Constable Neil Bruce Middle School Improvement Goals 2020-2021
As we enter our third year as a grade 6-8 middle school, we continue to grow in size. This year we have over 900 students registered with 33 divisions. We started this year off very differently than any other we have ever experienced. Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic we have continued to create a learning environment with the goal of helping every student thrive. First and foremost, the emphasis has been on ensuring the health and safety of all members of our community. We implemented several protocols and procedures to continue in-class learning for our students. Staggered grade level lunches, designated play areas for assigned learning cohorts, masks, hand washing and sanitizing, and minimizing student contact were all part of our safety plan. Even with our Covid protocols we have continued to timetable our students keeping the elements of a middle school education: tight teaming, exploratories, common collaboration time for staff, competency based curriculum and flexible schedules.
This year, we continue to develop several key areas that have guided our work over the last several years.
Social Emotional Learning: Character Strong continues to be our primary tool in developing the social emotional skills and language for our students and creating a culture of care, belonging and character in our building. The “8 Essentials” which include patience, kindness, humility, respect, selflessness, forgiveness, honesty, and commitment are the foundation of character development in our students. Each month we focus on a specific essential with student daily announcements and school wide activities to support this learning.
Communicating Student Learning: More than ever, our students are having conversations about where they are in their learning journey. They are seeking answers to questions such as “What am I doing well?” and “Where do I have room for growth?” All teachers are using common strength based language and students are self-assessing to focus on the learning process. Curricular and core competencies are interwoven with the content, as well as student self-assessment, to guide students with their learning. We have continued our commitment to develop a reporting template that better matches the way students are learning in a more efficient manner. The 'Option A' report card is being used by more staff, and the learning around the use portfolios to communicate learning is one of the priorities for staff development this year.
Increasing Levels of Literacy: During the 2019-2020 year, we targeted our grade 6 students to improve and strengthen their reading abilities and understandings. A collaborative model of support was created through our flexible schedule that enabled additional teaching supports for students who were highlighted in tier 2 or tier 3 through the response to intervention model. This year we have continued to grow our collaborative model of support and reading intervention program. We started the year with our identified grade 7 students receiving reading support while we took the time to assess our new grade 6 students. One of our goals is to have all identified tier 2 and tier 3 readers in grade 6 and grade 7 receive some level of targeted intervention throughout the school year.
Constable Neil Bruce Middle School Improvement Goals 2019-2020
This year we enjoyed our second year as a grade 6-8 middle school. Through the conversations and learning we all experienced, we continued to develop our 
understanding in reaching our targets and goals outlined during the 2018-2019 school year: strengthening our school culture, incorporating the OECD principles of learning, and communicating student learning to move teaching and learning forward.
As a grade 6 learning community, in support of the principles of learning and communicating student learning goals, we analyzed and determined the need for targeting our grade 6 students to improve and strengthen their reading abilities and understandings. A collaborative model of support was created through our flexible schedule that enabled additional teaching supports for students who were highlighted in tier 2 or tier 3 through the response to intervention model. Over the next two years, we are working towards creating a similar support model and data collection process for our grade 7 and grade 8 students.
Constable Neil Bruce Middle School Improvement Goals 2018-2019
After the West Kelowna school reconfiguration announcement in the Spring of 2018, Constable Neil Bruce began the 2018-2019 school year as a Grade 6-8 Middle School. Based on research around supporting adolescents students' learning and growth, we focused our inquiry this school year on the following three goals:
Target 1: To create a culture of care, belonging and character.
Target 2: To create a common research based understanding around how learners learn best through the OECD Principles of Learning.
Target 3: To develop common language around communicating student learning in order to understand how to move teaching and learning forward.
Constable Neil Bruce Middle School Improvement Goals 2016-2018
During the 2016-2017 school year our school improvement goals were somewhat broken into departments or content areas. As we worked through the scanning process , we discovered the demand and need for re-evaluation and recreating our school goals during the 2017-2018 school year.
Target 1: To increase the levels of literacy among all students.
In September, all students (7-9) engaged in a diagnostic reading and writing activity to determine literary strengths as well as areas of growth. As part of the District K-12 Assessment plan, the School-Wide Write was administered and our grade 7 students participated in the Whole Class Reading Assessment.
Based on the data and the resources available it was determined by our grade level leaders, our Collaborative Model of Support (CMOS) teachers and administration that purposeful support time would be provided through our CMOS blocks in support of our grade 7 students in the realm of reading. Our assessment information was able to provide us with teachable reading skills and helped to determine the need for 'good fit' books for our students.
In January, Star Reading was used to determine areas of growth for our grade 8 and grade 9 students. Looking at this data enabled our support team to dig deeper with our Fountas and Pinnell reading assessment kit to determine which grade 8 and 9 students would receive additional support through our hiring of an additional 1.0 teacher.
Target 2: To increase numeracy levels for all students.
Similiar to literacy, our numeracy teachers have determined the need for foundational math support across the grades. Members of our math department met this spring and created a diagnostic assessment that we will use in the fall to determine levels of supports for students mathematically.
Target 3: To improve the students' level of social responsibility.
This was the target in which many of our scanning questions stemmed from. It is here where we, as a school community, will work towards learning how to support middle school students, take action upon our new learning and ideas and check to see if our changes have made a positive impact in the lives of our students and school.
