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With the month of May upon us students will begin to complete projects, units of learning, Norval trips, spring sports and start thinking about the summer. As you will read in this week's edition of Heads Up, our Prep students and teachers have been very busy on all fronts! Mental Health Awareness Week is next week. This is a great opportunity to discuss the end of the year and reflect with your child on how the year has gone. Have they achieved their goals for the year? What can they do to finish strong and stay focused? What can they do in the final weeks to prepare for next year?  What support might they need? We are also prompting this kind of reflection at school and encouraging students to enjoy the excitement of the many culminating activities we are anticipating over the next month and a half. 

Your partners in learning,

Julia Kinnear, David Girard and Gareth Evans

The Prep Leadership Team

PYP Exhibition update

It’s crunch time for the PYP Exhibition as Year 5 students consolidate their research, build their websites, complete their design “teaching others” projects, put the finishing touches on their Arivism, work on French messages, take action, and begin to develop the pitch you will hear when you visit next week.  

We look forward to hosting Exhibition Day visitors on Friday, May 10, 2024. You can expect an interactive and lively afternoon of learning.

For planning purposes please note the Exhibition Day event is held between 1:00 and 3:00 pm. on May 10th 

The format will be:

1:00-1:15 Opening Ceremonies in Weston Hall

• Welcome Speeches and Y5 Musical Performance

1:15-2:45 Exhibition Hall 

• Student displays and informal sharing of learning in Weston Hall & Bitove Lounge

• In addition, group presentations will be scheduled in classrooms for virtual access & small-group enjoyment. Invitation linked here. 2:45-3:00 Closing Ceremonies in Weston Hall 

• Thank yous, tear down & a treat in classrooms for students

Should you have any questions about the PYP Exhibition, please contact your child’s Form Adviser or Dianne Jojic, the PYP Coordinator.

SK update

It is hard to believe we are getting so close to the end of SK with this incredible group of thoughtful inquirers! We have greatly enjoyed our time together and will be cherishing the learning moments that lead us to the end of the school year. 

Recently, we launched our Sharing the Planet unit and have begun investigating the central idea that living things are all connected and have needs to support growth. As an introduction to our unit, we celebrated Earth Week. We talked about the importance of Earth Day and how we can protect our planet. We learned about changemakers like Wangari Maathai from Kenya and Jadav Payeng from India, who have accomplished incredible things as they work to protect and rehabilitate trees and forest habitats. The SKs participated in activities including sprouting mung beans with the BSS SKs, spending time outdoors, succeeding on a “no fresh paper” challenge, and making art with recyclables.

The SKs will continue their learning about sharing our planet with living things and supporting their growth in a variety of ways leading up to the end of the year. They will also observe the life cycle of butterflies firsthand, continue observing the life cycle of red-tailed hawks via live cam, and reflect on their own growth as they experience the human life cycle. 

The SKs are continuing to grow as readers and writers as well! As readers, we continue to follow the Really Great Reading program and the SKs have been excited about practising using digraphs. They should be able to explain to you what a “digraph” is—two letters that make one sound, and which ones we have been learning about. As writers, their work is getting more detailed and thorough. Some have begun to show an interest in writing fiction stories, so we will be finding ways to support and extend this interest. We invite you to encourage writing at home by finding authentic opportunities to incorporate writing in your child’s play (e.g. “That sounds like it would make a great story! Can I help you make a book?”). 

In our math program, we have been diving into the captivating world of geometry. Our SKs are enthusiastically learning about 2D and 3D shapes, discovering their properties, and identifying them in the world around us. From circles and squares to spheres and cubes, they're building a solid foundation and asking questions that extend our lessons into conversations beyond grade level. We have also been investigating number bonds and their relationship with addition and subtraction. We will consolidate these foundational number sense skills to close out the year. 

Thank you once again for all you are doing to support our SK learners as they grow through this year. We could not do this without you! 

Anna Crawford and Pina Porto
SK Teachers

Primary French update

In SK our recent unit on farm animals was a huge success! It concluded wonderfully with additional songs, interactive readings of Ours Brun dis-moi, and a short film where students enthusiastically recreated animal sounds they had previously drawn. Several short videos of these moments can be found on Seesaw.

I am pleased to witness the progress students have made in articulating complete sentences through class presentations. It is wonderful to see them grow and develop their communication skills!

Now, we are gearing up for an exciting new unit on patterns and rhyming. In this upcoming unit, we will focus on developing listening and speaking skills as students learn to recognize rhyming sounds through various activities such as songs, poems, listening exercises, and matching games. The highlight of this unit will be each student creating their own puzzle of rhyming sounds!

1C has concluded our unit on La Poule Maboule and have now transitioned to a new unit focused on building more foundational vocabulary. This unit aims to enhance students’ vocabulary acquisition and spontaneity in oral expression, while also deepening their understanding of language concepts such as gender and sentence structure in positive, negative, and interrogative forms. The development of self-confidence and oral communication skills through choral speaking activities remains our priority in Year 1 second language acquisition. This unit will pave the way for our study of a familiar yet exciting new story, The Three Little Pigs.

Year 2 students are in the process of wrapping up a project centred on humour and storytelling. Using Book Creator, they crafted their own collection of French jokes and thoroughly enjoyed all stages of this project, expressing their creative talents through drawings while also demonstrating their understanding of written material. The last stage of this project focused on pronunciation awareness. Students engaged in partner exercises, practising repetition with provided models to fine-tune their speaking skills. Soon we will embark on the adventures of a little cat named Napoléon. Through Napoléon's escapades, our students will encounter surprises at every turn, enriching their vocabulary, enhancing oral expression, and reinforcing language conventions. 

Year 3 students are currently exploring the world of Marc Dubé's family, a francophone family in Northern Ontario. Throughout this unit, we will delve into a series of stories set in various Ontario French-speaking communities. As we progress through several of the 12 available readers, the complexity of the texts will gradually increase. Our focus will be on developing reading comprehension strategies and enhancing writing skills. We are delighted to see Year 3 students making great strides in vocabulary acquisition while deepening their understanding  of sentence structures, including positive, negative, and interrogative forms. Additionally, students will also continue to reinforce their oral communication skills through more episodes of our audiovisual program, Rémi.

In Year 4 new characters have now entered the scene to complexify the plot of our seven-scene play Un frère pénible, and our students are only a few classes away from the final twist of a storyline many can relate to in one way or another. Students have been engaged in practising various language skills, including writing story summaries using provided keywords and responding to both closed-ended and open-ended questions with proper language conventions. Alongside this, they have been continuing their exploration of the adventures of Julien Sirois through our reader Le Voleur, and are eagerly anticipating new episodes of Rémi, our audiovisual program. Our next unit will start soon, focusing on the exploration of several biomes, including their specific climates and animal life. 

In our French class, we continue to prioritise an immersion approach to every activity, with the development of communication skills remaining at the centre of everything we do.

Guillaume Dupre
Primary French Teacher

Health and Life Skills update

Over the next few weeks, students in Years 4 to 7 will begin their human development and sexual health unit in Health and Life Skills. 

In Year 4 we will introduce the idea of puberty and talk about the basic physical changes that occur during this time. We will discuss the potential changes in emotions (e.g. feeling uncomfortable because you’re taller or smaller than all your peers) and social relationships (e.g. friendships change as people develop different interests) that may be experienced during this developmental stage. Personal care and hygiene practices associated with the onset of puberty (e.g. regular bathing, wearing deodorant) will also be reviewed.

In Year 5, topics to be discussed include how the body changes during puberty specifically with respect to the reproductive system, menstruation and spermatogenesis. We will look at how the changes during puberty might be stressful for some and how that stress can be managed in a healthy way. 

In Year 6, we will review the social, emotional and physical changes that may occur in puberty and discuss the characteristics of healthy relationships. The impact of viewing sexually explicit media will also be addressed as will the effect stereotypes and assumptions can have on the development of a person’s self-concept.

In Year 7, how relationships with family and others may be affected by the changes occurring in puberty will be discussed as will the importance of communication within a relationship, including the concept of consent. We will also look at a variety of factors that need to be considered when making decisions related to sexual health including the identification and prevention of sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections (STBBIs). 

Accurate sources of information related to human development is something we discuss at all of these grades and the library at the Prep has a number of books for students and/or parents to borrow on the topic. Teaching Sexual Health is another source of information for parents around talking to children about sexual health as are the resources found on this website from sexual health educator Saleema Noon.  

Should you have any questions, please contact Martha Boyce or your child’s HLS teacher.

The Health and Life Skills team

Victoria Altomare-Varlokostas  (6L, 7S)            

Martha Boyce (6T, 7B, 7C, 7F, 7G, 7P)     

David Girard (5B, 5F)                                       

Kayla Gosse (6C, 6F)

Prep Bands explore Chicago

From April 25–28 the Prep School bands headed south of the border to explore the city of Chicago and compete in the International Chicago Heritage Music Festival. Highlights of the trip were many including:

• Exciting musical performances like the Blue Man Group and a professional jazz quartet at Andy’s Jazz Club.

• Educational experiences like the Chicago Museum of Natural History, Willis Tower (including the observation deck 1353ft above ground) and an accounting of Chicago history (1920s–1950s) from a gangster actor on a bus tour.

• Entertainment at a Chicago White Sox game and Medieval Times dinner.

• Sampling the local cuisine in the form of deep dish pizza at Giordano’s.

• Outstanding performances had by all at the music festival with some great learning opportunities during their clinic sessions with local college and university professors.

Medieval Times is where the festival banquet took place. After allowing the public viewers to exit the facility all participants gathered to hear the festival results. Showing great energy and enthusiasm, the students found that they had achieved the following awards from the Festival:

• Gold award and 1st place — UCC Year 7 concert band

• Gold award and 2nd place — UCC Year 7 wind ensemble

• Gold award — UCC Year 7 jazz ensemble (no placement as no other bands participated in their classification)

• Maestro award presented to Donny Beaupre (recognizing outstanding solo achievement)

All students represented UCC with pride, honour and respect for all participants.

Special thanks goes to chaperones Peter Labancz and John Berney for their time, expertise and efforts!

Special thanks to all students for their hard work, determination, and dedication to the UCC Prep band program.

Paul McGarr

Director of Bands

SAVE THE DATE | Prep Prize Day on June 3

This year's Prep Prize Day will be held on Monday, June 3 at the Prep School in Weston Hall at 8:30 a.m. Parents of prize recipients will be notified by email during the week of May 13. We hope that parents of prize winners will be able to join us at the celebration!

Norval | Spring update

Spring has arrived at Norval and with it came a lot of opportunities for our students to jump into their learning with both rubber boots.

The Year 3s were the first to find signs of spring as they discovered who calls our beautiful Norval campus home. They set up wildlife cameras, protected young trees from deer and helped with our salmon hatchery program.

Learning how to collaborate, overcome disagreements and creatively solve problems, the Year 5s took on one of Norval’s biggest tasks — making maple syrup. On their three-day trip, our students worked together to tap trees, haul sap and make maple tea, to which they were rewarded with a sugar shack brunch with pancakes and their own maple syrup.

The Year 6s visited Norval for their day of climate action. They planted lettuce, kale, and peppers, identified baby plants and removed invasive species to keep our campus beautiful and healthy.

UCC students were not the only ones visiting Norval this spring. We also had Mabin, Branksome Hall and Kingsway College School (KCS) join us. With the weather becoming warmer, KCS was our first class to sleep out in tents this year. Luckily it was only a little muddy!

Finally, enjoying a beautiful spring day the Year 1s came up to Norval to learn about features of structures that help communities meet their needs. They experimented with building their own types of shelters all over the property. 

Mike Bradford

Norval Instructor

Jewish Heritage Month

Today during our community time, our parent volunteers helped us celebrate Jewish Heritage Month. 

Prep students enjoyed braiding challah, learning to dance the Hora and had ice cream to mark the upcoming holiday of Shavuot. Each student will be bringing home their own delicious challah to share with their families. Eat it warm or save it for the best french toast. Simple instructions to enjoy your freshly baked challah are here.

REGISTER | Generations Day