The Literacy Coach is  responsible for ensuring that all the resources and research based teaching and learning strategies that she is trained in by the SSDEC are passed on to our staff and used faithfully in the classroom.

Gail has been fabulous at passing  all these resources and information onto the staff. Staff at our school have taken on over one hundred hours of professional development—on their own time after school! This school is very fortunate to have such a dedicated staff!

Parents have been very supportive and students have worked very hard—without their hard work we would not have made the progress we have. After all the parents are the child’s first and main teachers!!.

Vanessa brings many years of experience in testing, assessment , student support plans and developing literacy skills. These are the areas that really support our Initiative because we want to know if what we are doing is actually working!

Vanessa coordinates regular testing of reading levels to help us see clearly how well the students are doing and what specific skills we need to focus on to help each individual.

Literacy Coach—Gail Sajo

PST—Vanessa Saunders

Leadership for Literacy in Lutsel K’e

NWT Literacy Week in the last week of September is always a great success! Students rotate between five different stations, for example: stories and art, putting on a play, posters,  and the ‘Scavenger Hunt” . This year the students spent part of Monday beading as part of our SSDEC “MILLIONS PROJECT”.

This project is being done by all 8 schools in South Slave Region and when it is finished in March 2011 we hope to be entered in the Guinness Book of Records!! All schools are responsible for beading a set number of beads and when it is all finished there will be a length of ‘one million’ beads!!! When it is all put together it will be about 7 kilometers long—it would go from the school out to du Hammel Lake easily!

Gail and Vanessa madly sort beads by colour and students string them. Celine is the checker—making sure each colour is exactly 100 beads long!!