Instructional Focus

Instructional Focus

Once again this year, Mount Pleasant School, along with several other Edmonton Public schools, will be involved in a special project: Using Assessment for Learning to Enhance Student Achievement. This provincially funded Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI) project will support and enhance our instructional focus work. Teachers will work collaboratively to enhance their skills in using assessment as a tool to provide information for improving teaching and learning.

We will continue to focus on improving our students’ abilities to use higher-order thinking skills across all subject areas.  We will also continue with the following best practices:

·         Developing metacognitive awareness

·         Use of questioning strategies

·         Improving problem-solving

·         Vocabulary acquisition, and

·         Writing – We are continuing with our emphasis on seven key writing traits this year. These traits include:

Ø       Ideas

Ø       Organization

Ø       Voice

Ø       Word Choice

Ø       Sentence Fluency

Ø       Conventions

Ø       Presentation

Student progress in writing will be measured by three different writing prompts administered at intervals over the course of the school year: the first in October, the second in February, and the third in April.