2500 A Balmer Dr PO Box 460,
Elkford, BC V0B 1H0
Canada
Principal: Dean Chandler
Vice Principal: James Lund
School Improvement Plan
School Context
Rocky Mountain Elementary School is a rural elementary school established in 1982. The school has an instructional staff of approximately 10 fte teachers, a student services teacher as well as a part-time fine arts teacher and librarian serving 220 pupils. Our student services teacher supports 12 designated students.
The school on the edge of the small mountain community of Elkford and serves all of the elementary aged students of that community. It is also the sole feeder school for Elkford Secondary. Elkford Secondary School and Rocky Mountain Elementary School are located on the same school grounds and share a common soccer field. Elkford is a resource-based community and many of the community members work at one of the 5 coal mines. The coal mines operate on shifts and mine employees work four twelve hour shifts: two days and two nights.
This school was recently damaged by fire. The entire school has been reconstructed and all teaching and learning resources have been replaced with current Ministry recommended resources. While the school was under reconstruction, Rocky Mountain Elementary School students have been attending classes in alternate locations. Primary classes were held in classrooms at Elkford Secondary School and intermediate classes were held in temporary classrooms that were built in banquet hall at the Elkford Recreation Centre.
The staff has successfully established a professional learning community that is based on Adrienne Gear’s Reading Powers strategies. These strategies were used to support the learning of all students with a focus on students who struggle to or do not read at grade level. The staff has also successfully used the Mind Up program to support students in developing positive self-regulation strategies.
This School:
· understands that literacy and reading skills are important for all learning and must be incorporated into all subject areas.
· Recognizes the need for personalized learning and is committed to using differentiated instruction to engage and support all learners.
· Is a community of learners where students and staff feel safe to take risks and try new things.
· Recognizes the importance to focus on social and emotional development as well as academic development.
· Recognizes that shift work can disrupt families and make communication with the school difficult for some parents.
· Uses social media to communicate school activities and events with parents.
Using the TRIBES process as our fundamental belief, the goal of our school (a TRIBES school) is to engage all staff, students, and families in working together as a learning community that is dedicated to caring and support, active participation, and positive expectations for all students.
/ School District No. 5 (Southeast Kootenay)School Plan for (Rocky Mountain Elementary)
2014-2015
GOAL
Improving schools have a strong instructional focus. This focus is made visible in relevant goals for improving achievement for all students. / •To increase student achievement through social and emotional competence.
Self-Regulation: Calm, Alert, and Learning*
There is a growing awareness among developmental scientists that the better a child can self-regulate, the better she can rise to the challenge of mastering ever more complex skills and concepts. In the simplest terms, self-regulation can be defined as the ability to stay calmly focused and alert, which often involves – but cannot be reduced to – self-control. The better a child can stay calmly focused and alert, the better he integrates the diverse information coming in from his different senses, assimilates it, and sequences his thoughts and actions. For someone who thinks that self-regulation is really just a matter of a child’s getting in control of his negative emotions, there is very little difference between self-regulation and compliance. But, unlike compliance based on punishment, self-regulation nurtures the ability to cope with greater and greater challenges because it involves arousal states, emotions, behavior, and – as the child grows older – thinking skills.-Stuart Shanker
Objectives
Objectives help to focus goals into more specific areas of attention. / •Provide students with language and tools that allow them to independently self-regulate.
-Mind Up program
-Superflex program
•Reduce incidence of bullying, aggression and violence.
•Increase overall academic success.
Rationale
Improving schools have a thorough and connected set of reasons, based on evidence, for the selection of their student achievement goals. /
•“The better a child can stay calmly focused and alert, the better he integrates the diverse information coming in from his different senses, assimilates it, and sequences his thoughts and actions.” -Stuart Shanker ( Self-Regulation: Calm, Alert, and Learning*)
http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/self-regulation-calm-alert-and-learningData (Evidence)
Improving schools are actively considering at least three sources of evidence including classroom, school, district and provincial data. The analysis of this evidence informs the selection of the goals and is used to monitor progress. / •Baseline data will need to be collected to measure academic growth and its relationship to our efforts to have students self regulate in a variety of ways. Baseline data will be collected in term two of the 2014/2015 school year and will include:
1. Self regulation rubric based on Baumeister & Vohs’ Handbook of Self-Regulation, which includes at least five distinct definitions presented in the various chapters:
1. “The ability to attain, maintain and change one’s level of arousal appropriately for a task or situation”
2. “The ability to control one’s emotions”
3. “The ability to formulate a goal, monitor goal-progress, adjust one’s behaviors”
4. “The ability to manage social interactions, to co-regulate”
5. “To be aware of one’s academic strengths and weaknesses, and have a repertoire of strategies to tackle day-to-day challenges of academic tasks”
Five-domain Model
Now, to be sure, what developmental scientists refer to today as effortful control (e.g., being able to inhibit one’s impulses or ignore distractions) is a critical element of self-regulation. But to get a sense of the full array of processes involved in self-regulation,
one need only turn to a standard resource tool like
Indeed, we can introduce still more complexity if we view self-regulation in terms of Uri Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model, for it is clear that we can talk about the self-regulation of a family, a classroom, a school, a community, even a society. But for the purposes of this article, just looking at the level of the child presents more than enough of a challenge!
The five levels operating in the above definitions are:
1. Biological (e.g., how well the child regulates her arousal states)
2. Emotional (e.g., how well the child monitors and modifies her emotional responses)
3. Cognitive (e.g., how well the child can sustain and switch her attention; inhibit impulses; deal with frustration, delay, distractions; sequence her thoughts)
4. Social (e.g., the child’s mastery of rules of appropriate behaviour; how well the child can co-regulate and thereby develop prosocial attributes)
5. Reflective thinking skills
2. New School wide office referral
3. Social Responsibility Performance Standards (K – 6)
4. Grade 4 Satisfaction Surveys
5. Student Achievement Data
-Grade 4 FSA results
-Term 2 Report Card Results
Strategies
Improving schools have well organized, focused, improvement plans in place. The strategies selected to achieve the goals are an intelligent blend of research, best practice, and innovative thinking.
/ •The admin team will lead school wide in-class and school wide roll out of the Superflex program:
Superflex
by Stephanie Madrigal and Michelle Garcia WinnerComic Book by Stephanie Madrigal/Illustrated by Kelly Knopp. For professionals and parents to use with students in 3rd - 5th grade.
Superflex®is more than a superhero! It’s a curriculum designed to teach younger (primarily 3rd-5th grade) students how to regulate their behaviors and become stronger social problem solvers. Professionals and parents alike use this engaging teaching approach to help students learn about their own inner Superflex (their superheroic, flexible social thinking) and the related strategies they can use to outwit and outsmart various social challenges, represented by Unthinkable characters, such as Glassman, Brain Eater, One-Sided Sid, Mean Jean, and others.
/ •Teachers will proceed with in-class classroom instruction and facilitation of the Mind-Up program.
MindUP Curriculum
In 15 comprehensive lessons, our curriculum scaffolds core academic programs, delivering a set of social, emotional and self-regulatory strategies and skills, developed for pre-K through middle school students. Published by Scholastic, Inc., The MindUP™ Curriculum (2011) is available in both hard copy and e-book form.The MindUP curriculum helps children:
· Improve focus, concentration, and academic performance
· Reduce stress and anxiety
· Handle peer-to-peer conflicts
· Manage emotions and reactions
· Develop greater empathy toward others
· Choose optimism
Achieving Results
Improving schools monitor progress and improve results. They monitor and make adjustments in key areas of student achievement – at the classroom, school and district levels. / •Once term 2 data is collected it can be used as baseline data to compare to the third term and term 2 data from 2015/2016.
Results will be communicated through school communication tools. Improvement will be celebrated and lack of improvement will drive future school planning.
Communication
Improving schools are involved in continuous dialogue about student achievement and make public their improvement goals and the progress being made in specific areas of focus. / •Measures to communicate the School Plan include:
1. Published in September and monthly newsletters throughout the year.
2. Major bulletin board display in the main hallway.
3. School Growth Plan to be presented by SPC to the Parent Advisory Committee at the October meeting.
4. Included on our school website.
Staff and SPC are actively involved in the development of the School Plan. As well, the School Plan will be an agenda item on all staff meetings through out the school year.
Leadership/
Teamwork
Improving schools have a clear vision for, and commitment, to improving achievement for all students. Leadership at all levels, in all roles, is encouraged and systematically developed in a collaborative learning community. / School improvement planning is a consultative process involving the School Planning Council and school staff.
Administration, Student Services and Support Staff personnel: Child Care Workers, School Counselor, Aboriginal Education Worker, Community Links Worker all work as a highly effective consultative and cooperative team to support all students’ social responsibility and academic growth.
All members of our learning community embrace the importance of socially responsible behavior through modeling the virtues being taught. We work as a team to impart these values to the students and by extension all members of our school community.
Staff and students take on projects that promote social responsibility, local and global citizenship.
School District No. 5 (Southeast Kootenay)
Plan 2014 – 2015
School: Rocky Mountain Elementary
CERTIFICATION BY SCHOOL PLANNING COUNCIL:
We certify that, to the best of our knowledge, the information provided in this growth plan is accurate and reflects the needs of our school.
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Parent Member’s Name Signature Date
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Parent Member’s Name Signature Date
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Parent Member’s Name Signature Date
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Teacher Member’s Name Signature Date
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Student Member’s Name Signature Date
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Principal’s Name Signature Date
Board Authorization
School Plan for ______approved by the Board of Education of School District No. 5 (Southeast Kootenay).
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Board Chair Date
Budget Allocation to support School Goals
2014/2015
Allocation from School Growth Plan and/or Other funds (Operating/Literacy Grants/Network of Performance Based Schools) funds to support implementation of goal strategies/structures.
Goal/Objective / Actions Planned to Support Goal/Objective / Budget Allocation / Funding Source
Self Regulation / Superflex resource / $83.85 / Growth Plan Funds
Release time to support planning and implementation / 8 half days days@$163.00=$1357.00 / Growth Plan Funds