Kerrisdale Elementary Annex is an early primary school for the English Program Kindergarten to Grade Two students in the Kerrisdale Elementary School catchment. The students and staff are fortunate to be learning and growing together at a school with a beautiful outdoor learning space, situated next to Malkin Park, that includes an expansive field, trees, a playground and a large under covered area. This outdoor space is used extensively to extend and enhance student and community learning. With deep gratitude and respect, we are honoured to be learning and unlearning on the ancestral and unceded lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) and the students make this acknowledgement daily during our morning announcements. The school currently has five divisions with ninety-six students in attendance. Fifty seven percent of Kerrisdale Annex students are English Language Learners with Armenian, Bengali, Cantonese, Croatian, Kurdish, Turkish, Dutch, Korean, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Mandarin, Persian, Filipino, Spanish, Vietnamese and English among the first languages spoken by our families. Less than ten percent of the students have a ministry designation.

Kerrisdale Annex provides a safe learning environment where all staff know the names of the students and work together with the children to create a sense of belonging that respects and nurtures the development of the whole child as outlined as a primary goal in the District’s Education Plan. The staff work collaboratively to build strong foundations in Literacy and Numeracy, and this year they are also focused on strengthening the social emotional wellbeing of the students. Emotional literacy is explicitly taught, and students are called on to support each other in creating a home away from home where all are happy to spend their days. Effective classroom literacy programs are supplemented with our Reading Recovery Program and our One-to-One Reading program which currently benefits from 2 community volunteers. Opportunities for student leadership include daily announcers, MCs at assemblies and playground helpers. Opportunities for curricular and extracurricular enrichment are available and over a third of our student population were on the cross-country team and are presently involved in floor hockey intramurals twice a week after school. The library is open to students and their families on Wednesday afternoons, and you can see parents, grandparents and caregivers enjoying a book together with their child/ren.

Kerrisdale Annex is a tight knit community with actively involved families and a hard-working PAC that is striving to provide fun, entertaining opportunities to build further connections within and between Kerrisdale Main School and the Annex as families often straddle the two campuses.