The board members attending the April 17 business session of the South East Cornerstone Public School Division received an updated comprehensive report on the division's intensive needs students from Cindy Tenold, the division's co-ordinator of student services and Tracey Kiliwnik, co-ordinator of learning supports.
The two educators told the trustees the division is currently tending to the educational needs of 268 young people who require additional supporting services that will enable them to succeed. Kiliwnik noted that, for example, there are 58 students who are diagnosed as autistic, and there are dozens of others with varying degrees of diagnosis and assessments that make them eligible for additional programming.
Tenold said classroom intervention is usually the highest in the Grade 9 and Grade 3 levels with mathematics and reading fluency interventions being quite common. She said their studies have concluded that daily intervention in smaller doses often provides better results than more infrequent pullout sessions of longer duration.
Kiliwnik shared information regarding universal screening practises and sharing overall data with other schools and divisions. She noted that on the large assessment scale, the Grade 1 students have been registering a bit weaker in reading skills this year compared with other years, and provided a graph showing how improvements are being made at the Grades 1, 2 and 3 levels as poor readers turned into competent readers by the time they reached Grade 3.
Tenold explained the levelled literacy intervention (LLI) program to the board members, noting that educational kits for the teachers are now available for kindergarten to Grade 4 levels.
The two teachers/consultants explained there is a trend emerging that shows how the number of weeks of intervention at the early stages compares with succeeding weeks. The monitoring reports indicate how the effectiveness slows and then levels off by the 25th week. They noted, for example, there is hardly any significant progress in the first four weeks, and then strong progress is usually spotted between Weeks 5 and 9. They said there generally is a leveling off in skill building from Weeks 13 to 16 and then progress again until Week 25. After that there tends to be leveling off or drop in skills and attention.
"That indicates to us that LLI is not for everyone, especially after 25 weeks," Tenold said. So far the consultants have tracked some students for as many as 61 weeks.
Referrals for the intervention programs are made through interprofessional agencies including educational psychologists and pathologists.
Kiliwnik also touched on progress being made in the English as another language classes that involved 223 students last year and is now at 257 for this academic year. She noted, as an example, there are 30 EAL students enrolled at ECS compared with 21 last year and another 27 at Hillcrest School where there had been 17 before and 19 at Weyburn Comprehensive School, an increase of seven.
Tenold said a $10,000 EAL grant has been used for assessment tools, and they have since fielded 11 requests from other school divisions to share their assessment kit. She said strategy sharing among the schools across the province will be a key to success.
Kiliwnik also shared information on a new multi-tiered software package they have implemented to track and communicate their findings, and that allows personnel at all levels in all schools to provide input, which will help them plan future skill-building techniques.
"There are better paths to better behaviour, but there are no shortcuts," she said.
Tenold said the new software provides quick reference snapshots along with basic information as well as being an effective recording system. She went through each tab reference to illustrate how the system worked and lent efficiency to their programming.
Cornerstone's board chairman Harold Laich wondered out loud if the time spent entering data was detracting from time spent with the students, but Tenold assured him that data gathering has always been a part of the necessary chores, and this system made it more efficient and quicker to access for administrators.
The intervention programs involve students throughout the division that consists of 38 school facilities, 8,200 students, 550 teachers and educational support staff.
