http://www.newt.k12.nf.ca/

The preliminary strategic goals of the newly constituted Eastern School Board are as follows:

1. To challenge and develop the learning and achievement capabilities of each student in Eastern School District.
2. To provide safe, caring learning environments in all schools in the Eastern School District.

This school report provides you with information about your school= s performance during the school year 2005-2006. It allows you to assess how well your school and its community are doing toward accomplishing the goals set by the Eastern School Board. It allows you to learn about the school and its challenges and successes, and it provides insights on how you might be able to better support your school.

Eastern School Board is proud of the accomplishments of all schools within its jurisdiction. As a result of many dedicated professionals, parents, and community volunteers, our schools continue to provide excellent educational opportunities for our students. However, if we are to maximize our efforts in the achievement of the above noted goals, the Eastern School Board, district professional support personnel, teachers, parents, and school communities will have to work together to ensure that each student= s learning is supported to the extent necessary to ensure success. Some students will require more time and effort from parents, teachers, and other supportive members of the school community. They will need to spend more time than others on their own learning and teachers will have to provide alternate teaching interventions for them. If we are to succeed in our goal of ensuring success for each student, our school communities will have to be more committed to education than ever.

During the 2006-2007 school year, Eastern School Board will engage all district partners in a comprehensive strategic planning process that will set direction for the future. Your input in developing the Board= s strategic plan is important because that plan will impact each school and each student= s learning experience. We encourage you to participate in the quest to improve educational opportunities for our children and our youth and to advocate for public education at every opportunity.

The information contained in this report provides an overview of our school and the school development initiatives that have been ongoing during the 2005-2006 school year. As well, you will find tables that display summaries of our students’ performance on the Provincial Primary and Elementary Assessments for the last number of years. If you study them with care you will be able to see a picture of how our grade three and six students did on various aspects of the tests from year to year. You will also be able to make comparisons between the performance of our students and those of the district and the province in any given year and over time. They indicate that our students are some of the highest achieving in the district and province. I believe that their accomplishments are the result of the wonderful mix of talented students, supportive parents and caregivers, and dedicated and knowledgeable staff members that make up the Newtown Elementary School Community.

The Provincial Assessments are based on the curriculum outcomes, which tell teachers what students should know and be able to do as a result of each unit and grade level. The results attained by our students on these government tests constitute one important piece of information that we use to measure the impact of the curriculum outcomes and our practices on student learning. Classroom assessments complement these results. Taken together they help us answer critical questions about the standard of learning we want students to demonstrate as they show they are mastering the outcomes, as well as how individual students and our students as a group are achieving. Our special education services team provides additional support when we identify students who are experiencing difficulty. Teachers at Newtown work together to clarify what students need to learn and develop common strategies to assess learning. Through their ongoing work together and professional development experiences they identify new practices they can implement to raise student achievement levels. Assessment and testing results provide them with evidence about whether our programs and practices are working. We are also concerned that our school has a positive learning environment where everyone is treated with care and respect. Through our curriculum and school activities we also try to promote positive social behavior, beliefs and values.

The activities described here are those that members of a professional learning community perform. They also describe the school development process in action. In order to maintain this systematic approach to school improvement teachers need practice with the collective reflection and problem solving required. This is done through repeated cycles of review, goal setting, implementing and monitoring. As you read this report you will see aspects of how the school development cycle has been operating at Newtown during the last year and how it will continue in 2007-2008.

I am pleased to contribute to this report on behalf of your School Council. I would like to say thank you to Council members Jerry Rice and Nadine Perry, who along with myself were your elected parent representatives, and to Jody Saunders and John Dinn, who were our appointed community representatives. Gillian Pelley and Elizabeth Burden, our teacher representatives, along with the school administration provided valuable information from a staff perspective about daily activities and parent concerns as we discussed issues and made decisions. We were involved in a variety of activities during 2005-2006. We conducted a number of fund raising initiatives, which enabled us to continue giving each teacher $200.00 for instructional materials, give annual support to our technology renewal plan, put more books in our Learning Resource Centre, continue Spirit Day and add music and physical education resources. We also purchased more outdoor play equipment, which was not installed for the fall because of late arrival but will be in place for spring. We were also involved in reviewing a Safe and Caring School Policy that is being developed for Newtown. As well, we gave attention to the efforts of staff to make improvements in mathematics teaching and learning. These are but a few of the issues we were involved in this year. There are many wonderful things happening at our school and we know they would not happen without help from the many dedicated volunteers who help all the time or for special events. On behalf of our school community I offer heartfelt thanks to all of you. Finally, please remember we are there to represent you and we welcome your questions and comments, so please make us aware of them.

Newtown Elementary School is a school in the community of Mount Pearl, which is part of the Eastern Region of the Eastern School District. During the 2005-2006 school year we maintained an enrollment of about 480 students. Our classes generally ranged in size from 20 to 25 with the exception of our Intensive Core French class, which had 30 students. We had the services of 20 regular classroom teachers making four groups at kindergarten and three classes in grades one to six. We also had the service of full time teachers for music, physical education and guidance. Three and one half special education teaching units were assigned to our school. Three student assistants were assigned to provide further help for some of our students. We also had a half time teaching unit for our Learning Resource Centre. District itinerant services for band, speech language pathology, hearing impaired and educational psychology also provided support to our students and staff. Our very valuable school secretary and three maintenance staff round out those working at Newtown.

Students are able to complete kindergarten to grade six in English at Newtown Elementary. Core French is taught as part of the program from grades four to six, but we do not offer French Immersion. Intensive Core French programming is offered in one of our three grade-six classes. Our school program is based upon a curriculum, which is prescribed by the Department of Education and identifies learning outcomes for students in the different subject areas for the various levels of school, namely primary, elementary, intermediate and high school. The outcomes for each level provide teachers with specific direction about what students are expected to know, understand and be able to do as a result of instruction at the various grade levels. When teachers assess students in the classroom they are actually calling for each individual to demonstrate his or her knowledge, understanding and proficiency with the various curriculum outcomes. Our special education program provides additional support for students who experience difficulty and their teachers. Provincial criterion-referenced tests (CRTs) are also administered to students at certain key stages of their schooling such as the end of primary in grade three and elementary in grade six to assess how individuals are doing with some of these outcomes. The performance of each school, district and the province as a whole on these tests is also reported.

A variety of other learning opportunities are offered at Newtown to complement those related to the provincial curriculum. Our community, Mount Pearl, is known for providing children with many programs related to sports and athletics and we mirror these activities at school. In addition to making optimal use of time in each cycle for the physical education curriculum students are able to participate in extra-curricular sports such as track and field, basketball teams beginning in grade four, baseball and soccer. These activities involve some competition with other district schools and in invitational and provincial tournaments. Mount Pearl Frosty Festival events are a highlight of the school year. We work closely with some of the community sports associations such as those for basketball and soccer and they in turn help with our school program and facilities. Lunchtime games are also held at different times throughout the year. As well, our School Council has provided considerable support to enhance our school grounds to give students more variety in outdoor play choices.

Our school program also includes a number of opportunities for arts activities through and beyond the music and art curriculums. We do have many resources on hand to ensure that classroom activities in these areas are rich and varied. Art projects from different classes are on public display at all times. We have our own art collection at the school made up of different pieces purchased to recognize retiring teachers and art produced by our grade six students each year. Students in grade five and six are able to participate in the district band program. Students from grades three to six can become a part of Junior or Senior Choir. As well, students in grades four, five and six are able to audition for our Show Choir, which takes on more difficult pieces and requires a greater commitment for practice and performances. We have worked with the Anna Templeton Centre for a number of years to offer art and drama classes during lunch and after school for interested students. The Barbara Ashley School of Dance offers a lunchtime class at our school as well. All students participate in a variety of performances through regular assemblies and concerts that go on at different times in the school year.

We continue to give attention to creating a learning environment for our students that is stimulating and challenging, but also supportive and nurturing for each individual at the same time. In part we attempt to do this through the program offerings describe above but ongoing development of a Safe and Caring School Policy that is meaningful and practical is also much involved. We take a positive approach to supporting student behaviors and are implementing specific programs such as DARE, I Care and Peer Mediation as part of our culture. We also have a successful prefect program that involves our grade six students providing support for our kindergarten to grade two students during non- instructional school times such as recess and lunch. Other initiatives such as grade five recycling helpers and buddy reading promote helpful and caring attitudes among our students.

It is the combination of thoughtful teaching and learning curriculum experiences coupled with the variety of other learning experiences described here that makes up the program at Newtown Elementary School. During each school year we try to give attention to all the types of experiences we can offer to enable our students to grow both academically and personally.

The tables presented here provide a summary of the results attained by grade three and six students from Newtown Elementary, the district and the province on the criterion-referenced tests written since the spring of 2001. They also illustrate the ongoing development of the Provincial Primary and Elementary Assessments. As new curriculum guides and resources were introduced at the two levels first in English language arts and then in mathematics tests based on the outcomes expected for students in these areas were developed, administered and scored under the direction of government personnel. The results as they are presented here provide a means of comparing how students from Newtown performed in relation to those from the district and the province each year including the 2005-2006 school year, as well as in relation to Newtown students from past years. These results provide us with some important information that enables us to assess the effectiveness of our school programs and practices on the basis of their impact on student learning and how effective we have been in achieving intended results.

The Provincial Primary and Elementary Assessments written by our grade three and six students in June 2006 assessed student performance related to the three strands of the English language arts curriculum, namely listening and speaking, reading and viewing, and writing and other ways of representing. All strands of the mathematics curriculum, namely number concepts / number and relationship operations, patterns and relations, shape and space, and data management and probability were assessed. As you compare our results over time you will see evidence of how the tests have been revised over the years. In English language arts you will see that the narrative section of the reading was deleted in June 2006. In an effort to make the tests meaningful but able to be completed in a reasonable amount of time students were not asked to deal with narrative or story type text but they were asked to deal with informational, poetic and visual (poster / picture) texts. As well, they now just complete a demand writing piece, which involves giving them a prompt and a set amount of time to finish writing as part of this test. At one time all students also completed a process writing piece that had them writing to a prompt but revising and editing over several writing periods on different days as part of the Assessment. Process writing is now completed in March and the work of only a small number of randomly selected students from each school is submitted to the Department of Education and scored for their information. These results are not reported to schools. Some changes were also made to the mathematics sections of the test, which can be seen in the grade three results. The newest mathematics resources were introduced in grade six in 2005-2006 leading to a mathematics section being added to the grade-six test for the first time.

Both the Primary and Elementary Provincial Assessments contain multiple choice items which are marked right or wrong, and open constructed responses which are scored using a variety of rubrics. Rubric scores range from levels one to five with level three being the accepted adequate standard and levels four and five being above that. Results for each type of item for the various outcomes are shown in the summary tables. The percentage of multiple choice items correct for our school, district and province is listed. The percentage of students to attain levels three and above and levels four and above is also shown. Review of the summary tables indicates that our students generally perform better than those of the district and the province do but their overall range of performance is similar to that of the district and province from year to year. We are particularly pleased with the numbers of our students that are at level four and above in many areas. Our students continue to do well in mathematics. Even though the results during the first year of mathematics in grade six during 2005-2006 were not what we would want, compared to the overall district and provincial results our students performed well. Their performance provides us with a solid base from which to develop improvements in teaching and learning within the new mathematics program.

Reform of the mathematics curriculum for students in Atlantic Canada has taken place under the auspices of the Atlantic Provinces Education Foundation (APEF) to provide them with the opportunity to become mathematically literate in ways that will equip them to understand and apply mathematics in an increasingly complex society. This curriculum is based on several key beliefs about mathematics learning that come from research and practice and are articulated in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) document, Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (2000).

The philosophy and outcomes of the Atlantic Canada mathematics curriculum defines a mathematically literate student as one who:

• appreciates the utility and value of mathematics

• demonstrates confidence and competence in doing mathematics

• is a mathematical problem solver

• can communicate and reason mathematically.

As well, the curriculum reflects the following realities about mathematics:

• students must do mathematics to learn it

• mathematics instruction needs to be regularly connected to meaningful applications because it is a way to interpret the world

• mathematics and its instruction have been greatly affected by technology.

Curriculum outcomes for the current mathematics program are organized in terms of four content strands:

1. number concepts / number and relationship operations

2. patterns and relations

3. shape and space, and

4. data management and probability.

These strands are defined in terms of key-stage curriculum outcomes to be accomplished by the end of each school level up to high school. To help accomplish the vision of mathematically literate students graduating, the content strands are infused with four unifying ideas to create the key-stage outcomes. These unifying ideas, which permeate the mathematics curriculum and reflect the NCTM process standards are as follows:

1. problem solving

2. communication

3. reasoning, and

4. connections.

The organization of the curriculum around content and process standards informing each other indicates that the current program is based on the belief that how mathematics is taught is as important to the development of mathematically literate students as what they are taught. An important challenge of the current mathematics program for students, teachers and parents / caregivers is contained in the idea that what students learn is fundamentally connected to how they learn it. Our academic goal related to mathematics teaching and learning has been written to identify for everyone involved our desired results for Newtown students in mathematics education over the next two years. The objectives, and strategies to accomplish them, for the next school year are a more specific expression of what we will do to meet our goal and a commitment to how we will work to achieve our stated objectives during 2005 – 2006.

Teachers at all grade levels will work to develop their own practical understanding of the show, share and compare teaching model and the communication standard as described in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) publication Principles and Standards (2000) and apply this standard in their mathematics teaching.