Queen Mary Elementary

Areas of Focus for Queen Mary

Inquiry-based Teaching and Learning
“Inquiry nurtures curiosity and promotes enthusiasm for life-long learning. Effective inquiry encourages students to think, challenge, and extend their ideas; it prompts students to reflect and take action.” (Primary Years Programme: Learning and Teaching, p. 40 IBO, 2019)

Goal Statement: Educators at Queen Mary engage in inquiry action and reflection to develop natural curiosity in students to enable them to relate to, explore, and understand the world around them.

Objectives/Areas of Focus:

-Exploring skills of inquiry in order for students to be actively involved in, and take responsibility for their learning.
-Framing learning to allow students to encourage wondering and curiosity.
-Further developing teaching skills in planning, implementing, and assessing inquiry based learning.

Translanguaging

“Translanguaging is the process by which language students actively draw on all their linguistic resources to communicate and make meaning.” (Primary Years Programme: Learning and Teaching, p. 96, IBO, 2019)

Goal Statement: The Queen Mary school community fosters international mindedness and inclusion.

This area for growth was identified through our previous IBO evaluation visit, and as a result, it is a goal that we have had for the past few years.

Objectives/Areas of Focus:
– Acknowledging, honouring, celebrating, and promoting all cultures and languages within our school community.
– Building relationships with the local and global IB community.
– Providing explicit additional language instruction.
– Using local and global contexts in teaching and learning.
– Focusing on the development of the attributes of the IB PYP Learner Profile.
– Acknowledging and accessing all community members, including Indigenous communities, as sources of wisdom and expertise to enhance learning.

Specific aspects of focus for this year:
– Implementation of the Queen Mary French scope and sequence.
– Increasing opportunities for students to express knowledge and understandings in their home language.
– Use of ICT to facilitate multi-lingual communication.
– Connecting with community members and translation services and to facilitate translation.
– Accessing resources that support multi-lingual communications. (ICT/community members and organizations/texts)
– Increasing classroom and learning connections with multi-lingual parent/guardians.
– Having more of Queen Mary’s community members into classrooms sharing language and culture.

IB PYP Self-Study
In the year prior to an IBO evaluation visit, a school enters into a self-study process, reflecting on the degree to which program implementation is meeting the IBO Standards and Practices. With Queen Mary scheduled for an evaluation visit in October 2024 we are currently working through the self-study process.

The IBO provides schools with the Program Standards and Practices that guide schools in the implementation of IB Programmes. The Standards and Practices are organized into four categories:

Purpose: Captures the school’s  philosophy, mission, strategy and values.
Environment: Includes the school’s physical, digital, and human resources.
Culture: Articulates school policies and how they are implemented.
Learning: Outcomes that result from the school’s purpose, environment, and culture coming together to deliver curriculum through best practice in approaches to teaching, learning, and assessment.

The reflective component of the self-study process includes gathering evidence connected to the Program Standards and Practices. Using a collaborative approach, staff members, students, and representative parents/guardians will be working together over the course of the year to gather evidence to demonstrate how we are implementing/adhering to the IBO Standards and Practices. The purpose of this work is to acknowledge and celebrate areas of strength and uncover areas for future growth.