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February 2024
Churchill news from February 2024
Every month, our school council (CASC) meets to discuss events, fundraising, and other school-related topics. As part of the meeting, our teacher representative provides an update on some of the events that occur in the school. In addition, our principal sends out a weekly email which often includes a bit of information about what's happening around the school. While this post does not capture every event that happened this month, it does provide some highlights as shared by our staff.
A presentation by Masabo!
On Thursday, February 15th the West African group, Masabo, performed for the K-6 students. What an incredible performance! Students and staff alike danced to the incredible beats of the West African group, Masabo. Energy, music, song and story, all woven into a spectacular show.
Yeti (Grade 6) and Cacti (Grade 5) bird sculptures:
The yetis and the cacti have been working on creating three-dimensional bird sculptures. After looking a various birds, they sketched several of their favourites. They then created wire armatures based on their designs. Using cellulose clay they beefed up their birds to make them three-dimensional. In the coming weeks, they will be creating collaborative feather paintings that will be used to decorate these three-dimensional sculptures. Stay tuned for pictures!
Yeti (Grade 6) and Cacti (Grade 5) field trip:
The yeti and the cacti were at McSkimming on Monday and had a fabulous time in the great outdoors. The grade fives were introduced to ways in which the early explorers influenced the First Nations of the (now) Ottawa area and vice-versa. Students were also given the opportunity to further understand the lifestyle and history of the Algonkin or Algonquin First Nations. Students particularly enjoyed the interactive Fur Trade simulation activity which focussed on the First Nations' role in Canadian history.
The grade 6 focus was the Natural Science - Diversity of Living Things which focused on tree identification. Students made their way around the forest (with maps) looking for specially marked trees. Once they found the trees, it was their job to use a dichotomous key to identify them.
News from Yuri and the Wolves (Kinders):
Even though we know that Ottawa will break our heart at least 6 times, it felt like Spring was around the corner. We brought in some plants and veggies that had started growing roots and compared the flowers vs vegetables. The kinder wolves have been working on sorting, coming up with various ways to categorize and sort a collection of items. Luther then discovered that sometimes objects can be both, and so we moved our circles to overlap and have been working with Venn diagrams ever since.
With the Lunar New Year being celebrated by over a billion people, the Wolves are learning and working hard to say Happy Lunar New Year, and not Happy Chinese New Year. There have been some very thoughtful and insightful conversations on how calling it Chinese New Year might make “some people feel sad because they aren’t even Chinese.” and how that perpetuates the idea that all Asians look/are the same. We read Tomorrow is New Year’s Day: Seollal by Aram Kim and we discussed what was similar and what was different about the way Koreans and Chinese celebrate the new year. Then Clara helped model a Hanbok, a traditional dress worn for special occasions. We discussed how we do not call these dresses costumes and we do not ask people to “put on their costumes for cultural theme days” for our entertainment. Some might raise their eyebrows at the content of our discussions but our Kinder Wolves are just incredible, and the way they can communicate their feelings, and empathize with others is goosebump-worthy and makes me have great hope for the future. We are the KinderWolves but we are also mathematicians, scientists, artists, and French-speaking Changemakers.
Dumplings with the Yetis:
Tiiu and Shellie worked with the Yeti’s to make dumplings today. What a fantastic experience for all involved.
Grade 4/5 field trip to City Hall:
Ray's grade 4/5 class had the opportunity to learn more about the government at a municipal level by visiting City Hall and also had a chance to skate on the Rink of Dreams. Here's their report...
It was a long day, but a good day on all levels. We started the day with some instructions in class, before we headed down to catch the bus on Richmond Road. A quick bus trip got us to the LRT, which we rode down to Parliament Station. The excitement over riding on the bus, I was eclipsed by the excitement over writing on the train for sure, but both of those things were highlights of the day in someways for many of the students. When we talked about etiquette for writing public transit, how to get on and off appropriately, how to make space for others. That was a real learning process for many of the students. All day long, they presented themselves in the most responsible way, and represented the school and our community very well.
Once downtown, we made a detour up to Parliament Hill to talk about federal government, so that we could compare it with what we were going to learn about municipal at City Hall. We took a photo with the Terry Fox statue, as well as one with the Stanley Cup sculpture down on Sparks Street that was installed to commemorate the hundredth year of the Stanley Cup. I walk down Elgin through Confederation Park brought us to City Hall, where we met with Jeff Leiper, our local counsellor. Jeff gave us a great tour of City Hall, introduced us to Mayor Sutcliffe, and sara is down in City Hall chambers where he walked us through how counsel works, and how the municipality is governed.
After our time in City Hall, we went outside for a skate on the rink of dreams, which brought more smiles and good times. The walk back to the OC transport and our trip back to Churchill went pretty smoothly thanks to the half of all our volunteers and the good spirit of all the students. Again, students represented themselves very well and it was a fantastic day overall!
Cacti (Grade 5) Core French with Yuri:
Stacey’s class is working hard on creating Fake News biographies about themselves using the verbs aller, faire, avoir and être. We discussed fake news, and how we can be critical thinkers and readers when it comes to fake news. The kids have been tasked with writing 10 sentences, 3 of which are fake news. Once completed, we will trade biographies and the reader will have to discern which sentences are “fake news.”
Owl news:
The Owls have been studying biographies and timelines in Language Arts. They are preparing for the Living Library to present their products. In Art, the Owls have been exploring Alberto Giacometti and his surreal sculptures. They were creating paper mache’ “Igniting heart and other collaborative forms of sculptures for “Migration” sharing
Yeti (grade 6) news:
The Yetis have been thinking a lot about outer space and why we spend money to explore it. They have learned about a lot of spin-offs from space exploration that we get to benefit from here on Earth such as baby formula, sunscreen, and the Internet and our devices. They have also learned about the flip side which includes a pretty big carbon footprint left from travelling to and from, not to mention the space junk and all of the other big problems we have right here on Earth that the money could also go to. To understand it even better, the Yetis have coded Microbits to act as spacesuits as we do a mock mission to Mars. Their spacesuits will be able to track their distance to base camp and alert them about the oxygen levels in their tanks as they take light and temperature readings that they can eventually download for the scientists back home. There was no doubt that the Yetis needed to take a break from all this hard work by making some dumplings to celebrate the Lunar New Year. It was an extra big celebration as they are all dragons (as is Tiiu) so they were sure to celebrate in style.
Tripleball:
Tripleball season will be coming to a close in the next couple of weeks with a staff vs grade 6 game ! 3on3 basketball will be starting after March Break and an alternative tournament is planned for the end of April.
More field trips!
One of the amazing things about Churchill is the connection to the local community and the great outdoors! This week many classes made their way to Dovercourt for some skating and sledding fun. Rachael’s class had their turn to go cross-country skiing at the Kichi Sibi Winter Trails, while the Rays and the Owls ventured a little further out with a day at Gatineau Park.
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