One of our focus goals for our School Story remains improved Literacy development for all of our learners, whether they are just learning the alphabet in the early primary years, whether they are requiring reading interventions in small group settings, or whether they are extending in their literacy development.  Our actions towards providing literacy supports and interventions involves a very cohesive and collaborative group of staff who work diligently to assess and plan for the various needs within classrooms.  They regularly assess students using the PM Benchmark or Acadience reading assessments, which not only provides evidence of progress, but also drives their planning process to ensure that students literacy needs are being met.  In addition, the BC Ministry of Education has just added guidance on Early Literacy Screening Tools and they have included the use of Acadience as of of their three suggested assessments which we have already been doing at Blundell!

We also have a teacher librarian who works very closely with Learning Resource and enrolling Classroom teachers to support students in their literacy growth.  This year, our LRT staff also worked collegially to share their knowledge of reading resources such as Heggerty materials and UFLI materials to build capacity within our team, and then this knowledge could be imparted upon our learners.  Whether it was through Lexia, 1:1 sessions, small group supports, or classwide lessons--many efforts were made to meet our students' learning needs.  When asked by a student how she felt about her progress this year, "I feel really great about my reading this year because now I have strategies when I get to a word that's hard to read or when I don't understand what it means". 

Next steps for us at Blundell?  Working on having "layers" of reading instruction and support with common language from Kindergarten through Grade 7.  An example would be working on reading comprehension using "Reading Power" by Adrienne Gear....starting with one of the comprehension strategies in Kindergarten, then reviewing htat strategy in Grade 1 while adding on another layer/strategy, reviewing strategies from K/1 in Grade 2 while adding on a third strategy........and so on up to Grade 7.  Having common language and strategies will likely impact our student's literacy knowledge/skills in a positive way as we look forward to the new school year.