This past Wednesday, Ms. Sweet and I held our March Parent Coffee with the ES Administration. This month, Ms. Deepa, Ms. Sherman, Ms. Chris, Ms. Kristina and Ms. Sweet led a discussion on 3-Way conferences. This fall, the elementary school will implement 3-way (student-led) conferences.
What is a 3-way conference? A 3-way conference actively involves parents, students and teachers in reflecting on student achievement, discussing work samples and setting direction for future learning. This type of conference acknowledges the most important participants in the learning process: the student, teacher and parent.
How is the 3-way conference different from the traditional parent-teacher interview? The 3-way conference includes the child in the discussion about student performance The student can provide information to clarify what they have learned, how they learned it and what successes and challenges they faced.
Why conduct a 3-way conference? This type of conference puts the student in the center of the reporting discussion. The 3-way conference strengthens the home-school partnership and allows children to interact with their parents and teacher at the same time.
This has been just a brief overview. As we move closer to the fall conferences, you will receive more information about 3-way conferences.
This week, our Grade 1 EAL students culminated their Authors as Mentors unit with an Author's Celebration. The children used an iPad app called Explain Everything as a medium to record and share their published stories with their parents. What an exciting week for our budding authors!
Student Health: The following information is a reminder, and is taken from page 31 of the Elementary School Handbook 2012-13: If your child has head lice or is showing obvious symptoms of illness, such as severe cough, fever, headache, congestion, pain, nausea, vomiting or diarrhea, your child should be kept home until cleared by a medical practitioner. If your child has been given a medical order to stay home and rest because of an infectious disease (such as chickenpox, measles, etc.), they must not attend school until they bring a physician's statement indicating they are able to return without risk to their own or others' health. If a contagious illness has been diagnosed in your son or daughter's class, the school's Health Office will send written notification home with every child in the grade level. You may have heard that there were cases of Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease in the elementary school these past two weeks. There were very few and in fact, only .01 per cent of our student population was diagnosed with this common viral illness and notification did go out to the grade levels in which there was a diagnosis. No new cases were reported this week.
Grade 5 Parents: The theater program will be open to grade 6 students (currently in grade 5) for the 2013-14 school year. Students will have the option of choosing two fine arts courses from the three fine arts areas of visual art, music (band or choir) and theater. On March 20, from 2:30 to 3:30 in the auditorium, the middle school school Fine Arts Department will be giving a presentation to grade 5 parents and students about these courses. At the end of the meeting, parents will be given a form to fill in with their child to indicate which two fine arts courses they will select as their specialist courses for next year. The form will be due on April 10. Grade 5 students are to take their completed form to their homeroom teacher. Following the the Spring Break, grade 5 students who selected band will be required to attend an instrument mouthpiece fitting session.
I also wish to advise grade 5 parents of a small change to the President's Award for Educational Excellence selection criteria. Since we have moved from reporting letter grades to reporting as "Exemplary", "Secure", "Developing" and "Beginning" in Language Arts, students will now need to have earned each quarter "Exemplary" or "Secure" in Language Arts and A and/or B grades in their other subjects.
Library News:
Kevin Hall
Elementary School Principal
We
just celebrated the seventh-month anniversary of being in our new, wonderful
elementary library location. Hopefully
you have had the chance to come check out our new space and also take out a lot
of books!
The
elementary library is lucky to have such a great space for kids to come down
for library lessons, research projects, and checking out books. The elementary library would like to share a
few reminders with parents so that students can get the most out of their time
in the library:
1. When classes are in session or students are
checking out books, please keep computers, tables, and other sitting areas free
for student use.
2. Printing
is reserved for school-related matters only.
Please check with the library staff if you would like to print.
3.
Computers are not to be used for games
before, during, or after school. This
keeps computers free for those who need to research, do word processing, or
look books up in the catalog.
4.
Parents may borrow up to five books in
their name at a time and keep materials for two weeks. If you would like to take out books, but do
not have an account yet, please see any member of the library staff. They will be happy to help you. Please use our self check-in computer when
returning books.
Kevin Hall
Elementary School Principal