As a staff, we felt it is the perfect time, and a great opportunity, to survey our students to really see how they are doing. Our School Story Committee developed 6 questions we felt would target the areas we were looking for feedback from our students. The development of the questions were influenced by the book “A framework for Transforming Learning in Schools: Innovation and the Spiral of Inquiry” by Helen Timperley, Linda Kaser and Judy Halbert. 

We wanted to ask our students:

• What do you love about Hamilton? 

• What would you change about Hamilton? 

 • How could you explain to someone how to be a Hamilton Hawk? 

• Can you name two adults at Hamilton who believe you will be a success in life?  

• What are you learning and why is this important? 

• How’s it going with your learning?  How do you know? 

We decided to focus our survey on broad groupings of students from kindergarten to grade 7. We also decided to employ various strategies to ask the questions including individual survey questionnaires, small group “carousel” activities, and large group open discussions as a way to garner a broader and deeper set of data. In the weeks to come, our staff will be looking at this data to determine if there are any ways we can make Hamilton an even better place to learn.