Click on the Inquiry Question links below to see the full survey response and learn what each PLC group is exploring.

2015-2016

  1. What is the best way to teach friendship skills so they transfer to student’s daily life?
  2. Does Yoga, meditation, and mindfulness reduce anxiety and improve self-regulation?
  3. How can we weave the successful learner traits into our current practices and increase student ownership of learning?
  4. How can continuous reporting and regular home communication reinforce explicit classroom instruction to improve student learning?
  5. How do we use project-based learning to engage 21st cent. learners in a primary French Immersion classroom?
  6. How can we better engage and empower students to use criteria to self-assess and include them within the e-portfolio as part of their learning journey?
  7. How can we facilitate the use of technology in an inclusive way to meet diverse reading and writing needs of students? and How can we facilitate the use of technology to address the literacy needs of students in French Immersion?

2014-2015

  1. Can Eportfolio increase student engagement?
  2. “How can we improve student literacy?” (in French Reading)

A Focus on Numeracy

Question: When we find that students are struggling on a topic based on assessment data from various sources (classroom observation, informal assessments and the DMA) after we have taught the topic, to what extent will reteaching the topic differently from how it was originally taught increase student understanding of that topic?

We have had the good fortune to have the district’s Numeracy Support Teacher (Cheryl Jones-Adebar) as part of our PLC. The other members of our PLC are grades 3, 4, and 5 teachers. Based on assessment results, we have found a number of areas, especially relating to place value, where students are struggling. As part of the PLC process, we have explored different ways of teaching various concepts (for example the partial quotients method for division of 3 digit by 1 digit numbers as opposed to the traditional algorithm).

Developing a Mission, Vision and set of Workplace Values for the School

We worked with a consulting group on developing a mission, vision,and a set of work place
values for our school. This was a school-wide focus for the first half of the school year. We
started by surveying both positive and negative aspects of our school’s climate and culture.
Based on the results of this survey, we chose to address shortcomings in our school’s climate by working collaboratively on a mission statement for the school. We started with an appreciative enquiry process where we brainstormed what the school would look and feel like if it was “the best and most amazing school imaginable”. We then worked on creating a vision and mission with many rewrites. At the centre of this process was a “PLC within a PLC”, the ‘Wolf Pack’ (wolves are our school’s mascots) that worked outside of the regular PLC meeting times to edit, revise, and advise on what came out of the staff-wide PLC meetings. Once we had a mission and a vision, we worked on a set of school values that we would use to inform how we worked together.

Describe in relation to the work of the PLC teams in your building, how this work is having a real life impact on student achievement.

In terms of our numeracy focus all this work is having an immediate impact on our students
because we are able to have professional conversations relating to instruction and student
learning. We focus on the big ideas and designing learning activities that support student
understanding of those big ideas.

Based on a recent staff survey, school climate has improved noticeably. The improvements that have come about based on the process of creating a work-place agreement have allowed us to work together in a much more professional way. We are more able to look at student learning and we have the trust in one another to approach student learning challenges in an open and frank manner. Having a workplace agreement as well as a working vision and mission also allows us to focus our practice on what is truly important to us as a school and directly led to the Math PLC in the above example. We are focusing on student learning because we all agreed to do so in our mission statement:
At Ecole Robb Road staff, students and parents work together to create diverse learning opportunities that develop [competencies] in every learner in a French immersion environment.