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Chute Lake Elementary
Oct 11
What's New at CLE


DSC03995.JPGWhat's New Educationally at Chute Lake?

Thank you to all of the parents who joined us during our parent information night during the first week back in September.  The evening was well attended!! If you were unable to attend, please click on this link for our video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ju6wivdrDA&t=3s



You have probably heard from your children that we are working in learning communities or pods.   We have several learning communities at Chute Lake: K, K/1, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5 and 5/6.  All of our classroom teachers and support teachers work together to better improve the learning environment of our children.  Learning communities are beneficial to our teaching staff allowing them to plan, teach and reflect on their practice in rich ongoing discussions.  Teachers have the ability to work in combined groupings or just with their students.  Rich instructional opportunities are then created providing students with more voice and choice in their learning.  Collaborating also allows our students opportunities to be mixed in rich educational experiences with others in their grouping and to be led by different teachers in their pods.  Teachers are then able to meet individual student needs and to discuss how to better improve student learning.

Our teaching is based on seven learning principles.  These principles are founded after ten years of extensive research from the OECD (The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development):

  1. we make learning central to the students to engage them.

  2. learning is social and we encourage cooperative work

  3. we are in tune to students Social-Emotional learning, mind-set, and motivation and
    how this affects children

  4. we need to be sensitive to learner differences

  5. we challenge learners- not too little and not too much and that we recognize hard work and effort.

  6. we work to provide clear expectations and descriptive feedback.

  7. we promote connections across subjects, community and the wider world.

We no longer use only "Stand and Deliver" as our primary means to instruct students.  We use inquiry to drive our instruction meaning we want students to think critically, ask questions, explore, ask more questions and then further explore.

We have also been modifying our physical environments in the building to make learning inviting and personalized for student needs.  For example in many of our classrooms, loft area, and library we have unique furniture like tables that connect together, various sized stools,  bean bags, comfortable seating sections,  etc. to provide students with options for learning.  We also have traditional desks/tables for students who prefer this for focus.

We follow the BC redesigned curriculum.   Our curriculum reflects the world-wide expectation of today and beyond.  Our curriculum has both core subject and core competencies:  communication, creative thinking, critical thinking, positive personal and cultural identity, personal awareness and responsibility and social responsibility. The emphasis on the core competencies is what drives us.

Sometimes we teach core subjects in isolation and at other times through integration.  Using  "Themes or Big Ideas" to integrate various subjects (i.e. reading, social studies, science, math etc.) allows students  to delve into real world issues or topics relevant to them. It also allows learning to be engaging both collaboratively and in personal investigation which values students' diversity and personal interests.  Students are then motivated and curious in what they want to learn so we expect learning to look differently.

We are also in alignment with BC Quality Assessment Practices and are working towards a strength based rating scale encouraging students in their learning.  We continue to strive for improvement in this area of our reporting.

We value parental involvement and have had many opportunities for parents to come into our school in an instructional capacity (Learning in Depth, for example).  This has been very honouring of student achievement as well as their social and emotional success.  We highly value all parental involvement and volunteering in our school.  Parents work tirelessly in our school to enrich students, staff and families.  We thank you immensely for everything you do for our school.


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