Mustang Memo - February 16, 2024
Love and kindness was in the air all week! First of all we celebrated Valentine's Day with a dance party in gym which was organized by our incredible student leaders from the Leadership Club. We saw many kids wearing red and pink as they exchanged their valentines!
We also watched the Grade 1 students celebrate 100 days of school with a party across all three classrooms. Students had creative shirts that were covered in 100 objects and they counted snacks in groups of 10 until they got to 100! They even made fancy headbands that they decorated with 100 stickers! So much fun!
Our Grade 2s followed up with 101 day where they celebrated all things that add up to 101 including posters that represented 101 items and other fun games and activities culminating in watching 101 Dalmatians!
We ended of the week with Random Acts of Kindness Day! Students were challenged to carry out 5 random acts of kindness throughout the day and to write one on a sticky on the glass of the library doors.
On top of all of that, we are still celebrating Black History Month by learning all about famous Black Canadians in our video announcements. What a busy and great week!
Good thing we have a long weekend to rest up from all that fun!
We hope that you have a chance to enjoy Family Day and take advantage to that time to connect with those you love!
Helene Hewitt & Jay Robertson
Principal & Assistant Principal
You belong here!
Table of Contents
Week At a Glance
Action
- Don't Forget to Register Your Child for Next Year!
Opportunity
- Counsellor's Corner
Information
- 2024-25 Fee Survey
- What Did Teachers Learn on January 31 PL Day?
- Parents Make the Difference
WEEK AT A GLANCE
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ACTION
Complete your Returning Student Registration: February 8-21
Elk Island Public Schools’ (EIPS) returning student registration process is now open. All current students, except Grade 12, must complete the online Returning Student Registration Form to confirm their enrolment in a school for the upcoming 2024-25 school year. Additionally, students who want to attend a non-designated school need to make that request through the returning student registration process—acceptance is based on available space. All current EIPS students are required to complete the form by Feb. 21, 2024.
To complete your child’s returning student registration, refer to the Returning Student Registration Form email you received from Elk Island Public Schools via Permission Click on February 8. Families will receive one email for each student. No log in is required to complete the form.
For more information, contact the school directly.
RELATED INFORMATION:
Returning Student Registration Process
Applying to a non-designated school
OPPORTUNITY
Counsellor's Corner
“What do I do if I am being cyberbullied?”, “can people find your private information online even if you don’t tell them?”, “how do I stay safe online?”- These are all questions that children are grappling with more and more often.
The risk of exploitation and exposure to age-inappropriate content is an ongoing concern for parents and caregivers of children. Many community organizations are working hard to spread the word about how we can keep our kids safe online. For instance, apps like Snapchat and Tiktok, which may seem relatively safe at first glance, can put children at risk of exposure to violent or graphic content that is difficult to track and monitor. Being aware of the ways your child may be exposed on these apps and making sure that they know they can always talk to you without getting in trouble if they are exposed to something inappropriate or dangerous, are very important parts of keeping them safe. Below are some resources to help you stay on top of the current and evolving risks kids are facing online.
Protect Kids Online- Information By Age and Interests
Ask a Specific Question About Online Safety for Kids
Parents Ultimate Guide to Tiktok
Madison Bashaw & Kelley Mitchell
~DCE Counseling Team
INFORMATION
Fees Survey Feedback
Thank you to the 53 families who completed our Fees survey. Your feedback was helpful in setting the direction for fees for the 2024-25 school year. Congratulations to the Goodall family who won the $50 Sobeys gift card in our random draw!
A few themes that came from the survey included:
- most people feel that extracurricular and activity fees are reasonable at this time
- 93% of respondents supported an increase to noon supervision fees to avoid a deficit
- 81% of respondents wanted 3 or more field trips a year
- 43% of respondents would pay $30/trip and 36% would pay $20/trip while other respondents indicated they would be willing to pay more for an extra special trip and have less field trips in total or that they would pay less and have more trips
- 93% of respondents value swimming lessons and would like to see them continue
Our plan
For the next school year, we plan to request $10 increase to lunch supervision fees so that we avoid running a deficit. Those fees pay for the salary of the noon supervisors who ensure kids are safe and cared for over the lunch hour.
We will also raise the swimming fee by $1.50 to cover any increases to busing. As with all of our fees, we only charge the actual cost which sometimes may be less that what is in our fee schedule.
Why are there no swimming lessons for older grades?
We will continue to offer swimming lessons to students in K-3 but will still not offer them for the older grades for two reasons.
First, students in older grades reported feeling uncomfortable in change rooms. There are limited individual changing stalls with doors and not enough time to wait for an available stall before the bus leaves. This left some students feeling unsafe.
Secondly, the new curriculum in the older grades is very full and has significant jumps in content difficultly. On lesson days, including travel time, students spend around 80 minutes out of the school. While 30 of those minutes would fall under our physical education instructional time, 50 minutes of instruction would be lost twice a week for 8 weeks. Given the intensity of the curriculum, we cannot justify the lost instructional minutes for an extracurricular activity. It is for those two reasons that we will not offer swimming to grades 4-6.
If you would like to learn more about this topic or any other topics of interest to parents and caregivers, please consider attending a school council meeting. We talk about this kind of thing and more at meetings. Our next school council meeting will take place on March 14 at 6:30 PM.
What Did Teachers Learn on January 31?
Did you know that our teachers did some heavy lifting on our last professional learning day!
Our PL day was focused entirely on math to support of our School Education Plan goal: By building capacity for all teachers to implement best practices that support number sense and fact fluency, all students will demonstrate meaningful growth.
Teachers spent the morning working with their grade level partners to analyze all of their math data to identify gaps in student learning, to select key math vocabulary that each grade level needs to master, and to plan some ideas that we can do as a school to improve student math fact fluency.
In the afternoon, teachers joined mixed grade level teams to compare learning gaps across the grade levels as well as to compare their math vocabulary lists and fact fluency ideas. It was a day full of deep and thoughtful conversations about how to best teach math as well a road map on how will will move forward as a team to support excellence in math at DCE!
Parents make the difference
Here is this week's article with helpful tips for families:
Questions and Answers
Q: My child has struggled with math this year and now “hates” the subject. I can’t really blame my child, because I’m not good at math either. How can I encourage a better attitude?
A: Parents’ attitudes about math have a lot to do with how well their children do in math. Kids whose parents say they didn’t like math when they were in school often struggle with math as well. Likewise, children whose parents instill a sense of enjoyment about math tend to perform better.
To help your child develop a positive attitude about math:
- Set the tone. Let your child know you believe everyone can be successful in math. Say this often enough and your child will start to believe it!
- Avoid stereotypes. Gender and background don’t determine how well a child can do in any school subject. In fact, students who are successful in math can go a long way toward breaking the baseless stereotypes that others may hold.
- Talk about careers. Young children may decide that being an Avenger is a great career choice. Expand your child’s horizons. Talk about people who use math in their jobs—an airline pilot, a weather forecaster, an architect, an astronaut, a researcher, an accountant, etc.
- Connect math to the real world. When you and your child go to the store, bank, restaurant, etc., point out all of the ways people use math. At dinner, challenge family members to tell one way they used math that day.
Reprinted with permission from the February 2024 issue of Parents make the difference!® (Elementary School Edition) newsletter. Copyright © 2024 The Parent Institute®, a division of PaperClip Media, Inc.