Measures of Student Achievement and Success
Student achievement is measured on a daily basis with authentic classroom activities, rubrics, checklists, self and peer evaluation, tests, group project work and oral presentations. Student achievement reports are sent home three times per year.
In addition, every year:
School Improvement Plans and Initiatives
Although proud of the excellent results achieved by students on annual EQAO tests, we are aware that success cannot be measured by EQAO scores alone and that qualitative measures of learning are also important. For the School Improvement Plan we will be using qualitative assessment.
Parents will be invited to visit the school to see student work during Education Week to help us assess their learning about issues and points of view on how to solve issues.
This year’s particular foci will be:
Responding to and using critical thinking skills to evaluate non-fiction texts about authentic issues in health, science and/or social studies. Presenting a possible solution to an issue and using features of persuasive text to call others to action.
Our literacy goal pertains to fostering and using critical thinking skills, by encouraging students to set and use criteria to make judgments about issues from different points of view. Teachers will be seeking to further decrease the general performance gap between male and female elementary students, as we did last year. To this end, students will be exposed to more non-fiction reading material and images and a greater variety of reading materials that are reflective of our cultural persity. The first step in this plan has already been accomplished. Students from across the entire school have generated this list of criteria to define an issue:
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a serious health, social or environmental problem (which risks getting worse)
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a solution is needed and possible but there is no easy solution
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impacts a lot of people's lives (and sometimes that number is growing)
School Climate – Character Education
In keeping with the Ministry’s and the OCDSB Character Education initiative staff and students will integrate these character education values into the grade appropriate curriculum.
Acceptance, Responsibility, Respect, Appreciation, Perseverance, Optimism, Fairness, Cooperation.
We are also working with the poem by Frank Outlaw “It’s all About Character.” Watch your thoughts; They become your words. Watch your words;
They become your actions. Watch your actions;
They become your habits. Watch your habits;
They become your character. Watch your character;
It becomes your destiny.