. The contents of this learning will be housed in a digital repository for teachers to review at any time. A school-wide literacy handbook will also be completed in 2016. The handbook will detail our beliefs around effective instruction and how we go about ensuring that every student has the opportunity to succeed.
Environmental Stewardship
In order to be eco-responsible citizens, we must engage our leaders with the environment. This means learning happens outside so we can immerse ourselves in the outdoor world. In order to empower our leaders to want to make a difference in our world, they need first hand experience outside. Outdoor education will help foster this love for the environment. Regularly connecting with the environment, whether it be utilizing our school grounds as outdoor classroom space, or using the broader community to engage in eco-walks, our learners will focus on what more can be done to show that we are leaders of our environment.
Revisiting our recycling program will bring greater awareness to what we can do individually and as a full community to preserve and sustain our environment. This will include a more intentional focus on reducing our waste (less garbage output), recycling where we can (paper, plastics, tins) and of course reusing wherever possible. Growing our own food by using the hydroponics grower will also help our learners deepen their understanding for sustainable food growth.
We will track the completed, environment activities and initiatives with the goal of becoming and Earth School through the SEEDS foundation (a green school initiative to provide environment, energy education within schools), which means we will complete 1000 eco-projects.
Leadership
As we embark on year 6 of the Leader in Me, we will explore the 8th habit of finding your voice. Equipping our learners with the tools to be leaders for life has been our focus. The next step is empowering them to clearly articulate who they are as a leader and learner. We will begin this journey with staff reading the book “The 8th Habit” and then synergizing to develop a plan for bringing it to life within our school. Involving our parent community in this journey will be important with our focus of course being on the students.
The focus on finding our voice will also help us in our journey to reach Lighthouse Milestone. This milestone will be an opportunity and affirmation to our school of who we are as leaders within our full community.
Assessment
“Portfolios provide a comprehensive picture of a student’s accomplishments in a way that cannot be captured by tests alone.” ~ Portfolios: More than just a file folder, p.2
As teaching and learning have changed in the 21st Century, so too has assessment. No longer do we rely solely on tests to show what students know and are able to do and, as such, we need to look for alternative ways to share assessment data with our parent community. To do so, we will explore the use of Google Drive as a way for our students to create digital portfolios. Students will learn to select, organize and reflect on artifacts in their portfolios and, in turn, will not only take ownership for their learning but become advocates for themselves as learners. These portfolios will also serve as a tool to reflect the leading that each child does in their daily life so we can celebrate each individual as a learner and leader.
