Crystal View Elementary SD#62 Sooke

School Name: Crystal View Elementary

School District: SD#62 Sooke

Inquiry Team Members: Bronwyn Bright- bbright@sd62.bc.ca
Cathy Morrison-cmorrison@sd62.bc.ca
Tammy Bennett- tbennett@sd62.bc.ca
Sheila Robinson- srobinson@sd62.bc.ca
Karen Segato- ksegato@sd62.bc.ca
Cathy March- cmarch@sd62.bc.ca
George Hamilton-ghamilton@sd62.bc.ca
Carole Mackenzie- cmackenzie@sd62.bc.ca
Theresa Booth- tbooth@sd62.bc.ca
Heather Finlay- hfinlay@sd62.bc.ca
Sarah Laughton- slaughton@sd62.bc.ca
Kelsey Skelton- kskelton@sd62.bc.ca
Christy Chia- cchia@sd62.bc.ca
Jennifer Fiorin- jfiorin@sd62.bc.ca
Karen DeCicco- kdecicco@sd62.bc.ca
Dana Fraser- dfraser@sd62.bc.ca
Meghan Murphy- mmurphy@sd62.bc.ca

Inquiry Team Contact Email: kdecicco@sd62.bc.ca

Type of Inquiry: NOIIE

Focus Addressed: The focus of the inquiry was on developing increased teacher attention to supporting student voice in writing. Teachers viewed a wide continuum of student writing samples using the ministry performance standards, in order to take on a more holistic approach to writing instruction and assessment.

Inquiry Story:

1. Complete school wide write.
2. Collaboratively examined and discussed the writing continuum – specifically the strengths and next steps for instruction.
3. After developing a common understanding of writing assessment, we went into smaller grade groups and assessed the school wide writes according to the ministry performance standards.
4. We then returned to our classes and made a plan for next steps of instruction.
5. After a time of teaching and learning specific to the next steps, we came back together as a school and shared what we had learned from our students and from our teaching experience.
6. We came to a few important conclusions, one being that with intentional explicit instruction of a specific writing skill, we could see improvement.
7. We learned that prior to this experience, we had a narrow focus of assessment that was not looking at the breadth of the child’s writing development. We learned to expand our instruction to include increased scaffolding/focus on developing specific writing skills.
8. Unfortunately, our inquiry was stopped short due to COVID-19. We did not have the opportunity to fully explore developing student voice in writing. We look forward to continuing the inquiry focus in the coming school year.

Leave a Reply