Prep School OCTOBER 12, 2023
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Prep School Highlights
Prep School Highlights
Friday, Oct. 13
👕UCC spirit dress wear day
Saturday, Oct. 14
Association Day (A-Day)
Monday, Oct. 16
5F to Norval until Wednesday
Wednesday, Oct. 18
🕓 Student late start day
5H to Norval until Friday
CAIS U13 Soccer in Halifax until Friday
THIS WEEK AT THE PREP
THIS WEEK AT THE PREP
Prep Leadership Team | Sarah Fleming, David Girard and Gareth Evans
Dear families,
As you read in Principal McKinney’s message of care and support, teachers in all grade levels will be having conversations with their home forms about safe social media use. We are concerned by the escalated use of social media platforms circulating images and videos depicting violence in the Middle East.
For older students, teachers will be having conversations about social media consumption and guiding them to avoid viewing and/or sharing disturbing videos, images and other content arising. Younger students will also be having similar age-appropriate conversations but more general and broad in scope rather than specific to the current situation.
Parents may not always be aware of what social media their children have signed up for. Although the minimum age to sign up for various social media platforms is at least 13, many of our Prep students have active accounts. Be aware that TikTok does not require an account to browse their postings, so anyone with the app has access. We would like to ask for assistance from all in our community in helping prevent our students from viewing and/or sharing videos or images arising from this violence. We encourage you to have open conversations with your children about what they are seeing in the media.
If students are interacting with the news, or they do see something upsetting, it is important for them to check in emotionally with themselves. They can speak to an adult they trust, or have a conversation with school counselors Martha Boyce or Kayla Gosse.
We are grateful to our faculty and staff for leading challenging conversations with care and empathy, and to our students for modelling empathy and self-awareness.
Your partners in learning,
Sarah Fleming, David Girard and Gareth Evans
The Prep Leadership Team
REGISTER | PPO Parent Socials
REGISTER | PPO Parent Socials
The Prep Parents’ Organization (PPO) is pleased to invite Prep parents to its upcoming fall social. Now that students are settled and back into a school routine, come join Preparatory School Head Sarah Fleming and your fellow parents for a night of wine and mingling at the Upper School Student Centre. It’s a great opportunity to have some fun and get to know other members of the parent community.
Primary Years social (SK to Year 5 parents) — Tuesday, Oct. 24, 6–7:30 p.m. (Register here)
Middle Years social (Years 6 & 7 parents) — Wednesday, Oct. 25, 6–7:30 p.m. (Register here)
Kindly RSVP by October 20. We look forward to seeing you there!
Year 3 | Update
Year 3 | Update
It has been a fantastic start to our school year. Students are settling into the classroom routines and adjusting to the pace of the Year 3 program. We are so happy to see new friendships forming as we get to know each other better. Thank you to all the families who could attend the Information Night and to all of you for our rich conversations during the Hopes and Dreams conferences. It has been nice for us to get to know you and your children.
In Math, we are wrapping up our place value unit. Students represented, compared, and ordered whole numbers to 1000 using tools such as base ten materials and number lines. They learned to compose and decompose four-digit numbers into thousands, hundreds, tens, and ones in various ways (for example, 2456= 2000 + 400 + 50 + 6). Our next Math unit will focus on mental math strategies for addition and subtraction using two-digit numbers. We focus on accuracy and fluency (speed). If you want to support your child at home, we encourage you to play dice or card games involving mental math. If your child can accurately and fluently recall facts with two-digit numbers, the games can be easily adapted to include three-digit numbers.
Our inquiry unit is about exploring identity. Our central idea for the unit is The right to identity and its expression encourages tolerance, respect and happiness. Read-aloud and writing have been interwoven throughout the unit, as well as some fantastic artwork. Students have explored their own identities. Our homework activity asked students to discover their name stories as part of their identity. Students have been presenting their name stories to their peers as part of an introduction to public speaking in our classrooms. We have also begun to look at how people use their identities to create change around them. Using examples of children worldwide, such as Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai, Jazz Jennings and Robby Novak, we’ve introduced Year 3 students to examples of people who have taken positive action. In our classrooms, we regularly discuss how we can be “changemakers” in our lives.
In language, we have started the year with our phonics program, cursive writing, literacy work, and regular library visits. During our literacy reading block, students have been exploring their identities as readers (i.e. what books they enjoy and where they like to read) and learning strategies to maintain their reading focus. We encourage your child to read for twenty minutes every day. Please contact us if your child needs help finding a series or book to engage them. For our spelling focus, we are exploring word morphology. Our morphology focus can be found on Seesaw. In our literacy writing block, students have been writing in their journals. We are working on writing personal narratives. If your child enjoys writing stories at home, please remind them that we love to celebrate our Year 3 authors in class.
We want to thank you for your continued support. Agendas have been signed, and homework has been completed and celebrated. Thank you for your support of our weekly homework program. We will be outside as much as possible, and we want the students to be comfortable with the weather changing. Please send outdoor clothing to allow them to brave all the elements! As we move to have an efficient and safe dismissal, we ask that students be received by their caregivers at 3:25 when we dismiss them at the flag pole.
Individuals and societies | Update
Individuals and societies | Update
The Year 7 individuals and society program is well underway. The students started their course by reflecting on intellectual humility, antisemitism, the Holocaust and the dehumanizing process. The students are currently learning how to apply the six dimensions of historical thinking (historical significance, evidence, cause and consequence, empathy, continuity and change and moral judgment) in a case study on Christopher Columbus to understand how different beliefs can lead to conflict. During the discovery process, the students will also investigate the impact of the Residential School System on Canada's First Nations People. As we have been doing throughout the year, the students will be encouraged to continue to sharpen their media literacy skills by reading and discussing the news daily.
In Year 6 individuals and societies, students have been using the concept of change to explore how shifts in the natural and human landscapes (i.e. natural disasters, plate tectonics, erosion, climate, population) affect people and their environment. The students will soon start a large group project on natural disasters caused by climate change. This unit provides the perfect backdrop to explore similar themes around the world. As we have been doing throughout the year, the students will be encouraged to continue to sharpen their media literacy skills by reading and discussing the news daily.
Middle Subject Learning Leader - Individuals and Societies
Technology guidance
Technology guidance
Now that the school year is well underway and students may be using their devices more frequently for completing school tasks, we thought it would be a good time to redistribute the Technology Guide for Prep Parents.
In addition, here are a few reminders about how we can all help manage device usage to keep the children in our community happy, healthy and safe.
Supervision & Types of Online Activities
Develop a family media plan together. Here is an example family screen time contract to get you started.
Devices should not be used behind closed doors.
Supervise device use whenever possible.
At school, we have filters in place to block inappropriate sites and games. At home, we encourage you to monitor and discuss the sites your child accesses. If needed, your home router can be configured to block specific sites. Check with your internet provider.
Tip: Consider setting up a separate wifi for children which you can easily turn on and off at specific times, or hold back the password until other tasks are done.
Not all screen time is the same. Consider what your child is doing online —are they creating or just consuming?
Social Media
We are all aware of Facebook and Twitter, but the following social media sites aim to attract the attention of younger users. The age requirement to sign up for any of these accounts is a minimum of 13 years old. There are benefits and drawbacks to social media. Please discuss with your teen before allowing them to create an account.
Reminders for families of Year 6 and 7 students
As our middle division students take their laptops home each night, greater responsibility falls on them for maintaining the device and ensuring it is in proper working order for school. Here are a few reminders. Students are aware of these expectations and we would appreciate you helping with guiding them to develop these habits at home:
Nightly charging
Power supplies should stay at home to open space in student laptop bags for other school supplies.
Student laptops have no problem holding a charge for the full day. If absolutely necessary, charging is available at the help desk during the day.
Please allocate a place at home (outside of the bedroom) where the laptop can be stored and charged each night. It should be fully charged when they arrive at school each morning.
Regular shut-downs
Shutting down regularly helps the laptop quit unnecessary background activities and restore the charge to USB ports.
The school distributes updates that are often installed only upon restarting the laptop.
Please remind your child to fully shut down and restart their laptop at least once a week.
Actively help them manage distractions
Managing distraction is a hard skill for adults to master, never mind for our pre-teens! Our students need your help to develop this self-regulation skill.
While working on homework, encourage your child to close any unnecessary tabs in their browser that might distract them from their work. We suggest they keep their mail, calendar, drive and Brightspace tabs pinned in their Chrome browser, but others can be closed and reopened as needed.
Check that they aren’t hiding distracting items on a separate desktop with a 3-finger swipe across their trackpad.
Primary Technology Integrator
Middle Technology Integrator
PYP assessment practices and formal feedback
PYP assessment practices and formal feedback
Assessment is central to the Primary Years Program’s goal of thoughtfully and effectively supporting students through the acquisition of subject-specific knowledge and skills, the understanding of concepts and the development of approaches to learning.
The purpose of assessment is to inform learning and teaching. It involves the gathering and analysis of information about student learning to inform next steps in the learning. It identifies what students know, understand and can do at different stages in the learning process.
PYP assessment has four dimensions: monitoring, documenting, measuring and reporting on learning. Each of these aspects has its own function, but all aim to provide evidence to inform learning and teaching. Sharing information about student learning is part of what we call “formal feedback”.
Thank you for attending our Hopes and Dreams Conferences last week. This opportunity acts as the first formal feedback point in our academic year. Feedback takes a variety of forms in the PYP including parent-teacher conferences, SeeSaw posts, agenda communication, sign-backs of assessment pieces, three-way conferences, report cards and student-led conferences.
For the first time in many years, the PYP and MYP formal feedback cycles are aligning. For our returning families you will see a change in the timing of certain formal feedback opportunities, but you can rest assured we remain committed to a varied and authentic approach to sharing information about student learning.
Please note the following timeline for formal feedback for the 2023–24 academic year. As before, formal feedback points are roughly seven academic weeks apart.
Hopes and Dreams Conferences (formerly Settling-in Interviews) on Oct. 6, 2023
Three-way Conferences on Nov. 24, 2023
Mid-year report card on Jan. 31, 2024
Student-led Conferences on April 19, 2024
Final report card on June 26, 2024
Visit the PPO Booth on A-Day
Visit the PPO Booth on A-Day
Association Day is coming up this Saturday, October 14. Make sure you stop by the PPO booth to say hello, learn more about the PPO, and check out the limited edition flannel pants and t-shirts featuring the school mascot, Ice, that we will have for sale!
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