What targeted actions did we take to address our school’s learning focus? 

Our Grade 8 team of teachers decided, after reviewing the Fall PBA results, that we needed some targeted teaching strategies trying to improve our students Word de-coding skills. Our Grade 8 Team, led by our Literacy Leader and Librarian, developed monthly "Bitesized" teaching strategies documents that were shared with staff and the strategies within were utilized by the Grade 8 Team.

What gap or problem were these actions intended to address? Why was this particular strategy/action chosen? 

When the PBA was conducted in the Fall, we saw that only 59% of the students in Grade 8 were scoring at the Developing/Proficient range. While this number was better than the previous year, we felt that number needed to be improved. Specifically, the Word Skills data showed that only 13% of our Grade 8 population was scoring at the "Proficient" level.

What does the evidence tell us so far? 

After targeted instruction utilizing the teaching strategies outlined in the monthly "Bitesized" documents, we have seen that the percentage of students scoring in the Proficient category for Word Skills data increased from 13% to 24%. This is a significant improvement and has led to an overall increase on the PBA scores. 70% of our Grade 8 population now scored in the "Developing/Proficient" category compared to only 59% of our students in this category in the Fall assessment.

To what extent are the actions making a difference? 

As indicated above, we can see that our students are scoring better on the PBA in the Spring, but that has also led to improved results in overall school achievement (only XX of the Grade 8 population achieved Honour Roll status this year). We had only 5% of all students assessed as "Emerging" on the Mid-Year Learning Report and then had only XX students in the "Emerging" category at the end of the year.

How will we move forward accordingly?  

We have found the Grade 8 Team meetings and sharing of success stories and strategies to be very beneficial. We also feel the sharing of innovative strategies through the "Bitesized" documents to be helpful for teachers. We intend to continue these strategies with our Grade 9 teachers and student population next year to see if these longitudinal supports make a difference for students and achievement by the time they reach Grade 10.