Happy New Year and Welcome Back!
1. Our First Ever Winter Activity was a huge hit! Photos and a student perscpective will be posted soon. We spent the day snowtubing and show shoeing on Cypress. The morning snowtube group attempted to break the record of the most tube ‘rafted’ together coming down the hill, however with the fresh snow the afternoon group became groomers for the runs and may have come closer to the record. Thank you to all the parents who drove and participated! Your support makes these trips possible!
2. Empires Project due dates have been announced for the grade 7’s – please ask your son or daugther about these. Students are working on a total of 4 tasks about different types and characteristics of Empires.
3. We welcomed back Mrs Simcox, our teacher candidate from UBC. She is working with us for two weeks and then will be back in March. She is currently teaching the grade 6’s an integrated language art and science unit.
4. Students have started a new unit in Health and Career Education (HCE) and watched “The Future of Food” this week. We have begun the conversation about patenting seeds, Mosanto, genetically modified foods and some of the legal issues that have happened over the past 10-15 years.
5. Literature Circles are on hold for the first two weeks of January. Please ask your son or daughter to show you their feedback on the first 4 responses. We’ll revisit the responses and have more mini-lessons on pre-writing and proofreading.
6. For January, Math 7 & 8 are being taught in a more structured lesson format. Ms. Abbot & Ms. Moody are teaching the geometry units and the concepts in these units are new concepts that students have not likely encountered and are more hands on than other units. Students will be able to return to self-paced math, when the geometry units are completed.
7. Grade 6/7’s are reading selected chapters from David Suzuki’s “Sacred Balance”. They are learning strategies for reading non-fiction and exploring Suzuki’s perspective on sustainability through the topics of air, water, soil and energy. The chapters are going to be challenging for students to read and understand and they will need to use graphic organizers and other strategies to work through the chapters. This will be hard for some of the students who have always been able to quickly read a passage and fully understand it.
8. Do you know which Exploration your son or daughter is in this term? Students are currently in the second exploration class for this year and each class is doing exciting projects.
9. Information Nights for TALONS and IB happened this week for Grade 8 students. Application information is now available and deadlines are approaching. Please check on the google calendar for upcoming dates for Honors Exams, School Visits, Application Deadlines etc ….
10. Edmodo is back up and running after a Winter Holiday Break. Please ask your son or daughter to show you how we use this online tool in our classes. If you would like to set up a parent account, please email Ms. Abbot for your parent code.