Literacy

At Keewatin Public School, here at KPS we started our explicit instruction journey last year with the help of our instructional coach and through professional development opportunities provided by the board. We have been able to implement and see the benefits of explicit instruction in all grades, across all subject areas. We have also seen an increase in student engagement in lessons, specifically in literacy and math. It provides kids an entry point into the content being taught and kids are excited and actively engaged in the material, which in turn deepens their understanding of the content. Explicit instruction also allows teachers to monitor students and provide timely, corrective feedback in real time. Teachers are able to catch student mistakes and misconceptions and are able to fix them before the wrong pathways in the brain are formed.

All of our schools at Keewatin-Patricia have been on the Science of Reading journey for almost three years. We are working under the belief that all students can learn to read, with the right curriculum and instruction. We believe that all of our educators are capable of providing students with instruction that can help students achieve grade level reading skills and ability. It has been our goal to put all the necessary supports in place to equip all of our educators with hiqh-quality, evidence-based materials, resources, and teaching to improve the literacy skills of all of their students. All educational sectors at KP have been included in the learning and the work, whether you are a speech and language pathologist, an education assistant, a teacher, a special education teacher or leader, or an administrator. We are all committed to the literacy success of all of our students.

Our Primary and Junior students are receiving grade-level core instruction that is evidence-based and high-quality. Our teachers are working alongside our instructional coaches and SERTs to ensure they know the learners in front of them. Teachers are equipped with instructional teaching skills that meet the needs of all learners. Instructional materials and supports are in 100% of our classrooms. All teachers have access to instructional coaching to support them with any program, teaching method, and collection of data to inform their instruction. At King George, our teachers can confidently explain “why this learning, right now, for this child”. They are refining their instructional practices to be more explicit. This refinement guides their planning for lesson delivery and tiered instruction. Our administrators, coach and SERTS work together as a team to support our staff and students. This model includes regular data digs, co-planning, co-teaching, in class support and interventions. Our students receive instruction that is specific to their learning needs based on ongoing data where the team is progress monitoring consistently to ensure students are always making gains. We are seeing that data driven explicit instruction leads to growth and confidence in each and every one of our students.

I like Grade 9 destreamed English because Mrs. Sandberg teaches good, interactive lessons that make sure everybody understands what she’s teaching. There’s a lot of room for questions and students giving answers. The sticker system for answering a question is always really fun.

Moderator: This is Fynn. Your question is, is Grade 9 English different than you thought it would be?

Fynn: It’s a little bit harder, but at the same time, I thought it was going to be like really hard, but I really like it because it’s roughly the same as it was, but it’s not as scary as you would think it would have been.

Moderator: Are you guys doing Lexia in your Grade 9 English, and are you getting through it?

Students: Yes.

Moderator: What’s your favourite part (clarifies, favourite part of English)

Jonathan: Probably that whenever you answer a question, you get a sticker, and you can either just collect it or put them on a book or something like that.

Fynn: I like that Mrs. Sandberg is funny and she’s not really ‘Do your work!’ she’s a little more flexible.

Moderator: Ok, are you able to tell me which strategy you use the most in Empower?

Student: Alright, I’m going to be brutally honest here. I totally, 100%, super duper think, that the peeling off strategy helps a lot. For example, it helps me pronounce words like ‘helplessness’.

Moderator: How did it help you pronounce ‘helplessness’

Student: Alright, so, well ‘helplessness’ is really just ‘help’, but then there is a ‘ness.’ Also, it helps pronounce a lot of big words that might have a lot of those peeling-off words like ‘ness’ and ‘less’ and ‘ful’. There could be words that have a lot of those, so they look very big, but if you just peel off…because I remember a word once, it has a lot of those, and it looked insanely big, and I was like, whoa, that’s a long word. Then I peeled off all the ending and some beginning words and all of a sudden it was really small and very manageable.