I. General Information
School Name: Beach Grove Elementary
School District: SD#37 Delta
Inquiry Team Members:
Angela Vaughan, avaughan@deltaschools.ca
Josie Zahn, jzahn@deltaschools.ca
Jody Billingsley, jbillingsley@deltaschools.ca
Inquiry Team Contact Email: avaughan@deltaschools.ca
II. Inquiry Project Information
Type of Inquiry: NOIIE Case Study
Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Primary (K-3), Intermediate (4-7)
Curricular Areas Addressed: Language Arts – Writing
Focus Addressed: Core competencies (for example, critical thinking, communication, problem solving), Differentiated instruction, Formative assessment, Growth mindset, Inclusion and inclusive instructional strategies
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? After analyzing collected writing data for specific areas that need support, will targeting specific lessons to those areas improve writing?
III. Spirals of Inquiry Details
Scanning: This is our third year of collecting data regarding our students as writers. We continued to look at resources that we purchased this year. Last year we focused on one or two children in our class, this year we looked at the whole class and determined the needs in order to continue to target specific skills. We noticed that teachers wanted to focus on the whole class.
Focus: After analyzing collected writing data for specific areas that need support, will targeting specific lessons to those areas improve writing?
Hunch: In our third year, we are wondering if teachers have shifted their writing instruction and if students are making progress through targeted instruction. Does providing teachers time to collaborate and talk about students as writers help teachers to be flexible in writing instruction, which in turn would help their students to progress as writers?
New Professional Learning: The resources we used that were helpful were The Writing Revolution; Adrienne Gear’s Books: Powerful Poetry, Powerful Understanding and Powerful Writing Structures; graphic organizers; UFLI and decodable passages.
Taking Action: We created a school wide scope and sequence which helped teachers see the progression and overlap of skills from grade to grade. We did a school-wide write in both the fall and the spring to analyze the results. Teachers were provided with collaboration time to look at writing across their grade and plan lessons targeting the needs of their class.
Checking: By doing a fall and spring school-wide write, we were able to have a base line and see the progress over the year. We used the performance standards to support our data. By doing targeted lessons, students were able to progress in their writing.
Reflections/Advice: We learned that change takes patience and time. This is our third year into our inquiry in writing and we are noticing that students are progressing in their writing as we continue to make it a focus. We had to be flexible due to staffing shortages, however we attempted to continue supporting collaboration among teachers in order to keep the dialogue open about our students as writers.