School Name: Arrow Heights Elementary, Begbie View Elementary, Revelstoke Secondary
School District: SD#19 Revelstoke
Inquiry Team Members:Allison Just ajust@sd19.bc.ca
Lori Snider lsnider@sd19.bc.ca
Meghan Simpson msimpson@sd19.bc.ca
Inquiry Team Contact Email: ajust@sd19.bc.ca
Type of Inquiry: NOII (focus on core competencies, OECD learning principles, etc.)
Grade Levels: Primary (K-3), Intermediate (4-7), Secondary (8-12)
Curricular Area(s): Other: English Language Learners
Focus Addressed: Community-based learning, Inclusion and inclusive insructional strategies
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? What can we do to improve student support, connections and engagement with our ELL students?
Scanning: School District 19 is much smaller than most districts in BC. As a result, many ELL students were the only ones from their cultures represented in our schools. We wondered what would would happen if we brought them together – would there be more connection to their school and community if they found similar cultures and made new connections that shared and celebrated their own cultures? We wondered what it would be like for these learners if we looked for better ways to support the connections within our community.
Focus: We were hoping to give students more of a voice in their learning. We also wanted to provide opportunities for students to connect with each other, and in some cases, to making family connections within Revelstoke. We also wanted our actions to provide opportunities to share and celebrate ELL students’ individual culture with the school population.
Hunch: We are such a small district with small school populations. We were concerned that we were not doing all that we could to provide those connections for our students, expecially ones who have only just moved to town. We wanted to ensure:
– a sense of pride in their own culture.
– opportunities to connect with each other and other families with the same culture.
– a value in grouping students together in order to learn from each other.
New Professional Learning: We joined the Small District ELL Planning group. Each session provided us with a structure for conversation and many new resource ideas were shared.
We are three teachers from three different school who did not know each other very well before this inquiry. The release time that the inquiry provided gave us a chance to connect with each other and share our expereinces with teaching ELL in Revelstoke.
Taking Action: 1. We met two times for district inquiry planning/collaboration time.
2. We were part of a Small District Inquiry Planning. There were 4 on-line sessions.
3. We provided opportunities for ELL students to connect, share and collaborate with each other.
4. We examined and developed a new Annual Instruction Plan (AIP) to improve consistency and communication amongst students, district and staff personnel, and parents in our district.
5. We previewed and discussed current forms of assessment and resources. We developed a collaborative online document so it can be shared.
Checking: We had a year-end celebration with representation from all three schools where all ELL students were working together, reflecting on their experience, and participating in a follow-up activity.
We will continue to provide more group work with students across the district.
Reflections/Advice: Where are we going from here?
We want to cotinue to celebrate a culture within a classroom/school/district.
We want to continue to support district opportunities for connections among our ELL students.
We woudl like to see more ELL celebrations including all schools in the district.
We would like to create smaller, more frequent events between schools (For example: buddy reading, short leadership activity with students from the high school)
Lastly, we would like to Investigate the use of new online resources and apps in order to make better use of technology for our ELL students.