Thunder News Flash – June 5-9

For the first time in a number of years St. James & St. Ann’s School sent a small contingent of athletes who qualified for events to participate in the CISVA Track Meet at Swangard Stadium.   After the first day of this meet which includes 36 of our Catholic elementary schools, with about 8,000 people including athletes, coaches and family members in the stands, our school is doing very well.  Day 2 of this Track Meet goes on Wednesday, June 7th, and some of our students will be participating in events which are only run on this day, and a few of our athletes even made it into the finals for their events which also run on this day.  Congratulations to these students who represented our school so well, and to our entire Track & Field Team who will also be participating in our final Track Meet of the year at Rotary Stadium on Thursday, June 8th.

Our final Work Bee of this school year will be taking place on Saturday, June 10th from 9:00am – 2:00pm.  If you still need to complete some of your Parent Participation hours, this will be your final opportunity to do so.  If you are planning to attend we are hopeful that the weather will allow for much outdoor work, so please bring small gardening tools, and if any parents are able to bring a weed eater that would be most appreciated.

In the Parent Handbook it states that students in Grades 5 – 7 may walk to their parent’s car after school, and they do not require an adult to accompany them.  However, this refers to when their parent’s car is parked in the parent parking lot off of Gardner Ave., and it seems that there must be some confusion about this.  It has come to our attention that the afternoon dismissal of students is quite chaotic, with a number of older students walking or running through the staff parking lot to get to SJB to meet their parents or older siblings, or running through the St. James parishioners’ parking lot to meet their parents who are parked there.  Both of these situations are quite unsafe, and we would ask your cooperation to ensure this does not continue.  Our school parents should be parking in our parent parking lot, not in the St. James parishioners’ parking lot, as there is no supervision or crossing guard in this gravel lot.  In addition, if there are students who need to go to SJB to either meet their parents or older siblings, they should be walking over to SJB with the bus students, as there is adult supervision, and students walk in a safe and orderly fashion.  The safety of our students is our primary concern, and therefore we expect that if there are any students who have to walk over to SJB to meet their ride, they must meet with the bus students at 2:35pm daily, and walk with this group.

The school year is almost done and families only have until June 15th to complete any remaining parent participation hours for this year (20 hours plus a fundraiser).  If you have any questions please contact the Parent Participation Administrator at participation@stjameselementary.ca by clicking here.

A revised copy of the Parent Handbook has now been posted on the school’s website.  Please note that an important revision has been made to our procedures regarding students who must take medicine at school – if this applies to your child, please see page 32 of the Parent Handbook.  There is also important information about new water testing requirements for schools which can be found on page 51 of the Parent Handbook.

It seems that the latest fad right now is fidget toys, particularly spinners, which a number of students have been bringing to school.  Fidget toys are a great way for students who struggle with attention issues to focus when they are working, but for other students they are simply a distraction and are causing issues in many of the classrooms.  Unless parents have been specifically told by the Classroom Teacher, or one of our Learning Resource Teachers, that their child requires a fidget toy to focus on their work, students should not be bringing these to school, or they should remain in their backpacks during the school day.

We will once again be entertaining our school volunteers at the Volunteer Tea with a Talent Show on Tuesday, June 27th.  We encourage students in Grades 4 – 7 to audition and hopefully earn a spot in this great show.  Our first auditions for students in Grades 4 and 5 took place on Friday, June 2nd at lunch, and for students in Grades 6 and 7 auditions will take place on Monday, June 5th at lunch.  There will be one final opportunity for students in Grades 4 – 7 to audition on Tuesday, June 13th at lunch if they were unable to audition on either June 2nd or June 5th, but then auditions will be closed after June 13th.  Good luck to everyone!

Next week will be Spirit Week with a different dress down theme for each day leading up to Sports Day on Friday, June 9th.  The dress down days will be as follows:

• Monday, June 5th will be Disney/PJ Day – wear your favourite pair of PJs, or dress as a fairy tale character from your favourite Disney movie
• Tuesday, June 6th will be Twin Day – find a friend, or multiple friends and dress alike – you don’t have to limit yourselves to being twins, but you could be triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets, etc.
• Wednesday, June 7th will be Old & Young Day – come dressed as a youngster or as your favourite senior
• Thursday, June 8th will be Wacky Day – use your imagination and be wacky right from your clothes to your hair
• Friday, June 9th will be Retro Day for Sports Day – wear your “Retro Clothes” or your Thunderwear or your gym strip, but remember that it is Sports Day and you want to be able to participate in all of the fun activities, so make sure you can move well in the clothes that you do wear

As always the costumes/clothes that the students wear must be appropriate – no spaghetti straps, short shorts, torn jeans, or shirts with inappropriate words, logos or bathroom humour.  The appropriateness of a student’s costumes/clothes will be determined by the school staff, so let’s make this a great week.

Sports Day will take place this Friday, June 9th.  If it is a warm, sunny day, please remember sunscreen, hats, sunglasses and water.  If it is cool and rainy, please send your child with appropriate outerwear for the fun activities that are planned.  Please also note that lunch will be provided for the students, and dismissal is at 12:15pm.  

Just a friendly reminder that WALKATHON 2017 pledge sheets and money raised are now due.  Thank you very much to the almost 60% of school families who have already submitted.  For those families who haven’t submitted yet and are still planning to do so, every pledge counts no matter the dollar value.

Together we have raised just over $17,000 so far!

The three years of Walkathon fundraising for technology is so that the school can achieve the goals outlined in our technology strategic plan.  The money goes towards more than just computers and iPads.  It has been and will also be used for things like ceiling mounted projectors, network infrastructure, antivirus and web filtering software, and replacing outdated technology for classroom teachers to fully integrate technology into their teaching.  Technology in the classroom has a number of benefits:

• it is good for the environment – the more things that are done using technology, the less paper that is used by the school
• it allows for immediate access to information, which is so important for the inquiry-based learning that is mandated by our new curriculum
• it makes collaboration effective between students who are working on a shared assignment, but also between the teacher and the student to give feedback that leads to improvement
• it prepares students for the future, which we know will include much technology
• it improves knowledge retention due to better student engagement
• and most importantly, it makes learning fun as students are already inclined towards the use of technology

The important thing to remember is that all of the items purchased or leased with Phase 3 of our Technology Plan can either be worked into any school renovations, or moved to a new building.

Let’s try to reach our $25,000 goal so that all of these plans can be achieved and all students can benefit.

Thank you for your support of our great school.