I. General Information
School Name: Brechin Elementary
School District: SD#68 Nanaimo-Ladysmith
Inquiry Team Members: Olga Poyner (olga.poyner@sd68.bc.ca), Wendy Robertson (wendy.robertson@sd68.bc.ca), Lisa Brett (lisa.brett@sd68.bc.ca), Tara McConnie (tara.mcconnie@sd68.bc.ca), Amy Halliday (amy.halliday@sd68.bc.ca), Meghan Epps (meghan.epps@sd68.bc.ca), Sophie Scobie (sophie.scobie@sd68.bc.ca), Christina Smith (christina.smith@sd68.bc.ca), Oksana Legebokoff (oksana.legebokoff@sd68.bc.ca), Brianne Anderson (brianne.anderson@sd68.bc.ca), Katie Bernaquez (katie.bernaquez@sd68.bc.ca), DJ Thompson (dj.thompson@sd68.bc.ca), Courtney Hill (courtney.hill@sd68.bc.ca)
Inquiry Team Contact Email: olga.poyner@sd68.bc.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 – Literacy, Mathematics / Numeracy
Focus Addressed: Social and emotional learning
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? To find ways we can provide our students with support in the areas in which our students are “under-resourced” in (according to Ruby Payne’s Under Resourced Learners): Relationships/Role-Models and Mental (Math and Literacy).
III. Spirals of Inquiry Details
You can view a presentation of our inquiry HERE.
Scanning: At the beginning of the year, our team did a scan of our own practices and a scan of our students. We interviewed the majority of our students and all but four could not name any adult that believed they would be successful. Using Ruby Payne’s book “Under-Resourced Learners” and the First People’s Principles of Learning that “Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place)” we decided that, as a school, many of our students needed to be resourced in Relationships/Role Models (one of nine areas Payne writes about) before fully reaping the benefits of being resourced in all the other areas. When we asked students about who their role-models were, many of them did not know the meaning of ‘role-model’ or could not name a role-model.
Focus: Rather than viewing our students through a poverty-lens, we decided to inquire on which of the 9 areas our students are ‘under-resourced’ as referenced in Ruby Payne’s “Under-Resourced Learners” (Financial, Language, Emotional, Mental, Spiritual, Physical, Support Systems, Relationships/Role Models, Knowledge of Hidden Rules) and how we can provide those students with support to give them those resources. Also, how can we use the strengths and resources that they DO come to school with to help these students feel seen, confident and successful?
Hunch: Our hunch is that many of our students lacked the role-models and guidance at home that could teach them about positive relationships. At school, especially in the older grades, there isn’t always time set aside to teach kids about how to create positive relationships and talk about role-models. In terms of “Mental” which encompasses Math and Literacy, our hunch is that teachers face so many challenges with management in the classroom that interfere with instruction and learning and that they don’t always have the resources, time and capacity to teach what is necessary.
New Professional Learning: We used Ruby Payne’s, A Framework for Understanding Poverty: A Cognitive Approach as an initial guide to help us understand our unconscious privilege and bias. But we found her next book, Under-Resourced Learners: 8 Strategies to Boost Student Achievement more useful for allowing teachers to tailor their inquiry focus based on the needs of their students (i.e. where their students are most under-resourced). We used three school-based professional development days and met once a month to talk about planning, observations and processes.
Taking Action: Teachers completed the questionnaires in the area which they felt their student’s were most under-resourced in: Financial, Language, Emotional, Mental, Spiritual, Physical, Support Systems, Relationships/Role Models, Knowledge of Hidden Rules.
From this data, we decided that as a school we would start by exploring Mental and Relationships/Role Models. This prompted us to do the relationship survey (see next slide) with our students and focus on this in our February School-Based Pro-D.
Based off the results of the relationship survey and discussions, we found that students needed help with:
• Understanding how to make positive friendships
• Learning the vocabulary for traits of positive friendships
• How to give and accept compliments
We implemented the following ideas as a whole school to facilitate our focus:
• Kindness Kotcha’s- a kindness ‘chit’ where if teachers see a student doing something kind or positive, they get a kotcha. This went into a basket in the office and then a few of them got read out loud during announcements on Friday. They were also displayed on a bulletin board.
• Celebration of Learning in May – we also offered a Community Closet with free clothes, diapers, toiletries, shoes and books donated by staff and other organizations in the gym. Students in Fine Arts decorated paper bags that families could fill up with the donated items. We also showed a slideshow of students from the past few months.
The other area of focus was Mental which includes literacy and math. We noticed that our students were under-resourced in numeracy skills and teachers did not feel they had the resources to support their students. We decided to focus our May School-Based Pro-D on numeracy. We invited Tannis Calder, District Coordinator and a facilitator for the BC Association of Math Teachers. She challenged teachers’ different ways of knowing and doing math through differentiated games and instruction. We also worked in primary and intermediate teams on developing a Brechin numeracy scope and sequence for each grade using the new Math Indicators of Proficiency: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGEBNECDVw/Kbvn0qiPhRpojOnOK8qeUg/view?utm_content=DAGEBNECDVw&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=editor
We also did an inventory of numeracy materials and noticed that many classrooms were under-resourced in some of the basic tools such as 10-sided dice, playing cards, plastic slip covers for games, chips and counters. We used the inquiry funds to purchase class sets of these basic materials.
As we are a focus school and literacy is always top of mind, primary teachers piloted UFLI Foundations (University of Florida Institute) for teaching reading and spelling. We purchased materials to create the blending boards, more decodable books and fun literacy games that followed and supported the UFLI scope and sequence: alphabet knowledge, CVC words, vowel teams, heart words, etc.
Checking: Relationships: Community and relationship building has been and continues to be a primary focus for all staff in our school. We continue to explicitly model, teach and acknowledge positive traits and actions. It was difficult to measure progress in our relationship survey but it was helpful to have more of a focus and to learn about some of our students across the grades.
Mental: In terms of the numeracy subset, we learned that many of our students lacked math fluency and number sense. The discussions regarding the numeracy scope and sequence allowed us to find out more about our expectations and standards.
In terms of literacy, we found that UFLI gave us the structure to ensure that we were teaching the necessary skills to help students with reading and spelling and that we were teaching to the students’ abilities. We found that students’ phonics skills improved but that we still needed to supplement with appropriate fluency activities and literacy games that kept the students motivated and engaged.
Reflections/Advice: The term ‘under-resourced’ along with its definitions, helped us hone in on what was needed for our students. It also gave us a platform and a common language for talking about the many categories in which our students were under-resourced in. We also discovered that the financial constraints that are inherent in the public school system, particularly in an inner-city school, made it more challenging to lift students out of the under-resourced categories. The money from this PLG did help alleviate some of this, but we felt it should not have been this way. Here is an example of what we ran into: Art Supplies: Every year, around $500 is budgeted for art supplies such as paints, tissue paper and clay. When it came time to purchase these in May, we discovered that the funds were no longer available and that they had to be used for another area of the school budget. We decided we would offer some of our PLG money towards this as this was a prime example of how our students are under-resourced financially.