Developing Scanning Questions
In response to our discussions of our students' strengths and stretches, as a staff we decided to embark on another phase of scanning our students and asking some questions that we felt would give us some important information about the experiences of our students. Previously, our scanning questions consisted of:
- Can you name two adults who care about you and believe you will be a success in life?
- What do these people do that shows you that they care about you?
- What are you learning about in class? What are the big ideas that you are learning about?
- Why is it important that you are learning about this?
After input and feedback from staff, we wanted to specifically look deeper into some of our wonders and what we were noticing about our students. This was also an opportunity to gather some data around how our school focus has been going and the impact it has had on our learners. During a staff meeting in April and in consultation with our Professional Development Committee and our schools ELL / LRT Team, we collaborated and decided upon the following scanning questions:
- Can you name two friends in the school that you can trust your feelings with? (yes or no)
- How many adults in the school do you feel believe you will be a success in life? (none, one, two, three, more than three)
- Do you feel you belong here in your school community of Jessie Wowk Elementary? (yes, no, sometimes)
- What do you need from your school that will help you build meaningful friendships? (open ended responses)
- What do you need from your school that will help you do your best work? (open ended responses)
We were excited to see what our students were going to tell us and what some of their responses would show us about our work around our focus on the Core Competencies and Finding Happiness in Your School Day. We were also curious to find out how the challenges we have faced as a community over the past few years have had an impact on our learners and what we could learn about our students' strengths and stretches that we were observing.