It appears that the cold weather finally caught up to us this winter – I sit here typing January’s, From the Office, on our first school day without buses running. We plowed ahead with our SRC’s Pancake Breakfast anyways, and I have to tell you those pancakes sure hit the spot this morning. The SRC plans to go ahead with another Pancake Breakfast fundraiser early in the next semester, so please look forward to that. While on the topic of cold weather, parents, please take a quick look at what your students are dressing up in to head off to school and help us make sure that they’re wearing warm clothing in this cold weather. This includes our bus students as well, who should have warm clothes along in case of mechanical troubles.
Next week will hold our final exams and any midterms for the Grade 10-12 Semester 1 classes. Any outstanding assignments should have been turned in a long time ago, unless there were arrangements made with the subject teacher. The best advice is to keep frequent conversations between student, teacher and parent to ensure that constant progress is being made in each subject area. I encourage you all to do just that.
I’ll take a chance to update you on our school Professional Learning Communities progress. We have a bulletin board in the office that holds some initial testing results in the areas of Numeracy, Literacy Intervention, and Student Engagement. Our staff, in those three areas, are working this year on three goals to show improvements in those same areas. Our Literacy team is focusing on providing supports to all of the
various reading levels at the earliest elementary levels and learning new ways to intervene and help them improve. Our Numeracy team is using benchmarks in knowledge of numeracy abilities to find gaps in learning and look at re- teaching opportunities to fill in those gaps. And our Student Engagement team is examining the adult supports for student learning and brainstorming ways to make/find improvements. I’d encourage you to find a staff member and ask them to tell you more about their team and its progress.
As far as some upcoming dates to inform you about, this is a reminder that February 1 will be the turn- around day between semesters and not a school day for students. That will lead up to a mid-year report card going home for Grades 6-12 on February 6th. You can also mark February 8th on your calendars as a fun day of learning for the elementary K-6 students. We’ll be hosting the Dundurn students that day in the morning for a cooperatively planned and run art project, and then complete the day with a Wide Open Theatre puppet show production based on the written books by the author, Robert Munsch. It sounds like a great day. Lastly, I’ll draw your attention to the Stand Up to Bullying Day on April 10th. Information was sent home a week ago to get you thinking about it and asking you to send $5 to school to cover the cost of a shirt that students and staff will wear to show they’re against bullying behaviours.
The winter break will follow including Family Day on February 18th. I hope you have the opportunity that day and that week to spend some with your students. Each of them is a wonderful student at Hanley School and we’re proud to teach them.
As always, Mr. Anderson and I would love to talk to you if you have time to drop by the office. Take care and I’ll talk to you soon.