SD#74 Gold Trail – Networks of Inquiry and Indigenous Education

Gold Trail School District SD#74 Gold Trail

submissions — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 06:00:55 +0000

I. General Information

School Name: Gold Trail School District

School District: SD#74 Gold Trail

Inquiry Team Members: Brent Close bclose@sd74.bc.ca; Beth Bastedo bbastedo@sd74.bc.ca

Keri R.
Teri H.
Caitlin Q.
Dwayne D.
Rachelle R.

Inquiry Team Contact Email: astott@sd74.bc.ca

II. Inquiry Project Information

Type of Inquiry: Numeracy & Literacy Project

Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Primary (K-3), Intermediate (4-7), Secondary (8-12)

Curricular Areas Addressed: Mathematics / Numeracy

Focus Addressed: Numeracy

In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? If we build a team of Numeracy Leads that includes representation from all schools and supports their work as lead educators for numeracy at their sites, will we realize larger gains in maths instruction, understanding and efficacy?

III. Spirals of Inquiry Details

Scanning: In our scan, at the district level, we saw investment of time, resources and money that was not reaching intended results (shifts in practice, improvements in learning etc). We looked at students’ Satellite data (primarily report cards and FSA scores), the evidence of teacher practice, and the questions educators had about their maths instruction. With many options for professional learning offered by the district, we wondered if we narrowed our focus to things that matter most (literacy and numeracy) if we would see the things we were yet to see – intentional pedagogical shifts, improvement in attitudes toward math etc. Students in our district have experienced the “connectedness survey” for years; from that data, we know that, broadly speaking, our students do feel that they belong. The stretch is to move into instructional shifts that will improve learning.

Focus: Through numeracy leads, we hope that we will build teacher capacity in their own maths instruction AND in their confidence to lead adult learning in their buildings. If we bring in an expert who responds to the needs of this Lead group, will we move the needle.

Hunch: We need outside experts who listen to the needs of our Lead group. We need scaffolding. We need genuine networking and time for sharing.

We are too siloed, our professional learning is not attended by a core group regularly enough (in the past) and we feel scattered.

We are not providing professional learning through the lens of developing teacher leaders.

New Professional Learning: Staying laser focussed on Carole Fullerton’s expertise, her resources and the Coast Mountain Numeracy Assessment helped to have a professional learning focus.

Numeracy Leads then used their own teacher leadership skills (background knowledge of lesson study, professional presentation skills for staff meetings, gamifying adult learning) to advance their staff understanding of the concepts and competencies Carole was sharing and the Coast Mountain Numeracy Assessment was intended to measure.

Taking Action: Brent Close and his team at DSCS is the sample group that highlights what is possible when teacher efficacy is central to decision making, school leadership supports but, otherwise, stays out of the way, and district leadership swoops in to fill in gaps including purchasing snacks, providing feedback and suggestions, note-taking and making suggestions for managing debrief meetings.

The action was to plan internal coverage of classes to creatively release ALL teachers on maths k-12 to observe a co-planned lesson in action, observe the lesson design in action and then gather afterward to discuss the observations and what impact the lesson now has on the practice and planning. It also afforded the chance for Maths teachers to support each others’ own development as maths teachers – developing stronger relationships focused on pedagogy and allowed the Numeracy Lead an authentic opportunity to see where areas of strength building might be necessary.

Checking: There was massive growth from our first Lesson Study to our last at DSCS. What was less than successful during the first Lesson Study became a well-oiled machine by the end. With increased vulnerability over the past year, teachers began to become more confident in asking questions of each other and in uncovering their own competency concerns within their classroom. With extra eyes in the class, the other maths teachers were able to see what design strengths were obvious for different aged children and all developed a greater appreciation of the work each does at their own grade level or in their own cohort.

We are not yet satisfied and will continue with Lesson Study in the 25/26 school year with a focus on continuing to improve our math competence, using Carole Fullerton’s resources, intentional use of manipulatives and committing to improvement over time, putting the student at the centre of what we do.

Reflections/Advice: As for the numeracy leads as a structure in the district, it remains challenging as TTOC release can be hard and we are asking teachers to commit to this role with no remuneration and limited recognition. It does, however, provide teachers with an opportunity to take on a leadership role within the district and in their schools and this can be a helpful step for those who may want to enter into a formal leadership role in the future.

George M. Murray Elementary SD#74 Gold Trail

submissions — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 04:00:03 +0000

I. General Information

School Name: George M. Murray Elementary

School District: SD#74 Gold Trail

Inquiry Team Members: Jen Eddie: jeddie@sd74.bc.ca

Inquiry Team Contact Email: jeddie@sd74.bc.ca

II. Inquiry Project Information

Type of Inquiry: SRL Case Study

Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Intermediate (4-7)

Focus Addressed: Self-regulation

In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? To use outdoor experiences to impact a regulated classroom community.

III. Spirals of Inquiry Details

Scanning: I interviewed students as a part of our learning exhibition, and also talked to the adults that the students toured through the exhibition. I don’t think I did any full ‘tours’ of our semesters learning, as I had 5 kids stay late and do a full two hour shift. They explained the entire process and answered all questions adults had for them.

Because the exhibition is an oral language activity – where students tell people about their learning – I felt confident that they connected strongly with what we had learned. I always want kids to be PROUD of what they achieve in a year, and exhibition shows a beautiful product and an authentic process underneath it. As they showed people the ride through video of their bike trail and then their trail posters with a semester’s worth of learning on it, I felt very reflective myself. They could speak to their own learning, but also the learning of others.

If I think about the triangle of learning, everyone had a beautiful artifact and were observed learning throughout the term. Some students were able to use their voices to share their learning with strangers/family and some felt less sure. I hope to empower more students to use their voices to share their learning. Having community partners from our local bike club, search and rescue, and the naturalist society, provided a scaffold for students who felt less sure of speaking to share with people they already had a relationship with.

Focus: This was the most dysregulated group I’ve ever taught. I felt I needed massive buy-in from them, so I engaged them in less ‘bubble wrapped’ school and spent a lot of time outside. I wanted them to feel what they were learning had value to our wider community and that there was actual responsibility involved.

Hunch: I think having community partners, using real tools, and creating something our entire community was excited about (bikers, hikers and walkers all commented on the sign hung in the forest) helped them to look back on their year and feel pride. The boundaries placed upon them had purpose and real-life applications.

New Professional Learning: I accessed a lot of community sources in the way of organizations – the naturalist society, search and rescue, and the invasive species society. I used a project-based learning template to guide my learning process and inquiry work by Trevor Mackenzie to provide a learning target for me.

Taking Action: I would say boundaries and co-designing an outdoor rubric with the kids was very pivotal. The rubric was co-designed with students and involved three areas: guardianship of the land, engaged learning, and safety. They practiced this between weekly field days to show they were ‘ready’ to come back on the land safely. I had them self-assess on a weekly basis at one point, and added my own feedback. Then I scanned it home so that families could have a discussion with their students. This allowed me to take kids on amazing outdoor days and a multi-day overnight hike, but provide them with clear criteria to show they were ready between field days. We used the same rubric at lunch time and my lunchtime supervisor helped build them back up.

Checking: I think exhibition was my marker of excellence. I am satisfied with the results. I would like to have more students talking about their learning at exhibition and will focus on building more confident speakers next year.

Reflections/Advice: This inquiry was a wild dream at the start of the year, but the kids clearly loved being outside with purpose. When they got to the end and could see what they had created as a team they were proud of themselves. The rubric allowed us to provide specific feedback to students and an authentic way for them to show they were ready to be safe, learn, and be guardians of the land. The trail we built is built on private land but we also presented to the Elder’s Council and they were very excited about building in their community. We now have to engage the Council and seek their approval. I hope to build another trail and mentor more guardians of the land. If I can get the land use approved, we would be building on Indigenous Land in collaboration with their Guardians. We would be identifying culturally sensitive areas and how to help educate others who may be using Indigenous land.

Photo description: This is a picture of our overnight hiking trip to Harry Lake. We were supported by many learning partners including pack horses (which the students learned about during horsemanship anchor lessons prior to the trip).

George M. Murray Elementary SD#74 Gold Trail

submissions — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 22:07:04 +0000

I. General Information

School Name: George M. Murray Elementary

School District: SD#74 Gold Trail

Inquiry Team Members: Jen Eddie – jeddie@sd74.bc.ca

Inquiry Team Contact Email: jeddie@sd74.bc.ca

II. Inquiry Project Information

Type of Inquiry: SRL Case Study

Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Intermediate (4-7)

Curricular Areas Addressed: Applied Design, skills & Technology, Language Arts – Writing, Mathematics / Numeracy, Science

Focus Addressed: Core competencies (for example, critical thinking, communication, problem solving), Differentiated instruction, Experiential learning, Growth mindset, Land, Nature or Place-based learning, Self-regulation, Social and emotional learning

In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? Helping my students see themselves as learners by strengthening their ability to regulate themselves.

III. Spirals of Inquiry Details

Scanning: I talked to my students a lot in circle and asked them questions about their learning in previous years. Noise was a really distracting element for them and collaboration was not something they felt comfortable with (based on discussions in circle). They identified that worksheets and free time made up a lot of their learning in previous years.

I identified that there wasn’t a lot of circling back when things fell apart for my learners. Conflict resolution and giving time and support to heal mistakes was an area I wanted to help grow.

Many of my students had been on one field trip in the entire year last year, and they badly wanted to be outside. I hoped to show them that rigorous learning could happen in a group without arguing all the time.

Focus: I selected this area because I wanted them to be excited about learning and each other. I could see they needed supports to get to a place where they could collaborate and see learning as fun.

Hunch: I thought that worksheets as a primary mode of delivering education were shutting down many of the learners in my class. I wanted to get them talking together so we could all learn together.

New Professional Learning: I used the circle as a structure for debriefing when things fell apart. I kept coming back to the circle process and having vulnerable discussions with my class. I provided ‘carrots’ for the students which helped them want to be in my classroom more than anywhere else. I differentiated my instruction where I needed to so that everyone had an access point. I specifically used the resource “Notice and Note” for reading, “Using Micro-Mentor Texts” for writing, and “Good Inside” for restorative language and processes.

Taking Action: Circles was very helpful as a structure for when we needed to debrief as a group. I used it every day at the start of the day as a check-in, and when needed as a debrief/brainstorm tool. Circles were done outside 98% of the time.

I developed a restorative practice sheet based on the work on Dr. Becky Kennedy. Students had to complete it orally or in written form in order to show readiness to return after a mistake was made.

I taught the ‘signposts’ to students in anchor lesson format using visual and written exemplars in the first term. We then did a whole class novel where they had to record their conversation weekly in reading groups. I offered feedback on the recordings. I provided scaffolding in the way of ‘scribble notes’ to help those with memory stretches to recall the sequence of the story.

In math, I blended the ‘Thinking Classrooms’ model of collaborative math with a more traditional approach on a weekly basis.

We did a lot of outdoor learning and mountain biking.

Checking: Due to the consistent return to the circle, students realized that they would have to work together and that I had high expectations for them. The exhibition of learning was well attended and students were very proud of the kites they built in our collaborative project involving physics, ADST, and ELA.

When asking how the year went, I felt like the students were proud of their learning. They could tell me what they learned and many of the answers were varied. I liked that what they were proud of was varied – it told me that I had enough variety.

Reflections/Advice: I would like to riff on the trails learning we did last year and design a project around developing a bike trail.

Cayoosh Elementary School SD#74 Gold Trail

submissions — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 13:00:16 +0000

I. General Information

School Name: Cayoosh Elementary School

School District: SD#74 Gold Trail

Inquiry Team Members: Keri Remple: kremple@sd74.bc.ca, Tammy Mountain: tmountain@sd74.bc.ca, Angela Stott: astott@sd74.c.ca

Inquiry Team Contact Email: kremple@sd74.bc.ca

II. Inquiry Project Information

Type of Inquiry: Numeracy & Literacy Project

Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Primary (K-3)

Curricular Areas Addressed: Language Arts – Literacy, Language Arts – Oral Language, Language Arts – Reading, Language Arts – Writing

Focus Addressed: Community-based learning, Indigenous pedagogy, Land, Nature or Place-based learning

In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? Our focus was on increasing family engagement and voice in students’ literacy development.

III. Spirals of Inquiry Details

Scanning: Scanning the school-home interactions, our team noticed that most of the communication fell into the “involvement” category instead of resembling the “engagement,” as described by ? Ferlazzo’s (2011) – who states that engagement “lead[s] with its ears – listening to what parents think, dream, and worry about… to gain partners” (p. 12). Report cards, newsletters home and learning conferences all were examples of teachers talking instead of listening. Considering the principle: Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place), as well as, Learning is embedded in memory, history, and story, we wanted to have families authentically engaged in story creation with students.

Focus: We noticed that there was a consistent pattern of families attending learning conferences, listening to their student (and teacher) and then finishing with the question: but how are they doing? Families did not feel connected to learning experiences and did not have a sense of ownership in their own child’s education.

Hunch: We believed that the school may be contributing to this dynamic by having limited opportunities for families to be deeply engaged with learning experiences; in addition, when families and teachers came together, too often the knowledge was being held by the teacher – the power dynamic was impacting the relationships between the school and the families, as well as the families and their participation in their children’s learning.

New Professional Learning: Keri Remple (team lead) is currently enrolled in UBC’s Masters of Education with a Literacy focus. Her project work has focused on exploring family engagement. These are some of the articles that have helped shaped learning during the project:
– Bartram, B. (2019). Chapter 1: Using Questionnaires. In Lambert, M. (Ed.) Practical Research Methods in Education: An Early Researcher’s Critical Guide. London: Routledge.
– Dewilde, J. (2019). Chapter 11: Ethnography. In Lambert, M. (Ed.) Practical Research Methods in Education: An Early Researcher’s Critical Guide. London: Routledge.
– Dworin, J. (2006). The family stories project: using funds of knowledge for writing. The Reading Teacher, 59(6), 510-520.
– Ferlazzo, L. (2011). Involvement or engagement? Education Leadership, 68(8), 10-14.
– Harris, P., Camaitoga, U., Brock, C., Diamond, A., McInnes, E. & Neill, B. (2021). Co-creating multilingual books with children to foster their literacies. The Reading Teacher, 75(5), 555-565.
– Kellas, J. (2005). Family ties: Communicating identity through jointly told family stories. Communication Monographs, 72(4), 365-389.
– Kim, S. & Song, K. (2019). Designing a community translanguaging space within a family literacy project. The Reading Teacher, 73(3), 267-279.
– Lambert, M. (2019). Chapter 4: Involving children. In Lambert, M. (Ed.) Practical Research Methods in Education: An Early Researcher’s Critical Guide. London: Routledge.
– Leavy, P. (2017). Research design: Quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, arts-based, and
community-based participatory research approaches. Guilford Publications.
– Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D. & Gonzalez, N. (1992) Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory Into Practice, 31(2), 132-141.
– Moody, S. & Matthews, S. (2022) Reading without words: Cultivating bi/multilingual family engagement. The Reading Teacher, 76(2), 122-130.
– Pole, K. (2015). “Why downt you riyt back to me?” Family letter writing in kindergarten. The Reading Teacher, 69(1), 119-128.
– Rowe, D. & Fain, J. (2013). The family backpack project: Responding to dual-language texts through family journals. Language Arts, 90(6), 402-416.
– Simone, J., Hauptman, A. & Hasty, M. (2019). Better together on behalf of our children. The Reading Teacher, 73(3), 281-289.
– Szech, L. (2021). How the funds of knowledge theory shifted teachers’ dominant narratives of family Involvement. School community journal, 31(1), 149-170.
– Winwood, J. (2019). Chapter 2: Using interviews. In Lambert, M. (Ed.) Practical Research Methods in Education: An Early Researcher’s Critical Guide. London: Routledge
– Wissman, K. (2020). ‘We are stories’: Centering picturebooks in the reading support class. The Reading Teacher, 74(2), 201-207.

Taking Action: Throughout the year, families came into the classroom multiple times to create a fictional story that featured their child as the protagonist. Using story studio materials, caregivers and children wove family memories, favourite foods, and meaningful places throughout their narratives – as well as several fantastical elements too (mermaids and robotic skunks to name a few). We used Zoom to meet with Indigenous artist Amanda Ned (who used to go to Cayoosh Elementary as a student!), to share details about the stories so she could create illustrations. After multiple drafts, the final stories and illustrations were published in a book that was shared at our Exhibition of Learning.

Checking: The project was a huge success in terms of family engagement (every child had a guest during family sessions – we got creative with inviting older siblings from the high school, family friends and even meeting off school grounds if needed) and built connections between the classroom and home. Along with strengthening home-school relationships, the project embedded literacy learning throughout as families wrote dialogue, similes and descriptive passages together.

Reflections/Advice: We are very interested in using the format of hosting family shared activities in other curricular areas – we are considering doing a monthly math session next year where families would start by investigating an artefact that connects to our district’s St’át’imc Scope and Sequence, asking “what math lives here?” and then playing games that support learning goals in the classroom. We are hoping to work towards a spring project where every family collects an artefact with the same guiding question.

Cayoosh Elementary SD#74 Gold Trail

submissions — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 15:05:23 +0000

I. General Information

School Name: Cayoosh Elementary

School District: SD#74 Gold Trail

Inquiry Team Members: Angela Stott: Astott@sd74.bc.ca, Keri Remple: kremple@sd74.bc.ca

Inquiry Team Contact Email: Kremple@sd74.bc.ca

II. Inquiry Project Information

Type of Inquiry: NOIIE Case Study

Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Intermediate (4-7)

Curricular Areas Addressed: Language Arts – Reading

Focus Addressed: Inquiry-based learning

In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? How can independent reading and story studios be combined to increase student accountability around just right texts, as well as formative assessment?

III. Spirals of Inquiry Details

Scanning: At the beginning of the year, students were not selecting appropriate texts for independent reading. They often chose overly simplistic stories or too challenging novels that they could not comprehend.

Focus: I chose to investigate independent reading because it involved a strong element of student choice and differentiation.

Hunch: My work with the literacy network team members suggested that I was not adequately supporting students in selecting books, or in reading with purpose and intention.

New Professional Learning: I read a professional development book on supporting independent reading conferences, attended a learning lab on story studios, and had a literacy mentor (Lori Kelly) observe my one-on-one conferences with students.

Taking Action: With grant money from NOIIE I was able to buy a story studio materials cart. Once a week students created a scene using those materials to retell what was happening in their independent reading. They shared their retelling with me (on camera) and also with classmates.

Checking: Very quickly, I noticed students selecting different texts on story studio sharing days. Students also seemed to be interested in books after hearing their classmates talk about them. One of the most significant realizations was that in a short amount of time I could have a formative assessment of student comprehension that was completed in a non-stressful (and even joyful) manner.

Reflections/Advice: I will definitely be pursuing the impact of independent reading and story studio again next year. I am interested in developing students’ understanding of genre to empower them to select future books without as much teacher support. I also hope to create a “Heather’s pick” style of student endorsement of certain books, after seeing the influence of students sharing their thoughts with the group. I also only did my own outdoor story studio, and I would like to increase those events next year to be more thoughtful of land- and place-based experiences.