Student Empowerment

Student Empowerment
At Queen Anne Elementary, we believe that student empowerment ignites student passion and purpose through growth mindset and increased confidence. Our school-wide guiding question is “How are we making a difference in the world?”, and Kindergarten – 5th grade students are encouraged to make an authentic impact in the world each day through school-wide programs, innovative initiatives, student-generated ideas, community projects and a variety of learnership opportunities.

Innovative Leadership Opportunities
Our school motto is: be aware, safe and connected. School-wide expectations are posted on bulletin boards, addressed during regular class meetings and highlighted during Monday Morning Meetings, when our whole school gathers together to build community and focus on learning. As part of our Positive Discipline curriculum, all classes establish clear expectations and classroom jobs, which allow students to feel a sense of belonging and significance by contributing in meaningful ways. Students meet regularly in class meetings to complement, express gratitude and seek solutions to address authentic class problems raised by teacher or students.

Intermediate students can volunteer to be: tour guides, greeters, assembly ushers, assembly MCs, Gratitude Crew. All intermediate students are reading, writing and math buddies and bus buddies. All students can join the QAE Green Team and 2nd – 5th grade students can join QAE Design Team, responsible for designing spaces and decorating bulletin boards. These leadership opportunities ensure that student contributions are meaningful and purposeful.

Global Reading Challenge
Global Reading Challenge is a Seattle Public Library program for SPS 4th and 5th graders. GRC encourages children to have fun and enjoy reading. After reading 10 books, children take part in a “Quiz Bowl” game with students from other schools.

Project Based Learning
In Project Based Learning, students go through an extended process of inquiry in response to a complex question, problem or challenge. While allowing for some degree of student “voice and choice,” rigorous projects are carefully planned, managed and assessed to help students learn key academic content, practice 21st Century Skills (collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity) and create high-quality, authentic products and presentations.

Makerspace
All K – 5 students work in QAE MakerSpace every week, one of the first dedicated elementary makerspaces in Washington State. QAE’s Visual Arts program is provided in the MakerSpace classroom, where students use their visual arts skills to create, design, craft, problem-solve and envision. Student endeavors may be exploratory, skills based, and/or aligned with a PBL project with a curricular-based inquiry question.

Student-Led Assemblies
Intermediate students lead specific assemblies during the year. 4th graders lead November’s Veterans Day Assembly and 5th graders lead January’s Dr. Martin Luther King Assembly and February’s Black Lives Matter Assembly. Our welcoming learning community provides opportunities for every student to develop learning and life skills in addition to academic rigor through Positive Discipline. Common language and approaches help each student to feel safe, connected and valued.

Global Citizenship Traits
Queen Anne Elementary follows Harvard’s Empowering Global Citizenship: A World Course (Reimer). Each month, we will explicitly teach global citizenship traits through stories, class discussions and Monday Morning Meeting presentations:

September: Kind
October: Helpful
November: Determined
December: Responsible
January: Compassionate
February: Caring
March: Flexible
April: Perseverant
May: Honest
June: Confident