What targeted actions did we take to address our school’s learning focus?

Firstly, we met as a staff on school-based Professional Learning Days throughout the year to discuss resources on effectively teaching reading strategies to students.  We also shared lessons on reading strategies in table groups.

Secondly, we held Celebration of literacy assemblies throughout the year. Here, we presented a story and focused on one reading strategy to practice with all students, highlighting its importance in reading comprehension.

Finally, we had each class set a reading goal each term to emphasize this focus. 

What gap or problem were these actions intended to address?  Why was this particular strategy/action chosen?

Data collected during September reading assessment showed that our students needed intervention and practice using these reading strategies: making connections, inferencing and identifying and using text features.

What does the evidence tell us so far?

Spring reading assessment has shown encouraging growth in our students’ use of these strategies:

Making connections – 53% of students were proficient or extending from 39% in the fall. 79% of primary K-3 students were proficient or extending in the spring.

Inferencing – 59% students were proficient or extending from 41% in the fall 

Identifying and using text features – 53% were proficient or extending from 37%

Further see the attached data to see improvements in each reading strategy for all grades and for primary and intermediate grades.  

To what extent are the actions making a difference?

We believe that our targeted focus on explicitly teaching these strategies using fiction and non-fiction texts across subjects have improved our student’s reading comprehension as shown by data above.  We would like to see even more significant growth in the students’ use of these strategies.

How will we move forward accordingly?

Our goal is to continue to focus on teaching these strategies to students school-wide and in classes.  We would like to see even greater improvement in our students’ comprehension next school year by focusing on the strategies above as well as prioritizing making connections.  We also purpose to build our students' prior knowledge by providing them with more placed-based learning opportunities. Lastly, we will also aim to work on expanding our students' word and vocabulary knowledge.