South East Cornerstone introduced new report cards to better assess students in 2010-11, while opening a new school and holding successful meetings with Ministry of Education officials. New report cards created The division changed the way it reports on how students do in the classroom by introducing an outcomes-based reporting system in the fall.
Recent changes to curricula by the Ministry of Education involved the creation of student outcomes. These outcomes indicate what students should know, understand and be able to do by the end of a grade level for each subject. By having clear learning targets, student success increases, as they understand more what is expected of them for an assignment or subject. Outcome-based reporting results in more accurate conclusions about student achievement. The new report cards now use a scale to report student achievement. Students will be Meeting (M), Approaching (A), Beginning (B) or Experiencing Difficulty (E) for an outcome. If there is Insufficient Evidence (I), that shows a student may have not done their work or enough of it. All core subjects in Grades 6-9 now report using the outcomes-based system, along with Grades 1-5 and 10 Math. Since the Ministry of Education still requires a percentage mark for students in Grades 10-12, those will be included in the outcomes-based report cards as well. New school opens in Oxbow It was a joyous and celebratory day for the community of Oxbow and the school division in April, as the new state-of-the-art Oxbow Prairie Horizons School (OPHS) opened with much fanfare. The facility brings together roughly 375 Kindergarten to Grade 12 students in one place, creating an opportunity for older students to act as mentors and role models for younger students.
OPHS is a 5,881-square-metre (63,300-square foot) facility which has a silver certification for being environmentally friendly. All students share a large commons area, gym, multi-purpose room, library and offices.
They also have two new computer labs and wireless Internet. Learning Fair celebrates classroom strategies South East Cornerstone's inaugural Learning Fair was held in May, as 600 division teachers and administrators gathered together to share and listen to successful strategies used in the classroom. Some things educators learned and discussed included: technology; writing examples and rubrics; Science and Math techniques; strategies around Response to Intervention; and different ways of conducting Celebrations of Learning (three-way conferences).
