Best wishes for the long weekend

Our school enjoyed our track and field events yesterday. We want to thank our partner high school Emily Carr S.S who allowed us to use their track and facilities for the morning. Congratulations to all the students who tried their best and many of whom achieved personal bests. It was wonderful to see LJPS spirit.

As a school community, wish Ms Miller and her family the very best as she begins her maternity leave effective May 21, 2013. Please help me in congratulating Ms Miller.

We also welcome Mr. Hock who will be joining our team to teach Ms Miller’s class until the end of the school year.

To all of our staff, students and parents, we wish you the very best for the “unofficial” start to our summer in this Victoria Day long weekend. Please enjoy the time with friends and family. We look forward to seeing everyone back on Tuesday May 21, 2013 which is also the beginning of the final six weeks of this school year. We look forward to a continued focus by our students on their daily work at our school and to a great end to the year.

EQAO Assessments

To parents of our grade 3 and 6 students

During the weeks of May 27 – May 31, 2013 your child will be participating in the Education Quality and Accountability Office’s (EQAO’s) Assessment of Reading, Writing and Mathematics, Primary or Junior Division. Specifically, we have planned the following:

• Grade 3 student swill write the assessment on May 28th, 29th, 30th
• Grade 6 students will write the assessment on May 27, 28th and 30th

We do ask all parents to avoid any appointments for students during those times.

In six one-hour sessions, students will complete a variety of assessment activities designed to allow them to demonstrate their skills and knowledge relating to reading, writing and mathematics as described in The Ontario Curriculum. The assessment is administered province-wide and is developed by Ontario teachers and assessment experts to reflect curriculum expectations.

EQAO has developed a “Parent’s Guide to EQAO Tests” and “Questions and Answers for Parents” (available in 20 languages) to give you more information about the assessments and an understanding of what to expect. To access these resources, go to the EQAO Web site (www.eqao.com), click “Parent Resources” and then select “Primary Division (Grades 1–3) and Junior Division (Grades 4–6).”

Emergency Preparedness Week

Did you know that this week is our national Emergency Preparedness Week? Our federal government offers some tips for families throughout Canada on how to be better prepared in the event of an emergency.

This is also an ideal time for us as a school to review health and safety procedures. As such, this week our school will practice two drills as follows:

Lock down drill

In 2010, the Ministry of Education directed all school boards to develop Lock down procedures. These drills help us review our collective response to a threat to the school. While a sensitive topic, and drill, know that our staff have been preparing students in developmental and age appropriate ways.

Fire Drill

The Fire Code requires schools to practice fire drills at least six times a year. The drill allows us to review safety measures and assess our school’s evacuation procedures.We also work with our local fire department at times, to review our plan and receive their feedback.

We know this information needs to be taught to our children in both sensitive and developmentally appropriate ways. We are also cognizant of global events this past year which have given us all pause for reflection.

We thank you for your continued work with us, and our students, to help them be better prepared should an emergency occur. As always, I welcome your feedback if you have thoughts on this important collective work.

Mr. Collins

New phone number

To our community,

We are pleased to announce that we now have an additional school phone number 647-795-7701

This phone number is useful if you work outside the GTA so you can call our school without incurring long distance charges.

 

Elder’s Mills, Lorna Jackson: Us

Last night, we hosted a parent orientation evening for the Elder’s Mills community. As you know, the Elder’s Mills English track students will join our school in September. We appreciate the good turn out last night, dialogue with parents, and questions for us. I want to extend my appreciation to our staff who attended last night and to our school council members who attended and set up the welcome display. In case you missed the presentation, you can find a copy of it now archived on our website. One of the activities we engaged in last night was around data collection for our School Touchstone. 

We considered the following:

•Consider 4-6 core school values that matter to you.

•Share with someone beside you.

•If you had to create a sentence that captured that value what would it be?

•Jot down the sentence on a post it note.

If you could not attend last night, feel free to submit your thoughts here via our school blog. In the next few weeks, we will work with Elder’s Mills to also gather feedback from the students who will be coming to our school in the fall. Together, we will collate the combined data to help co-create our school touchstone. This is just one way that will support the transiti0n of the students to our school. We also look forward to an opportunity for the students to visit in June.

The dialogue began last night, but let’s continue it here, via our school twitter account, or call myself at 905-893-2829 ext 154 should you have other questions in the coming weeks.

I thank everyone who attended for your positivity and for your collaboration as a team.

Here’s to great weeks and months ahead to continue our work together.

And finally,  let’s all enjoy what is forecast to be an incredible weekend of sunshine and warm weather!

Mr. Collins

School Council Forum follow up

At the West School Council forum in April, there was a presentation on social media for parents. The presentation was shared by one of our board staff and he has kindly offered to share it with our community. The presentation shared some of the challenges and cautions for all of us with regards to technology and concluded with some of the valuable ways we can use social media to positively impact the work we do.

One way our board is working on supporting students and teachers with these new frontiers for new learning is through what we call our Knowledge Skills and Attitudes standards, namely:

1. Creativity and Innovation
2. Communication and Collaboration
3. Research and Information Fluency
4. Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision
Making
5. Digital Citizenship
6. Technology Operations and Concepts

The notion of digital citizenship is worth careful consideration as we all work together to support our learners in developing safe and responsible uses of technology.

We also thank our police partners in York Region for their tips for parents on “Be Net Aware”.

Let us know what you think of the presentation document.

Kindergarten registration

Kindergarten Registration Continues

Kindergarten registration began February 1, 2013 for the 2013-14 school year. Registration Forms are available on YRDSB’s website http://www.yrdsb.edu.on.ca.

Children who turn four or five years old during 2013, live within the school boundaries and whose parents are public school tax supporters are eligible to register for kindergarten.

A Welcome to Kindergarten Evening for parents of new J/K students is being held on May 9th at 7:00p.m. in our Gym.

Summer Institute programs

Our local partner school Woodbridge P.S will host the summer institute this year. Please see the flyer for more information on registering your child.