Intellectual Development

Our students will learn key academic skills - like reading, writing and math - to encompass the knowledge and processes associated with intellectual development. As learners and meaning-makers, students take subject-specific concepts and content and transform them into a new understanding. 

Goals

  • Improve student success in literacy. ​
  • Improve student success in numeracy. ​
Literacy Presentation 2025

Members of our Reading Club, under teacher Ashleigh Wighton, presented our initiatives to improve literacy to the Board of Trustees on October 21, 2025.  Diella and Varun shared their passion for reading and explained three of the ways we are making reading part of everyday activities here on campus. 

RHSS Reads RHSS Reads

Hansen Reads!!  Improving Literacy is a focus at Hansen and our staff and students like to demonstrate that they are readers!!

Read-A-Thon 2025

On Tuesday November 25, 2025 the Rick Hansen Secondary Learning Commons hosted our first ever Read-a-Thon. We locked ourselves away for a full school day of reading in the library to raise money for new library books. 23 students fundraised just over $1200. The students who fundraised help decide which books we will purchase for the Learning Commons collection. Additionally, they will receive one prize book of their choice as a thank you for their efforts. It was a great success and a fun day. 

As we work as a full staff and student community to bolster our literacy skills, some of our Psychology 11 students recently created a podcast about the benefits of silent reading (featuring a few staff voices from the interviews). Listen to our podcast HERE.

Franco-Manie winners Franco-Manie Winners
The Franco-Manie 2024 Tournament ended in November 2024.  The competition ran for 2 weeks and included 8 songs. Students participated in writing, speaking, listening, and reading comprehension activities relating to the songs using a program called Roxxem. Out of 15,000 students from around the world, Hansen Hurricanes nearly swept the top 3...
 
Here are some stats regarding our participants who:
  1. Collectively played 8990 games
  2. Collectively studied over 475 hours of French song lyrics (mostly in their spare time)
  3. Rick Hansen students placed in the Top 5 on every song
Franco-Manie winners Franco-Manie Winners
RHSS Votes RHSS Votes

RHSS students cast their ballots! The Student Vote, running concurrently with the provincial election on October 19 was the result of the socials department engaging students in intense discussions around elections issues with their classes and trying to help students get informed. 

 
School of Business marketing School of Business marketing

Our RHSS School of Business students have designed and created and are now advertising and selling their custom Hurricane Merch!

Celebration of Learning Celebration of Learning

Each year, our students participate in one of two Celebrations of Learning evenings, designed to showcase demonstrations of learning, either as an exceptional project or their Capstone as part of their graduation requirements. The Celebration of Learning Evening typically includes:

  1. Inviting an "authentic audience", including senior administration and trustees, key community stakeholders, and partners from our family of schools to name a few; 
  2. Highlighting our Grade 12 Capstone presentations (January evening) OR a demonstration of learning from across the grades in project-based learning experiences (May):
    1. There are 3 different opportunities to participate in this event to showcase their learning to the community:
      1. display table to engage the public 1-on-1
      2. semi-formal presentation to a small group of people
      3. mainstage presentation to a more formal and larger gathering of audience
  3. Live music from our RHSS music students
  4. Snacks made from our RHSS culinary students