School Goal One
To improve student engagement and individual academic success with a focus on literacy and numeracy interventions for our most vulnerable students.
How will implementing comprehensive literacy / numeracy instruction and intervention processes increase accessibility, equity, and engagement for all students at NSMS?
At North Saanich Middle School, we are proud of our school's culture of academic engagement and rigor. We are fortunate to have a diverse learning community of vibrant learners who arrive each day with a desire to learn and grow together. Our innovative and committed staff create multiple access points and opportunities for our learners to be met where they are and move forward in their learning journeys. A thorough look at recent data has enabled our team to get to know our learners and better understand their strengths and areas where they need support. By looking at our District Literacy Assessment (DLA), our student's report card data, our Foundation Skills Assessment data, along with a benchmark schoolwide write, we were able to identify the need to implement targeted literacy and numeracy interventions to increase accessibility, equity, and engagement for all students at NSMS.
As we work towards achieving our literacy and numeracy goal, we will ensure that W̱SÁNEĆ, other First Nations, Metis, and Inuit students will experience academic success, while maintaining a strong cultural identity, as outlined in the Indigenous Enhancement Agreement.
This goal aligns with our district strategic priority to improve student literacy across the curriculum for all students with a particular focus on early learning. Additionally, we have placed numeracy as a priority as North Saanich Middle School. Our intended approaches are deeply connected to First Peoples Principles of Learning.
District Literacy Assessment School Summary June 2022
District Litreracy Assessment School Summary June 2023
First Peoples Principles of Learning
The Literacy and Numeracy Goal needs to ensure that:
- Learning recognizes the role of Indigenous knowledge;
- Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place); and
- That to increase academic success for our W̱SÁNEĆ, other First Nations, and Inuit students we must ensure that their histories, cultures, and traditions are honored, reflected, and engaged throughout all aspects of their learning journeys.
We plan to improve student literacy across the curriculum by addressing equity to ensure all students have access to comprehensive literacy instruction, as well as literacy interventions.
Currently, our Inclusion Support Team (Inclusion Support Teachers, Counsellors, Indigenous Liaison, Indigenous teacher, ELL, and ELS as well as our District OT/PT) engage in an extensive transition process with our feeder schools to ensure that we have appropriate supports in place for student success. This process requires the collection of data from report cards, the District Literacy Assessment (DLA), and the District Literacy Screener. The collection of this data helps inform our learning teams on how to best meet students where they are with their literacy skills. It also allows our team to ensure that students have access to appropriate support to target explicit skill building as well as comprehensive literacy instruction. As part of our comprehensive instruction, we also use an inclusive classroom planning tool to implement Universal Design for Learning (UDL) strategies.
NSMS has developed and facilitated a series of multi-age interventions to increase students’ capacity and engagement with writing. Most recently, we have re-established reading interventions for our most vulnerable students, while also providing opportunities for students to extend their learning. These opportunities include the Beaver Computing Challenge, Gauss Math Contest, and Skills Canada competitions.
Over the 2023-24 year, we will track progress on our initiatives identified in this year’s plan.
English Language Arts report card data - final assessment, June 2022
English Language Arts report card data - final assessment, June 2023
Summary learning, based on evidence gathered over the year, will provide us with key learnings to guide next steps for the 2024-25 school year and beyond.
