Our focus for our School Story was broadly to improve literacy outcomes for our students. We initially wanted to support our learners develop their identity and continue to foster a stronger sense of belonging at Blair to build their literacy skills. One Action was an extension of our earlier activity of Connecting to a Special Place at Blair: we had students connect to their local place during an Earth Day activity, and use their 5 senses to feel connection to a specific place outside. Our anchor text was Thank you, Earth: A Love Letter to our Planet by April Pulley Sayre.

The attached examples of student work are artefacts of that activity showcasing student identity and connection to place through their senses and documentation, with a focus of strengthening literacy skills.

However, further to our broad School Story, our focus emerged to be how to improve reading outcomes for our students, especially primary students. Our primary Teams worked pointedly with our Kindergarten and Grade 1 students to teach reading strategies. Classroom teachers and Resource/ELL teachers collaborated and team-taught for whole class reading instruction, including read-alouds to model pronunciation and comprehension; small-group instruction on specific activities and strategies; and further targeted intervention for specific students. Whole-class literacy instruction continued daily with renewed focus and teacher collaboration; small-group instruction by classroom teacher or Resource/ELL teacher for 20 minutes reached all students four times per week; and targeted intervention for specific students happened two-three times per week for 20 minutes.