Since the beginning of the school year staff have been learning more about "what is going on" for our students at Thomas Kidd. At the January Professional Learning Day, staff had an opportunity to look at student scanning questions, Grade 4 and Grade 7 Numeracy Foundational Skills Assessments (F.S.A) and Term 1 numeracy proficiency in written updates.

Staff noticed that almost 50% of those that participated in the student scanning questions, indicated that they liked numeracy because they were good at it or they enjoyed working with numbers. Students also indicated that they found numeracy hard, they just didn't like it, made them frustrated or it was confusing.

In Grade groups, staff also looked at Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) data for Grade 4 and Grade 7 and learned that 13 students in Grade 4 and 7 demonstrated an emerging understanding which represents 38 percent of the student who participated in the FSA. In addition staff also learned that 23.5 percent of students were at emerging or developing competency in numeracy as reported through the 2024 term 3 written updates.

Given this information Thomas Kidd staff feel that it is important that the school focus should be on numeracy with an emphasis on how can we continue to make math more engaging for students at Thomas Kidd so that they develop a growth mindset towards it and also learn to be more numeracy resilient. 

Some questions that will guide our focus include.

How do assessment practices impact student attitudes towards numeracy?

What instructional routines or practices are we missing in the area of numeracy that we could implement that would shift students perspectives and attitudes towards numeracy?

How can we better support students in numeracy, especially in Grade 4, to help them feel more successful?

Why is there a discrepancy between gender in numeracy performance?

How much of a role does language impact proficiency and how can we support students in understanding the “language of numeracy.”

Our next steps are to create a plan for the 2025/26 school year that supports our focus. The plan will incorporate actionable items as well as ways of monitoring progress made towards the focus.