PROCESS FOR DETERMING AREA OF STUDENT LEARNING OF MOST CONCERN?

What reasons do you have for selecting this area for school improvement?

• Based on the data around student choice, interest, and relevancy, these were deemed key areas to address. As a staff we will discuss what student agency looks like across a K-6 setting, strategies to design more relevant connections to their learning and attempting to foster curious learners, who often ask the question, "Why?". In order to engage with their learning, students must have an understanding of why they are learning what they are learning.

• With an eye on engagement in both academic learning and school community, we will develop strategies for both. One of the keys ways we will be growing engagement in school community is through the creation of a PBIS framework as our goal for the 2026-2027 school year. A PBIS framework benefits Brackendale Elementary by:

  • Creating a safer, more predictable school environment

  • Improving student behaviour and reduces discipline issues

  • Supporting academic learning

  • Building a positive school culture

What process is used to review and revise your goal to ensure a focus on areas of need?

• For several years, the school goal has been focused around critical thinking. With a shift now towards a new goal, the 2026-2027 school year will be the 1st year of design and implementation.  It will realistically take the first part of the year to discuss and design strategies and structures that will increase student choice and relevancy. Students will need time to become comfortable with perhaps some new ways of approaching their learning and we will need to communicate this goal out to our parent community.

• In addition, implementing a PBIS framework will take time. It has been designed over the course of the school year, and will be communicated to parents before the end of the 2025-2026 school year. 

• For all parts of the school goal, they will be reviewed at our staff meetings, and school-based team meetings, and parent and student feedback will be solicited in a variety of ways. 

• Ultimately, the goal is to increase a sense of ownership over their learning, and have them make connections between what they are doing in school to the outside world. We are also trying to foster community and connection in the school, reduce rates of chronic absenteeism, and as a by-product, see increased academic results. This is all quantifiable data that our school can reflect upon in the coming years as this framework gets established. 

How are your staff, students and families engaged in working on the School Learning Plan?

• At this point, most of the work has been done with the staff. We have spent time discussing community and engagement, and school culture. We have worked to address our absenteeism and to develop our PBIS framework. We have had outside experts come present to staff and to provide feedback to administration on the framework plan.

• The conversations at the end of this year and start of next will focus on student agency and purposeful relevant learning opportunities. By the end of next year, we should have both qualitative and quantitative data on these topics. 

• Parents will be made aware of the framework through PAC meetings, and a whole-school communication will be done once we are ready to implement. 

• Students will engage on a classroom and school-wide level. Given that we are trying to foster a sense of agency over their learning, they will be at the centre of what we do. We will also begin implementing more structured exit interviews for our grade 6's, to learn and collect their feedback on their elementary experience. 

How does the school goal address achievement for ALL students?

• All students should have agency over their learning. For our most confident learners, this will help the, to engage more deeply in their learning, to personalize it, and to begin to extend in the competencies and content. For our most vulnerable learners, a sense of agency might give them the confidence to re-engage with their learning, after having struggled to do so.

• Additionally, a PBIS framework that every single student can engage with, on a repeated basis, will provide immediate and direct positive reinforcements. 

• Research indicates that with an increase in positive recognition and a sense of agency, students begin to take ownership of their own actions and learning, which leads to greater engagement and effectiveness while in school. 

• By creating a more welcoming and positive school culture, the hope is that we will see a decrease in absenteeism, and it is clear that attendance is the most foundational element of student academic success.

How has the school engaged with students through student voice to broaden the data set?

• At this point, the school has not yet engaged with students related to the school goal, as most of the framework needs to be in place before we do so.

• Starting this spring, at the minimum, we will collect feedback from our departing grade 6's, to better understand their experience at Brackendale Elementary.

• Next year, we will seek to enhance opportunities to collect feedback in a variety of ways relating to the implementing of our school goal.  

Triangulated Evidence

What did the data tell you about the achievement of ALL students in your school?

• The data indicates, as can be expected, that there is a range of students' experience of learning and belonging in Brackendale. We have been successful at connecting with our students to make them feel they belong.

• However, there is a signficiant percentage of students that may not be fully engaged in their learning due to its relevance and perhaps limited choice. 

• Additionally, we are still seeing a population of students who miss a lot of school, and this is negatively impacting their learning. 

• By looking at the disaggregated data sources, we can see some trends in our cohorts that can be looked at more closely to better prepare them for middle school. 

How are you comparing the various sources of data to shape your thinking and/or confirm your actions?

• Data is being collected and will be shared and discussed with staff. It will be looked at from both a full-school, but also primary/intermediate groupings, and even grade-level data. 

• Another growing source of data will be self-reflection and self-assessment by students on their learning. This is currently being collected and communicated home, but it isn't really being looked at as a entire data set, something that we can learn to do in the future.

• With a wide range of experience amongst my Learning Services teachers and Collaborative Support Teachers, as well as my classroom teachers, they bring a wealth of experience across many grade levels and cultures. Importantly, several of them bring contextual knowledge of Brackendale Elementary, having worked there for years. Understanding why something is the "way it is" allows for the ability to better understand the strengths and challenges of a strategy, structure, or piece of data. 

What "street data" have you considered to broaden the school's understanding of student learning and success?

• There have been daily conversations about structures and strategies used in the school to create and enhance school culture and drive academic learning. Teachers are collaborating with one another, the ILT, administration, and IST about engaging our most vulnerable learners. Through multiple classroom visits every day, time spent working individually with each teacher, learning from the EA's and working very closely with Learning Services, the administration is first understanding what the measurements of success, engagement and agency are in an elementary school of success. 

• Moving forward, with a baseline understanding of the school, more specific anecdotal and quantitative data can be collected about a range of topics. 

SPECIFIC GROUPS OF STUDENTS OF MOST CONCERN

When selecting your goal, which specific groups of students were of most concern?

• • We are most focused on two groups of students: those with chronic absenteeism, and those with low engagement and low connection to school. In many cases, it is the same students in both groups. However, there are students who have good attendance but are not engaged in school, and vice versa.

  • We are also looking at students who don't feel a sense of ownership over their learning, nor do they find many of the topics covered to be relevant or interesting to them. 

What data did you use to determine this?

• • There are a variety of data sources that the school can track, including survey data, like the Student Learning Survey and the MDI survey. In addition, academic data is collected through EdPlan Insight and MyED BC. We also use anecdotal data from students and staff continuously.

  • Additionally, the school has been tracking attendance data very closely this school year, with monthly attendance reviews forming part of every staff meeting. The school knows very well who is struggling with attendance and in many cases, have established contact with the family to understand the reasons why. 

  • In terms of data around engagement, while there is quantitative data, it is anonymous. We need to use street data to understand which students are struggling to engage in their learning and with the school. Fortunately, with so many well connected adults, we do not have difficulty understanding which students are struggling to engage.

DISAGGREGATED EVIDENCE

How are you separating your data to gain a deeper understanding of particular groups of students?

• When looking at attendance data, we are looking at a class level to understand if certain classes have more absenteeism. On a closer level, looking at male/female/non-binary as a reference point, indigenous vs non-indigenous and ministry designation vs non-designation as a level. This will allow us to really focus in on who is missing the most school. We can reflect on any patterns that emerge from that level of data disaggregation.

• We are tracking our Grade 6 as a cohort, and disaggregating by gender to better understand the differences over their 7 years in elementary school. This will hopefully allow us to better prepare them for the transition to middle school. 

• We will start conducting "exit interviews" with our grade 6's, as it is an important group that aren't part of a large-scale survey. 

How are you tracking data over time to follow specific cohorts of students and/or trends in information?

• As mentioned, attendance data is being tracked and chronic abseentism will be looked at for trends in improvement.

• Student engagement can be tracked both quantifiably through survey data. However, more useful and practical data will be tracked anecdotally and through our PBIS tracking tool.

DESIRED KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS FOR STUDENTS AND STAFF

What are the desired skills or areas of knowledge that students should be able to demonstrate through your learning plan?

• Students should be able to identify the "why" behind their learning for almost any topic. They should, on a progressively more complex level, understand the reason they are learning the material they are.

• Students should feel like they have some choice in what they are learning or how they are learning it. Again, this can progress over their years in elementary school. 

• Students should understand the expectations of the school and their classroom teachers at all times. 

• Students should be able to articulate our school values. We would want all students to know our school values and be able to give an example of what that value would "look like" in action in our school community. 

What are the desired skills or areas of knowledge that staff hope to be able to show through this plan?

• All staff should be able to teach about our school values and why they are foundational for our school community.

• All staff should be able to recognize positive behaviour and explicitly reinforce these positive behaviours by linking it to our PBIS framework. Also, they should be able to call out unwanted behaviours again by linking it to our framework.

• All staff should be able to engage their students in a discussion around the importance of school attendance and the impacts of absenteeism. Staff should also be able to engage parents and caregivers in this same discussion.

• All staff should be able to present their rationale to their students about why they have chosen to teach the material they are. 

• All staff should, from time to time, present students with choice in their learning. This can look very difficult from class to class and grade to grade. However, students should feel a sense of ownership over their learning.