place. The focus lessons are based on the grade 1-2 curriculum.

Focus lessons are kept to a

length of about 10 minutes which is what research states is the amount of focus time students at
this age will have before needing a change.

When students are dismissed to a begin a work round she uses a one, two, three breathing
method that works very slick as students move to their work spot in an efficient, non-chaotic
manner. In the spirit of daily 5 students have choice as to where they want to work. Very few
stay at desks as they find more comfortable working areas. Kaitlyn also has a good plan in place
that allows students to book shop to refill their book bins with new books each week. No chaos
here.

Kaitlyn also has some other good routines in place. In the morning students complete their
agendas, check in on the daily five boards, and when finished sit on the carpet with their book
bins and read while others are finished. She also has students sit on the carpet with a “crisscross
apple sauce” which keeps legs and arms in a small space to allow for all to have their own
personal space. Math always starts with calendar time and students know to take their math duo
tangs and marker pen to the carpet. Kaitlyn has some sign language background and has taught
students some sign language that they use when they need to go the washroom or get a drink.
Her willingness to take suggestions to make changes is wonderful. She used to let students go to
the washroom even in the middle of her focus lesson. When I brought this to her attention she
made changes so, unless it is an emergency, they do not miss the important learning from the
focus lesson and with the sign language plan go when it is more appropriate.

Kaitlyn’s classroom is a class that any child would like to be in. To start the year her bulletin
board theme was “Monsters in grade 1-2” with each students name on the picture of a monster.
Through the first half of the year this hallway board is always displaying student work. Teepees
from Social Studies are a good example of this or currently their individual identity posters are
on display. In her room the CAFE menu is in a visual spot and the check-in board for both math
and LA is accessible for students. All of the I-chart posters developed with children is hung on
the wall for regular reference. Rather than just a word wall Kaitlyn has developed work collector
charts that student add words from each of the four core subjects.

Kaitlyn’s classroom organization and management is excellent. Her students have great stamina
and their work independence is very good. She has excellent rapport with her students and has a
classroom that is inviting for all. Her transition times are excellent and every minute of
instruction time is being used most efficiently. She provides positive reinforcement to all of her
students. Her math organizational stackers for each is genius in terms of students having easy
access to materials By having one for each POD and keeping games, student books, supplies
such as pencils, scissors, erasers, sock erasers, math manipulatives and so on makes it very easy
for students to always have materials ready and available. Well thought out.

D. PERFORMANCE AREA: INSTRUCTION

Kaitlyn implements very effective lessons. Through her long, short and daily planning she
ensures that the instructional objective is congruent to the Program of Studies. She adapts ideas
from approved resources and connects them to the outcomes. She likes to use “backward by
design” in which she takes the learning outcomes, matches them to topics and then finds fun,

Teacher Evaluation Summary — Page 3 of 7

interesting, meaningful and hands on ways for students to learn them. Kaitlyn has good lesson
structure. They all start on the carpet with a focus lesson in which she usually makes clear what
the learning objective for the day is. She uses a variety of instructional activities which address
the needs of all students. She tries to bring each lesson to a close either with a summary or a
teaser of what they will be doing tomorrow “Now that we are in Saskatoon, tomorrow we will
—

be trying some Ukrainian food which is commonly found in the area.”

Her math calendar time is impressive to watch. In the 5 minutes of time she takes to go through it
many math concepts are covered and reinforced everyday. Students bring their duo tang with
sheets inserted into plastic so they can be used like mini-whiteboards. She covers concepts like
days, dates, before and after, yesterday, today, tomorrow, patterning, number and numbers sense.
If it is the 64th day of school students have to show how many tens and ones on their
whiteboards. She does a quick scan to see if everyone has got it. Students then have to write the
word. She also had them use tallies to count, by using the groups of fives and ones. She then took
the number and tied it to place value tens and one. It goes on and on and students are engaged,
—

working fast and learning.

Because of grade I in her class she regularly reviews all of the sounds such as ook, ea, or, qu, ed,
ck, etc. her phonics lessons then focus on one or two of these sounds and letter combinations that
make words. Strategies such as “blend and stretch, the “squealy e” or “two vowels go walking”
help student read words that are new to them. Smart board use with students moving words to
different sound quadrants is an effective technique.

As part of her instruction Kaitlyn has done extremely well with Daily 5 and the work stamina she
gets from her students. They accomplish a lot of meaningful work during each round. Students
are reading during read to self a large number of books at their level. They are enjoying the
choice they get during work on writing and utilizing strategies learned from focus lessons. A
couple of examples of this are; Kaitlyn reminds students to “do your best with spelling, guess,
underline the word and move on”. She has students put an X between words so they can learn the
spacing technique needing in sentences. Two great strategies that help students with the writing
process! Another strategy that helped connect subjects was when she had students use a picture
they had drawn in art class as the writing prompt. Different activities for word work that focus on
student needs such as phonics or vocabulary are some other great examples of variety. When
students are reading to someone they are utilizing their “check for understanding bookmarks”.
Students use WADs and classroom computers for listen to read and are very independent at
getting these up and running. She also allows students to use the literacy room that is located
next door. This is a fun room to quietly read, work on writing or us a computer.

Kaitlyn uses other visual strategies to help students understand concepts and tries to keep things
relevant to what they know. During a math observation she used students as the visual aid to
teach the concept of adding 0. Five were sent to the corner. She asked them to add zero students.
Eight were sent to the corner and she asked them to add zero students. She then used higher
numbers in a problem for students to solve “I ate 100 cakes after school and then 0 more. How
—

many would I have?” Besides students being able to give the correct answer some felt
comfortable enough to respond with humor such as “You would be full.” and “You would be
fat”. Kids can be fun. Kaitlyn used this same strategy on another occasion to demonstrate the

Teacher Evaluation Summary — Page 4 of 7

concept of odd and even. Probably the most fun and creative lesson I have observed in a long
time was a recent Social Studies lesson. The students were going to travel from Vauxhall to
Saskatoon and study the different landscapes along the way. Four chairs were made into cars, the
driver with a steering wheel and all students with a luggage folder for writing down things they
see. A Google map was posted on the smart board that showed the route they would take. As
they travelled down the highway she made various stops, by clicking on the map. The satellite
feed would then give a 360 degree view of the area so students could see the landscape, talk
about it and understand the difference between Vauxhall and Saskatoon. What a road trip!

Kaitlyn uses effective questioning strategies. She is always asking questions to stimulate the
learning, reinforce concepts to clarify instructions or to challenge them to a higher order of
thinking. Examples of these would be “What are things you could do? Compare what you wore
outside to what they would wear in Saskatoon? Do we have another group of ten? How do you
know? Show me? Who can tell me why? What do you do?” I think that benchmarking and
running records has also helped her with questioning as the focus on these is to get students to
infer and go beyond the text. Her wait time has also improved as she tries to get all students
involved in responding to questions.

E. PERFORMANCE AREA: STUDENT EVALUATION

Kaitlyn plans and prepares appropriate evaluation strategies. Evaluation is a work in progress as
she tries to develop assessments that monitor student progress for feedback and help her
determine levels of student achievement. Her first report card marks of students in reading were
quite low as she just based them on the benchmark levels. She has since learned that there are
more ways to determine reading levels and that the time of year and curricular outcomes need to
be considered.

Kaitlyn is using the pensieve from Daily 5 for tracking the times she meets with students, the
discussions they have and the goals that are established from the conferences. She is able to meet
with all of her students at least once per week and with those needing intervention on a daily
basis. These conferences have helped her determine course of actions for students, which then
translates into interventions with herself, CSA or high school assistant. She is using the Fountas
and Pinnell intervention program very well, planning for the groups she is assigned to,
conferencing with the assistants and keeping updated on the running records of students in the
intervention. She also has intervention goals and strategies for numeracy. “Close your eyes and
think about what you want to get better at. Now tell me your math goal”. That really can relate to
grade 1 and 2 students. Kaitlyn has become proficient at benchmarking and is currently
conducting midyear assessments to monitor reading growth. She is doing a great job with using
assessments for learning.

Overall Kaitlyn is doing an excellent job with knowing the levels of her students, the concepts
they are struggling with, establishing intervention strategies and setting goals with her students.
The key to her success is that she really has a grasp on her student’s learning styles, strengths
and weaknesses. When she is “stuck” on how to help a child she will seek support from her
mentor, the LST or the PLC team. She is more confident in doing her benchmarking this next
round and will have much better data and information for making informed decisions on report
cards. She uses every moment she can to work with students or provide support from a CSA and

Teacher Evaluation Summary — Page 5 of 7

conferences with them a lot. The running records she does with F and P informs of the progress
or lack of a student is making in reading. She moves on as individuals as opposed to a class,
differentiating for each one. She was teaching a math game to a group of students who knew the
concepts and needed the extra practice. When others are ready for that she will teach them the
game. Just a note of expectation that will help students down the road is to make sure they are
doing work neatly even if writing is just in first draft. This will ensure that neatness and
conventions are a priority in all classes and with all assignments as they go from grade to grade.

F. PERFORMANCE AREA: PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL ATTRIBUTES

Kaitlyn adheres to policies and procedures of the district and carries out her assigned duties.
Based on my experience with Kaitlyn within the breadth of activities in and outside of the
classroom, it appears that she adheres to the Professional Code of Conduct. She also felt it was
important to attend her induction into the ATA. If she has a concern I feel she is able to come to
me or consult with someone without breaching any conduct issues. Kaitlyn conducts herself
accordingly at our staff meetings and is a willing participant.

She promotes a positive perception of VES. She attends and participates in school functions such
as our back to school BBQ, dress up days and climate events. She was a willing participant in
one of our assembly activities. She also volunteered to co coach our boys tier three volleyball
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team. Kaitlyn will be volunteering to judge 4-H speeches, which shows a willingness to be
involved not only in the school community but the community of Vauxhall.

Professional growth is ongoing for teachers and I think that Kaitlyn understands this. She
attended the beginner teacher’s conference which gave her an opportunity to connect with other
new teachers on our staff, in Horizon School Division and around the province. She also
attended the Daily 5 two day conference held in Lethbridge with 6 other school staff of yES.
This was an important conference to help her make sense of launching and utilizing this
structure. She recently attended a one day workshop on best practices of using Fountas and
Pinnell as an intervention tool. The grade K-3 team meets weekly as a Professional Learning
team. Kaitlyn is a strong listener in this group and recently she has shown more confidence to
share her thoughts on the matters at hand. Kaitlyn really makes use of her mentor and the rest of
the K-3 team. She is often “picking the brains” of her colleagues so she can learn and grow as a
teacher. She has a fun side to her as well and was a good sport in singing our School song during
our staff team building exercise.

Summary:

Meeting the Teaching Quality Standard and aligned Performance Criteria described in Horizon
Policy GCN necessitates a sound understanding of pedagogy, instructional strategies, effective
lesson structures, and the Programs of Study. As such, it is expected that a teacher has the ability
to plan and pay attention to details. I am extremely pleased with Kaitlyn’s progress as a teacher.
Her classroom is a great place for students to learn and grow. She has a keen sense of humor that
her kids enjoy. She is to be commended on the tremendous amount of time she puts in after
hours and on weekends. Her attention to differentiation and individual student growth is usually

Teacher Evaluation Summary — Page 6 of 7

only shown from more seasoned teachers. She has taken Daily 5 and Math Daily 3 and utilized
the structures to the benefit of children learning. The variety in her lessons makes them fun and
engaging. Kaitlyn is an important member of the VES team and I look forward to spending more
time in her classroom during the second half of the year and working with her, watching her
continue to grow and get better as a teacher. I might have to board her classroom plane trip to
Iqaluit.

Employee Comments:

Dale Cummings Dat&”

Principal, Vauxhall Elementary
Horizon School Division # 67

Kaitlyn Smith Date

Vauxhall Elementary School
(Acknowledging receipt of report)

Teacher comments:

Teacher Evaluation Summary — Page 7 of 7

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