As we begin this academic year at Eric Harvie School, our teaching and support staff are focusing even more acutely on supporting our learners to discover and create the conditions that help their learning to thrive. 

At times this might be as simple as choosing positive, productive peers to work together on a task, finding a preferred seating location in the classroom that helps them to focus or having word/sound walls around the classroom. These supports for learning are described as being universal supports, elements that are present in each classroom and are offered and available for each learner. Our goal in setting up our classroom and school-wide spaces before the school year begins is to establish learning environments that create opportunities for each learner to be successful.

One specific school wide example of how we are creating these conditions is our school wide Ignite learning time at the start of the day. When learners come through the door in the morning, they follow the morning routines of hanging up coats and changing shoes, and then they have an opportunity to choose from a variety of engaging, hands-on learning tasks to help them to start the day. The goals of these tasks are to help learners start a day ready to be curious to learn, to have their mind active to learn, and often to review skills learned in prior lessons in Math or English Language Arts. This strategy is also very helpful if children are feeling reluctant or worried about coming to school, as having an enjoyable, engaging task that they felt successful completing at the start of the day can help prepare them for further challenges in the day ahead.

The next tier of strategies are more specifically linked to individual needs that a learner or group of learners presents. A simple analogy for this level of support would be providing prescription glasses to someone who is unable to see the whiteboard; you would provide the correct lenses for the individual child to see properly, not just provide the exact same prescription to every child and hope that they can see clearly. These are referred to as targeted supports, as we provide a specific support to a learner or group of learners when the assessment data or observations indicate that the support is required.

Here are some examples of these targeted supports at Eric Harvie School:

• Targeted Reading Groups: Starting in a few weeks, we create 30-minute daily reading instruction blocks for each teaching team where we bring in multiple other teachers and support staff to help make smaller groups sizes that target specific reading needs that learners are currently at.

• Spark Program: Spark is a 20-minute physical fitness program offered to students as a support for their Individual Program Plan. The goal is to foster their social/emotional/academic success at school through aerobic activities that will assist them to have better focus for learning. This includes circuit training, core muscle development and high paced dance and occurs during the Ignite learning time.

• Discovery Centres Program: The aim of Discovery Centers is to provide a social opportunity for students to practice skills in a highly supervised environment that reflects the less structured social environments such as recess.   We work to build connections and transfer of skills between what we do in Discovery to other social situations. This takes place near the end of the school day and is adapted programming for learners that need this support.

Our key goal for each learner is to discover what areas we can support in their learning and to help them with developing the tools, skills and understandings that will build these areas of need into a strength. All young learners, and adult learners too, have different needs, strengths and areas of interest. By building towards the goal of engaged, independent learners our hope is to help them to handle any challenge that comes their way in the years ahead!