Presentation of Growth Plan

On May 18, 2011, Mr. Hall, Mrs. Graham, Mrs. Russett, and 2 students met with Karl deBruijn (Assistant Superintendent), Joanne Stokes (School Trustee), and John Harwood (School Trustee) and presented our 2011-2014 School Growth Plan. The focus of our conversations was on our literacy initiative and involving parents and community in our school.

The Literacy initiative includes:

• Examining our students in grades 8 and 9 to determine their reading comprehension and writing skills.
• Collaborative marking sessions to determine the strengths, weaknesses and developing an action plan.
• Development of instructional strategies to use in our classes to improve our students' skills.

Increasing our students' literacy proficiency is a focus for staff in order to have students improve their achievement rates. In addition, we assess individual students' progress in order to provide supports for struggling students. The exam is performed at the beginning, middle and end of the school year to track the progress of our students. We also track their improvement from grade to grade. The literacy exam is a unique characteristic of our school and one that staff is proud.

We have changed our focus from a social responsibility goal to a parental and community involvement goal for a variety of reasons. We believe, from our data, the behaviour of our students is improving and the issues with social responsibility can be dealt with through different avenues. As a school, we have a desire to improve the level of involvement and communication with parents and the community. There are many technologies we have available in order to improve the level of communication and we need to make use of them to inform parents about different aspects of the school.

Overall, the meeting went well. Our plan is unique to Barriere Secondary and is one that staff, students and parents can work together to achieve.