In our ongoing efforts to improve our school wide literacy, our students and teachers engaged in their fall reading and writing assessments during September and October.

This year, we used four different reading and assessments.

1. school-wide Acadience reading screeners for decoding and fluency,
2. school-wide Richmond Formative Reading Assessment (RFRA) for reading comprehension and fluency.
3. SPARK (Screener for Phonemic Awareness in Richmond Kindergarten) - The SPARK is a phonemic awareness screener for Kindergarten and Grade 1 students.
4. Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) for grade four and seven students, which provide a system-wide measure of students' foundational reading comprehension skills to inform educational planning and resource allocation across the province.

Reading and Writing assessments:

• Identify the strengths and areas of growth for our students. Last year, our assessments showed that our school-wide decoding skills were proficient, but we need to shift the focus of our learning and teaching towards explicit instruction in reading comprehension strategies.
• Track progress over time so we can see if our focus and teaching is providing positive results.
• Inform instruction for teachers to adjust their teaching strategies and differentiate instruction effectively.
• Target interventions by identifying students who require early intervention or specialized support to address specific reading and writing challenges.
• Ensure accountability by tracking achievement and identifying areas where school-wide improvement efforts and resources are necessary.

Overall, school-wide reading and writing assessments are essential tools for promoting literacy development, improving student learning outcomes, and ensuring that all students can succeed.

This year, we continued our journey to improve literacy achievement at Whiteside. Building on last year's spring reading screeners and provincial assessments, we implemented more comprehensive reading assessments this year, evaluating both word reading accuracy and reading comprehension. Every student engaged in oral reading with their teacher and demonstrated their understanding by answering questions about the text. These assessments were conducted consistently in both French and English.

In previous years, we collated fluency and comprehension scores into one data set. By adding additional assessments, we can differentiate easily between different areas of reading and within specific reading comprehension strategies. By collating those scores together, we could analyze our data from this year, compared to the results from the autumn of 2024.

Key Trends and Analysis

1. Significant Success in Middle Years

• The Middle Years experienced the most dramatic positive change, demonstrating major success.
  • The percentage of students in the Emerging category dropped by -10%, and the Developing category dropped by -15%.
  • This shift resulted in a +23% increase in the Proficient category.
  • Overall proficiency (Proficient + Extending) increased by +25% (from 20% to 45%). This group is moving strongly toward the school's long-term goals.

2. Area of Intervention in Primary

• The Primary level shows the largest negative shift, and this area requires immediate attention.
  • The Emerging category saw a sharp increase of +19% (from 27% to 46%).
  • The Proficient category dropped by -15% (from 36% to 21%).
  • Overall proficiency (Proficient + Extending) dropped by -16% (from 38% to 22%).

3. Consistency in Upper Intermediate

• The Upper Intermediate level remained relatively stable with minor positive movement.
  • The Proficient category increased slightly by +4%.
  • Overall proficiency (Proficient + Extending) increased by +3% (from 49% to 52%), showing modest but growth.

4. Overall School Data

• The School (Overall) data shows minor improvement in the top two categories, with overall proficiency (Proficient + Extending) increasing by +3% (from 39% to 42%). However, this gain is due to the strong performance in Middle Years, which is masking the significant regression seen at the Primary level.
• We believe this regression in our primary grades is due to the increase of reading assessments at that level. We are now able to analyze much more data about their literacy scores, which leads us to a school-wide literacy intervention program for primary students.

We look forward to continuing our ongoing reading assessments to track the changes our students make throughout the school year.