We are proud to announce a new course for parents and caregivers of children aged 4 to 6 who want to learn the core strategies for supporting their child in becoming a reader.
This course ‘Becoming a reader in 75 days’ equips caregivers with the knowledge and sequence of foundational reading skills and provides fun and engaging activities for teaching children at home.
Stronger together
Are you prepared to support the well-being and learning of staff and students as they return back to the classroom? As schools reopen, getting a pulse of students’, caregivers’ and educators’ experiences during this time will be essential to re-engage the school community and drive student learning. We know that you are facing a pivotal point in education and we want to ensure that you have the information necessary to start the school year prepared.
In June we reached out to parents, students, and educators to get a complete picture of what they were experiencing and received valuable feedback. Using this information and the limited research available we have created the new OurSCHOOL ‘Transition Back to School’ module.
Be informed.
We have recently completed a series of interviews with our wonderful customers to explore their experiences of using The Learning Bar solutions. We are proud to share these Educator Insights videos with you.
Find out how educators are using the Confident Learners Literacy Program to make meaningful gains in student literacy and graduation rates and how the Early Years Evaluation and OurSCHOOL are being used to better meet the needs of children, families and educators.
Find out what other educators are doing to improve graduation rates and how they are using data to make meaningful gains in literacy development.
Hear educators discuss how they are using their EYE data to inform classroom instruction and put appropriate interventions in place as children prepare for kindergarten.
School Improvement and Planning
Watch video testimonials from educators discussing how they are achieving positive and practical change in their schools to create an environment where all students can thrive.
Contact us if you would like to find out more.
Webinar: March 11, 3:45 MDT
Join us as we address common instructional questions related to teaching reading and strategies to support students at different stages of reading development. Common questions to be discussed include:
• What are the differences between phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics and why are they important?
• How do children learn to automatically recognize words and read fluently?
• How do we teach children to comprehend texts they read?
A question and answer session will follow.
Participants are encouraged to click on this link and submit their questions in advance of the webinar.
About the Presenter Dr. St. Croix
Dr. Norma St. Croix is an educational consultant and researcher in the areas of assessment and data literacy, professional learning, literacy and numeracy. She has over 20 years of successful teaching experience and 12 years in educational leadership roles in rural and urban schools. For the past 6 years, she’s been working with The Learning Bar, focusing on developing educators’ skills assessing and teaching early literacy skills with the Confident Learners program.
The Learning Bar is passionate about reducing global vulnerability and giving all children the opportunity to thrive. To do this, we provide tools in three primary areas: The early identification of learning needs, the transition from learning-to-read to reading-to-learn, and evidence-based school improvement.
We’ll be there! Contact Christine Hole to connect now.
Webinar: March 4, 3:45: 5:00 EST – Common questions answered!
We’ll be following up the conference with a webinar led by literacy expert, Dr. Norma St Croix, addressing common instructional questions educators have about reading.
For example, have you ever wondered…..
Find out the answers to these questions and more. If you are a literacy lead or an educator responsible for teaching reading, this will be a great opportunity to engage directly with one of our experts. Have a question of your own? Let us know and we will attempt to address it in this or future webinars.
We’ll be at this annual event alongside administrators from the English school boards across Quebec. We met some of you at our April OurSCHOOL Survey workshop at the Lester B. Pearson board offices and are keen to reconnect with you, as well as touch base with those who weren’t able to make it. We had some great conversations about how to dig into and share survey results with the aim of prompting informed discussions around data analysis and incorporating the resulting ideas into your success plans.
Bring your data along and come and discuss using OurSCHOOL to improve outcomes at your school. If you’d like to set up a specific time to meet during the event, please email me directly. We look forward to seeing you there.
“Countries need to build strong foundations for success for each stage of children’s development if they want their education policies to be successful.”
Listen to guest speaker Dr. Douglas Willms talk about inequality and educational prosperity or click the video to the right.
Teachers have never-ending opportunities to provide feedback to students. Amidst all the different sources of feedback students receive, neither marks or grades have the biggest impact on student learning. These matter, but they give students little information as to how they can increase their learning or demonstrate more accurately what they have learned. Written and in-person feedback that is specific to the task at hand has the greatest impact on improving learning outcomes.[1] Feedback, when done well, has a powerful influence on student learning.[2] In fact, research suggests that spending slightly less time teaching in order to provide more constructive feedback increases student learning.[3]
The Business Excellence Awards acknowledges the accomplishments of businesses in the Fredericton area ‐ both members and non‐members of the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce. The Large Business Award recognizes a company with 51 or more employees that has been operational for at least five years and has demonstrated professional integrity, excellence in customer service, success through innovation and a commitment to the community.
The Fredericton Chamber of Commerce hosts the Business Excellence Awards gala annually to recognize and exemplify leadership in the city.
The Learning Bar and the Rick Hansen Foundation have teamed up to help educators assess the level of inclusivity and accessibility within their school environment. Through the collaboration, the OurSCHOOL Student Survey, developed by The Learning Bar, now includes questions of students’ awareness of the barriers facing peers with physical disabilities, and their willingness to take action. The data will enable educators to monitor the success of programs aimed at increasing awareness, accessibility and inclusion. Click here to find out more.
Explore what the world is searching. Enter a search term or a topic.
Validity refers to whether a set of survey questions is measuring what it is intended to measure.
Steps for establishing the validity of an OurSCHOOL measure
Data are analyzed using two psychometric techniques: factor analysis and item response theory (IRT). The analysis provides an indication of how well the questions hold together to provide a measure of a single unified construct, and whether each question contributes to the reliable measurement of the construct.
High accuracy of reported measures is best achieved by having 100% of students participate. However, a reasonable estimate can be achieved by having as few as 30 students participate.
Reliability refers to the consistency of the measurement process and is one of the key criteria for a sound measure of a schooling outcome or school process.
The OurSCHOOL survey only uses multi-question measures, as opposed to single questions as found on most other school surveys. When developing our measures, we take steps to ensure they are the most representative of the construct under investigation. We begin with the broad construct (or domain) – for example, the concept of Anxiety – then we conduct a thorough examination of the existing literature and consult with subject matter experts.
A bank of questions is then developed that are intended to reflect the construct and are rigorously tested. We know that measures are more reliable when they include a number of well-formulated questions as this allows us to more accurately differentiate between students.
School monitoring programs and national and international studies such as PISA provide trailing indicators of student’s outcomes. The primary aim of trailing indicators is to assess changes in system performance across schools and districts, and over time.
Educators need leading indicators to inform timely school policy and instructional decisions. Leading indicator data allow you to not only focus on what is happening in your school now, but also to predict what will happen as a result (e.g. high bullying rates now will lead to high anxiety rates later). Leading indicator data are collected before learning occurs or as it is occurring. They typically employ short tests and administer surveys more frequently. The data can be used to:
We enable schools to continuously monitor several leading indicators that can help guide school policy and practice and assess the effects of school reforms.
The Confident Learner’s program adopts a skills-based, rather than grade-based approach to student learning and instruction. It also includes a structured Literacy Pathway to provide a clear and coherent pathway to proficiency through a sequence of clearly-stated learning outcomes.
Many curricula require students to master a number of poorly-defined skills to demonstrate the achievement of curriculum objectives. Educators must identify the appropriate skills and sequence of instruction that will enable each student to demonstrate proficiency of a given outcome.
The RTI classification includes three tiers, which are based on a prediction model derived from longitudinal data that estimated the likelihood of a child being a successful reader at age 8 or 9, based on his or her EYE-TA domain scores. Children with a greater than 80% chance of becoming a successful reader are classified as having Tier 1 learning needs; those with a 50% to 80% chance of becoming a successful reader are classified as having Tier 2 learning needs; and those with less than a 50% chance are considered to have Tier 3 learning needs. The prediction model takes into account the age of the child at the time of the assessment and his or her skill level in each of the five domains. The results derived from the model weights some skills more heavily than others. Skills in the Cognitive and Language and Communication domains figure most prominently; children’s Awareness of Self and Environment, Social Skills and Approaches to Learning, and Fine Motor skills also contribute to the classification.
An RTI classification is not permanent or necessarily long term, nor is it a label assigned to a child. As children are developing their literacy skills, their progress should be monitored on a regular basis, using a variety of formal and informal tests. In practice, teachers use the domain-specific results to plan their instruction. Schools with more than one kindergarten or Grade 1 classroom can use the RTI score to ensure the prevalence of vulnerable children is evenly distributed among classrooms.
Also, children with Tier 2 or Tier 3 learning needs do not necessarily have a specific learning or intellectual disability. The classification simply indicates that a child may need extra instructional time and resources during the primary school years.
The Confident Learners program provides a rigorous curriculum aligned with teaching activities, assessments and quality professional development. The program covers all pre-literacy to literacy skills required to achieve reading fluency by the end of Grade 3. The foundational model of literacy and language development that the Confident Learners Literacy Program uses, draws upon is the widely recognized and validated ‘Simple View of Reading.’ This model has two critical and complementary dimensions:
Code-related skill: Concepts about print, phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and reading fluency (decoding and spelling, recognition and spelling, speed and prosody).
Language skill: Vocabulary, receptive language, expressive language, and written language.
Children must master both to read proficiently.
Click to view a Code-Related Instructional Activity or Language-Related Instructional Activity.
Join the OurSCHOOL Engagement Team in one of our personalized interactive sessions. Each session was designed to reach all levels of data literacy, meaning you don’t need to be a data expert or statistician to attend. Let our team of experts guide you in finding your data story!
1
PRE-SURVEY
STRATEGY SESSION
2
DATA
DEEP DIVE
3
ASSESSING
YOUR IMPACT
4
BUILDING A
THRIVING SCHOOL
Explore topics such as:
In this year-end online debrief, the
Engagement Team will provide
you with tips and resources you
can use to:
A school is thriving when teachers,
students, parents / guardians, and
the community are working together
toward a common vision of success.
Take a deep dive into your data!
• Data-driven planning,
• goal setting, and
• using survey measures and
custom questions to capture
actionable evidence.
Our experts will:
• Review your data
• present notable highlights, and
• identify areas for further
investigation.
• Review your progress,
• assess the impact of your
implemented strategies, and
• discuss ways to help your team
adjust strategies and set
priorities for the coming year.
In this session you will:
• Explore strategies for how to
engage your whole school
community and build a culture of
consultation and collabora-tion
between all stakeholders, and
• learn how to triangulate the
perspectives of students,
teachers and parents to gain
deep insight into your school
communities' alignment.
• This session is available for
schools that use the OurSCHOOL
suite of surveys (Student, Parent,
and Teacher).
Leave the session with:
Participants will:
• Strategies and resources to
generate excitement for the
OurSCHOOL survey, and
• ideas you can use for a
successful survey
implementation.
• Learn to interpret and share
their OurSCHOOL findings,
• identify areas to celebrate,
• pinpoint opportunities for
improvement, and develop
achievable action plans
for further success.
Leave the session with:
• Knowledge and resources to
assess the impact of your
current strategies, and
• tips and resources for creating
a plan before your next survey
implementation.
* Sessions are available in both online and in-person format with up to 50 attendees. Pricing is based on session details and availability may be limited.
The OurSCHOOL Teacher Survey requires schools to set challenging and visible learning goals for students. Teachers can do this by:
Customized Secondary School Surveys
MEASURES FOR GRADES 7-12
Social – Emotional Outcomes
– Social Engagement – Emotional Health
– Institutional Engagement – Career Pathways
– Intellectual Engagement
Physical Health Outcomes
– Nutrition – Risky Behaviours
– Physical Fitness – Sexual Health
Academic
Outcomes
Demographic
Factors
Drivers Of Student Outcomes
– Quality Instruction – Classroom Context
– School Context – Family Context
Dependent on selected measures within a domain, thematic reports are also available.
Customized Elementary School Surveys
MEASURES FOR GRADES 4-6
Social – Emotional Outcomes
– Social Engagement – Intellectual Engagement
– Institutional Engagement – Emotional Health
Physical Health Outcomes
– Nutrition
– Physical Fitness
Demographic
Factors
Drivers Of
Student Outcomes
– Quality Instruction – Classroom Context
– School Context – Family Context
What does the EYE-DA assess?
Awareness of Self and Environment
A child’s understanding of the world and his or her ability to make
connections with home and community experiences.
Cognitive Skills
A child’s basic math and pre-reading skills and his or her ability to solve problems.
Language and Communication
A child’s understanding of spoken language and his or her ability to express thoughts and feelings.
Physical Development
Fine motor: A child’s ability to perform small movements that require hand-eye coordination.
Gross motor: A child’s ability to perform large movements that involve arms, legs, and body.
What does the EYE-TA assess?
Awareness of Self and Environment
A child’s understanding of the world and their ability to make
connections with home and community experiences.
Social Skills and Approaches to Learning
A child’s attentiveness during classroom activities and their
ability to interact with peers while respecting the classroom rules.
Cognitive Skills
A child’s basic math and pre-reading skills
and their ability to solve problems.
Language and Communication
A child’s understanding of spoken language and
their ability to express thoughts and feelings.
Physical Development
Fine motor: A child’s ability to perform small movements
that require hand-eye coordination.
Gross motor: A child’s ability to perform large movements
that involve arms, legs, and body.
The Confident Learners framework was developed over the course of a three year research partnership with 32 First Nations communities to develop a scalable program, informed by best evidence, and designed to meet the literacy needs of each child, school and community. To outline some of the key challenges we addressed through our research, and evidence underlying the program’s approach and design, we have developed the Confident Learners Program Overview. To receive the Overview directly in your inbox please provide us with your contact details below.
