Rachel Primeau: Technology for Everyone

Year: 2021 — Province: Quebec
Certificate of Achievement Recipient

Saints-Martyrs-Canadiens School
Grade 2
Montreal, Quebec

Quote

“It’s such a pleasure to collaborate with Ms. Primeau and to discover a teacher who is committed to her student’s development and success. She is adept at integrating digital culture and creativity into her teaching. Working in a multi-ethnic environment, she encourages young people to respect each other and to iron out their differences. The play she puts on with the children is a great example of teaching good citizenship and community involvement. Her way of integrating the arts and sciences through a creative project demonstrates her leadership as a teacher. Ms. Primeau is a role model. She leads young people towards success, curiosity, collaboration, and greater self-esteem.”

Artist

Educational approach

Rachel's educational approach focuses on one essential element - personal commitment. Through her involvement with the children and her one-on-one approach, she fosters exceptional growth in her students’ knowledge and skills. By diversifying her classroom projects, going the extra mile and securing the necessary funds to carry out her projects, her students benefit from a wide range of learning opportunities while staying motivated and eager to further develop their knowledge.

In the classroom

During the pandemic, interpersonal issues were observed in the Grade 2 students, so it became critical to find effective solutions to maintaining and developing their social skills in order to enrich community life. Rachel was able to bring together professional resources such as the school's special education technician. Over time, by valuing the strengths of each student, taking the time to converse with the children, orchestrating activities like robotics and theatre, things improved. Her efforts helped the children open up to others and avoid the negative effects of isolation, an ever-present threat caused by pandemic-related confinement measures. These efforts also enabled improving her group's development, while maintaining high quality educational standards and a high level of motivation in her students, an essential aspect of academic success.

Exceptional achievements

While reading may be the most important part of learning in a school environment, a high percentage of students have significant challenges in this regard. Through weekly follow-up sessions, inviting parents to follow-up at home, and with the participation of parent volunteers and guardians, all of the children in Rachel's class dramatically improved their reading skills. Rachel implemented assessment tools to track her students’ reading progress, including recordings at the start and end of the program in order to quantify the results of her approach. On average, students with reading problems went from a 34% rate in decoding errors to an 4.75% rate and their reading speed increased from 20 words/min to 69 words/min.

Get in touch!

Saints-Martyrs-Canadiens School
9920 Parthenais Street
Montreal, QC H2B 2L4
(514) 596-5560
Email: stmartyrs@csdm.qc.ca
Facebook: @ commission.scolaire.de.montreal