I. General Information
School Name: Garibaldi Highlands Elementary
School District: SD#48 Sea to Sky
Inquiry Team Members: Katrina Lowe (klowe@sd48.bc.ca), Kimberly Sinclair (kimberley.macneil@ubc.ca)
Inquiry Team Contact Email: katrinamarielowe@gmail.com
II. Inquiry Project Information
Type of Inquiry: SRL Case Study
Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Primary (K-3), Intermediate (4-7)
Curricular Areas Addressed: Language Arts – Literacy, Language Arts – Oral Language, Language Arts – Writing
Focus Addressed: Literacy, Core competencies (for example, critical thinking, communication, problem solving), Formative assessment, Self-regulation
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? My focus for the year was using staff meeting time to walk teachers through inquiry to model Self Regulated Learning and inquiry so that they could feel supported and prepared in using these same strategies with their students.
III. Spirals of Inquiry Details
Scanning: In the scanning process we asked the students the four questions that matter. What are you learning, how is it going, and where to next. I also had staff fill out a reflective tool after this scan asking the questions… What was your plan for scanning in your classroom(s)? What were you looking for? What happened? What did you see, notice, or hear? What did you think and feel about what you observed? What did you learn? What’s next? What are your questions now? What did you need to learn more about and what might you try next? We used the responses from these two tools as well as all of our quantitative data (the FSA, the OurSCHOOL survey, the student learning survey, the MDI, EDI, and CHEQ) to inform our next steps.
Focus: In the focusing stage, the staff used the consequence tables from Brooke Moore’s book and read the article “Spiral of Inquiry and Decision Maker Moves: A Rigorous Blend” to decide, using our collected data, what focus would give the biggest bang for our buck. We collectively decided to focus on using self-regulated learning strategies with our students to develop the competency of community and the literacy skills.
Hunch: If students are not seeing themselves as active participants in their learning, and as a result are not taking ownership of it, then we must recognize that the system has been unintentionally—but effectively—designed to produce this outcome. By shifting our focus toward Self-Regulated Learning, we begin to address this issue with purpose and intention, fostering environments where students can truly engage with and take responsibility for their own learning journey.
New Professional Learning: We had Kimberly Sinclair come to our school and deliver two workshops to teachers during ProD days on Self-Regulated Learning. The first session focused on what is self-regulated learning and its connection to social-emotional learning and the second focused on designing learning. Kimberly was available for the afternoon of the second workshop to work with others who wanted to begin designing learning for their students. As a whole team we have read the Spirals of Inquiry Playbook, and have worked collaboratively on each step of the spiral in a way that everyone has had the opportunity not only to contribute but also to experience inquiry. As a team we have read the article “Spiral of Inquiry and Decision Maker Moves: A Rigorous Blend” by Brook Moore, as well as several articles by Helen Timperly, Leyton Schnellert, Deb Butler, and Kimberly Sinclair.
Taking Action: Kimberly came again in the spring twice to collaborate with small teams of teachers who wanted to develop some SRL in their classrooms. We have also decided to implement PBIS in our school, based on the need to develop community. We have come up with our four values… Persistence, Accountability, Community, and Kindness. We have changed our school mascot to the T’Kaya (the wolf), which the students chose and stands for community and togetherness. We worked together with a local Squamish Nation artist named Siobhan Joseph to create our new T’Kaya. We held a traditional blanketing and honouring ceremony to officially adopt the T’Kaya and thank those who have helped us on this journey towards strengthening our community, and we (the entire school) have begun to learn the T’Kaya song and dance.
Checking: We plan on asking the students the four questions that matter again in the fall. The teachers can all name the stages of the spiral of inquiry and what our school learning plan is. Everyone can identify our school values. Everyone can name our school mascot and describe how the wolf represents us.
Reflections/Advice: Something I have learned from this inquiry is that sometimes it’s hard to teach a large group of educators about the power of inquiry. The book leading through the Spirals of Inquiry helped me immensely in this project, as well as Helen Timperly’s work on collaborative communities.