120 Napa Valley Avenue, Woodbridge, On L4H 1L1 (905) 893-1631 www.eldersmills.ps.yrdsb.edu.on.ca (905) 893-7371 Fax janvier 2014 Principal’s Message Un mot de la directrice: “Parental participation in schools positively influences student achievement” Joyce Epstein, Since this January Newsletter is going out before the winter break, we can begin by sending out our sincere good wishes to you all for the up- coming holiday season. Whether this is a time of year for holiday cele- brations or simply a time for rest and reflection, we hope that the time you have together with family and friends is happy and full of warmth and laughter. We look forward to the New Year and hope to see all our stu- dents return ready and committed to fulfilling their goals for the rest of the school year. December’s character trait focused on “empathy” and we were im- pressed with the empathy our students and parent community demon- strated with their generous support of our “Coins for the Philippines” campaign as well as our holiday charity drives. We were thrilled to see that our students raised $735.40 towards the Canadian Medical Assis- tance Teams and the government will be doubling our efforts, so that means that the Elder’s Mills community raised nearly $1500 dollars to help those suffering from this tragedy. Thank you to all those who con- tributed to our local Food and Toy Drives as well and helped your chil- dren understand the meaning of empathy and of “walking in someone else’s shoes”. Positive school climate and school spirit is always a focus at our school and we are pleased to say that our first “maison d’esprit” or spirit house teams get together was a huge success. Students from grade 1-5 from each colour house team met one another and together came up with a team name. Students can earn points for their teams throughout the year by speaking French at all times, demonstrating our character traits, showing acts of kindness towards one another and school spirit! As we bring in the New Year, 2014 looks to be an exciting year ahead and we look forward to the many exciting learning opportunities and ex- periences planned for our students. January 27th, is Literacy Day when we plan to encourage the love of reading by combining our multi- grade house teams again and have them read together as reading bud- dies. Literacy strategies like making text to world connections through film can also be encouraged at our Family Movie Night January 30, which we hope you will all attend for a night of community fun organized by out School Council Outreach Committee! A reminder of our French Immersion information night January 16th for all those registering their grade 1 children next year. See you in the New Year! Respectfully yours, Mme. Joseph DATES TO REMEMBER Jan. 6: Back to School Jan. 7: Arts Performance Jan. 16: FI Information Night Meeting 7:00 p.m. Jan. 17: PA Day—no school FI Registrations Open Jan. 27: Literacy Day— PJ Day! Jan. 28 “Initiative” Character Assembly Jan. 30 Family Movie Night Principal: Micheline Joseph Superintendent of Schools CEC West: Susan Logue 905 764-6830 Trustee: Anna DeBartolo 905-727-0022 Ext 2829 School Priorities: Curriculum Implementation: Effective Literacy and Critical Thinking Skills School Climate Positive, Safe and Inclusive Learning Environment and School Community Student Engagement: Student engagement in explicit and purposeful learning
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120 Napa Valley Avenue, Woodbridge, On L4H 1L1 (905) 893-1631 www.eldersmills.ps.yrdsb.edu.on.ca (905) 893-7371 Fax janvier 2014
Principal’s Message Un mot de la directrice: “Parental participation in schools positively influences student achievement” Joyce Epstein, Since this January Newsletter is going out before the winter break, we
can begin by sending out our sincere good wishes to you all for the up-coming holiday season. Whether this is a time of year for holiday cele-brations or simply a time for rest and reflection, we hope that the time you have together with family and friends is happy and full of warmth and laughter. We look forward to the New Year and hope to see all our stu-dents return ready and committed to fulfilling their goals for the rest of the school year. December’s character trait focused on “empathy” and we were im-pressed with the empathy our students and parent community demon-strated with their generous support of our “Coins for the Philippines” campaign as well as our holiday charity drives. We were thrilled to see that our students raised $735.40 towards the Canadian Medical Assis-tance Teams and the government will be doubling our efforts, so that means that the Elder’s Mills community raised nearly $1500 dollars to help those suffering from this tragedy. Thank you to all those who con-tributed to our local Food and Toy Drives as well and helped your chil-dren understand the meaning of empathy and of “walking in someone else’s shoes”. Positive school climate and school spirit is always a focus at our school and we are pleased to say that our first “maison d’esprit” or spirit house teams get together was a huge success. Students from grade 1-5 from each colour house team met one another and together came up with a team name. Students can earn points for their teams throughout the year by speaking French at all times, demonstrating our character traits, showing acts of kindness towards one another and school spirit! As we bring in the New Year, 2014 looks to be an exciting year ahead and we look forward to the many exciting learning opportunities and ex-periences planned for our students. January 27th, is Literacy Day when we plan to encourage the love of reading by combining our multi-grade house teams again and have them read together as reading bud-dies. Literacy strategies like making text to world connections through film can also be encouraged at our Family Movie Night January 30, which we hope you will all attend for a night of community fun organized by out School Council Outreach Committee! A reminder of our French Immersion information night January 16th for all those registering their grade 1 children next year. See you in the New Year! Respectfully yours, Mme. Joseph
DATES TO REMEMBER Jan. 6: Back to School Jan. 7: Arts Performance Jan. 16: FI Information Night Meeting 7:00 p.m. Jan. 17: PA Day—no school FI Registrations Open Jan. 27: Literacy Day— PJ Day! Jan. 28 “Initiative” Character
Assembly Jan. 30 Family Movie Night
Principal: Micheline Joseph Superintendent of Schools CEC West: Susan Logue 905 764-6830 Trustee: Anna DeBartolo 905-727-0022 Ext 2829
School Priorities: Curriculum Implementation: Effective Literacy and Critical Thinking Skills School Climate Positive, Safe and Inclusive Learning Environment and School Community Student Engagement: Student engagement in explicit and purposeful learning
Safe Arrival/Attendance In order to ensure the safety of students, the school office is required to perform Safe Arrival procedures. If your child is going to be late or absent, please call the school at 905‐893-1631. You may leave a message on our answering machine prior to 8:15 a.m. in the morn-ing and after 4:15 p.m. in the afternoon. Please clearly indicate your child’s name, homeroom teacher, and the reason for the absence. Students arriving late to school are required to sign in at the office and re-ceive a late stamp in their agenda before proceed-ing to class. Please remember that you CANNOT drop your child before supervision at 8:30 a.m.
Thank you for your co-operation.
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Make literacy come alive in your house this holiday season! We never break from reading or literacy. It’s a life-long skill that follows us everywhere we go, no matter our age. In today’s world, literacy skills are needed everywhere and are extended into me-dia literacy and digital literacy. Every time, we read a book, work or play on our computers, or even
watch TV or a movie we are developing our literacy skills. Parents/guardians can help your children develop these skills. Although the holidays are a time for some R & R, why not enjoy that time with some of the fol-lowing strategies:
Enjoy a read aloud (no matter what age) by making the story come ALIVE with voice and expression Role play or play charades with a part of the story Discuss your favourite part of the book and what it reminds you of. Change the ending Change a character in the story Explore the digital world and recommended web sites for literacy activities with your child Create a joke book together Write notes on sticky notes for each other around the house Create a recipe together Make text to text, text to self and text to world connections when reading or watching a movie. Always ask the question, “What does this remind me of…?” “Ca me fait penser a…..” Enjoy the magic of exploring literacy and bonding with your child!
January 27th marks YRDSB’s annual Family Literacy Day. The theme to this year’s literacy day is “Sing to Literacy”. In our classrooms, especially in French Immersion we often use song to further vocabulary development and comprehension. Please encourage singing French songs at home as well. Family Literacy day is a community awareness day where the school and families participate in highlighting the gift of literacy. At EMPS we will accentuate this day by participating in literacy activities such as reading buddies between our classes. Media literacy is also being encouraged through our Family Movie Night on January 30th. We encourage all families to come out and support this fun community event which we can all do together. As always, we thank parents and guardians for helping us to spread the message that literacy is a skill that is important and useful for all. Enjoy the magic of reading!
LITERACY CORNER
Kiss and Ride/ Bus Loop Thank you to those who are following our safety parking lot rules. We ask that all parents please be aware that if you drive your child to school and are entering our parking lot, you CANNOT park your car at the entrance curb/Bus Loop or along our Kiss ’n Ride curb. It is a safety hazard. As well it interferes with our safe bus service and blocks our busses. Please park in a parking spot or simply drop your child/ren after 8:30 and quickly and safely continue along your way. If you must park your car, please do so in a designated spot.
Thank you for your cooperation.
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We recognize the importance of digital literacy and its potential to engage students in meaningful communi-cation and collaboration. As a result, the York Region District School Board is providing and managing access to the Google Apps for Education service for staff and students. This service, referred to as GAPPS, may be used by your child’s teacher to complement the learning that already occurs in our classrooms on a regular basis. Specifically, GAPPS provides fast and easy collaboration, real-time editing and feedback, and access for students on any device at any time. Use of GAPPS, by both staff and students is governed by existing policies, including Policy #194: Appropriate Use of Technology. This policy is available for review on the Board’s web site. Along with access to the GAPPS platform, most students will now have access to a Board email address. This email address can also be used as a login for other cloud-based educational tools, such as Moodle. The activation of student email on the GAPPS platform, will occur as follows:
JK-Grade 2: no email access Grade 3-5: access to internal York Region District School Board email only Grade 6-12: access to internal and external email
As with all use of technology, we rely on parents/guardians to be strong partners in educating children on the appropriate use of technology. To this end, the service is provided as a privilege and violations of Board policy may result in withdrawal of the service. The standard format for the GAPPS email address will be student#@gapps.yrdsb.ca where student# is the same number students use to access the Board network and classroom computers. Please take the time to review our appropriate use of technology policy and reinforce the importance of responsible technology usage. For your information, we have attached some internet safety tips. More information and login for the GAPPS platform is available at https://google.yrdsb.ca.
DIGITAL LITERACY
TECH CORNER
Here are some recommended websites that you can access for your child at home to support their learning: http://teachingkidsnews.com (current news in kid friendly language) http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids www.khanacademy.org (Math and Science tutorials) -available as an app also www.wegivebooks.org (digital books) Online Encyclopedia Britannica, Link: http://www.school.eb.com, LOGIN: dsbyork, PASSWORD: dsby7692 Tumble Books Link: www.tumblebooks.com, username: emills, password: books
TumbleMath Link: www.tumblemath.com, username: Memphis, password: login TumbleBooks (BiblioEnfants)- courtesy of Vaughn Public Library There are many books in French on this website that your child can read, see and hear! http://www.biblioenfants.com/home.aspx Mini TFO- Francophone sector of TVOntario This website offers great reading activities, games and children’s programming in French! The children love it! http://www1.tfo.org/mini/ Zone des petits- Francophone sector of CBC With this website, your child can practice their French language skills in a meaningful way! http://www.radio-canada.ca/jeunesse/petits/
BBC Dance Mat Typing http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/ Your child can continue to practise appropriate typing techniques with this online resource.
Quelle presentation amusante! Nons avons appris des danses du salon comme le quick step, le tango et le jazz. It was fun to learn about these dances because the dancers were silly too. Their dance and presentation took 80 hours to choreograph! How lucky are we to have seen the final product!
SPIRIT COMMITTEE—L’équipe d’esprit
Le jour de les maisons d’esprit or house spirit day was lots of fun! We all dressed in our house colours and met other kids that belonged to our house from grades 1-5. Now we have house buddies all over the school!!! We picked out house names and learned how we can collect spirit points. We can’t wait to have
fun with our house team again soon!
As part of our Government unit, Mlle Joachim’s and M. Petrilli’s grade 5 classes were invited to witness a Citizenship Ceremony. We got to see 135 new Canadians from over 40 countries become Canadian citizens. Mme. Joseph, our principal came with us and was one of the dignitaries to stand by the judge and shake everyone’s hand as they got their citizen-ship certificate. She said that she felt very honored to be asked to do this. We waved our Canadian flags as they walked passed our chairs! We were so happy for them and they looked so proud to now be Canadi-ans. Some of us even got to go up in front of everyone to present our speeches and poems on why we are proud to be Canadian. Our thanks to parent, Mrs. Jurisic for arranging for our visit. Canada is the best country in the whole world because we are a free and diverse country that accepts all people and cultures. Thousands of new Canadians are sworn in every year! Some of our own families are new Canadians and we are so proud to be Canadian! Nous sommes fière!!
Les Lions Jaunes! The Yellow Lions!
Les Volcans Rouges! The Red Volcanos! Les Dragons Verts The Green Dragons!
Les Gaie-Bleus! The Blue Jays!
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French Immersion Registration for New Students—Information Night: January 16, 2014
Kindergarten Registration to Commence January 17, 2014 Kindergarten registration will commence on January 17, 2014 for the 2014-15 school year. Registration forms are available on YRDSB’s website: www.yrdsb.edu.on.ca. Children who turn four or five years old during 2014, live within the school boundary of the school they are registering at, and whose parents are public school tax supporters, will be eligible to register for kindergarten.
For more information please visit the YRDSB website or contact your local school. Please note that Elder’s Mills P.S. no longer offers Kindergarten classes as of September 2013. Lorna Jackson P.S. is our community school for Kindergarten.
As the weather begins to change, please be reminded that all our students will be expected to be outside before and during school in most weather conditions. Students need to come to school dressed to play outside during recesses. Boots, jackets, hats, mitts, scarves, snow pants and a warm winter coat will make recess more enjoyable. It is advisable for children to have a change of clothing at school (extra pants and socks) in case they get wet. It In the event of inclement weather (rain, or a significant wind chill factor) students will be kept inside during all or part of the recess break. The principal will keep a close eye on weather conditions before recesses and make decisions based on what is best for the students and staff. We follow the YRDSB guideline stating that a combination of tempera-ture and/or wind chill of –20 degrees during recess time may result in indoor recess. Shortened recess may also occur when temperatures reach –18. When possible, safe outdoor play time is encouraged and beneficial for child well-being. To ensure the safety of students, school bus service may be cancelled from time to time due to inclement weather, extreme temperatures and/or poor road conditions. In these cases, parents and students should develop alternate care/transportation arrangements. During bus cancellations schools may remain open. Parents, students and school staff are asked to access the following radio and television stations after 6:00 a.m. to receive bus cancellation information: RADIO and TELEVISION 590 AM 640 AM 680 AM 860 AM 1010 AM 1050 AM 1540 AM 1580 AM 88.5 FM 89.9 FM 92.5 FM 93.1 FM 94.9 FM 95.9 FM 97.3 FM 98.1 FM 99.1 FM 99.9 FM 101.1 FM 102.1 FM 104.5 FM 100.7 FM 107.1 FM Television: CITY TV CTV Barrie CFTO TV CP24 GLOBAL NEWS A bus cancellation message will also be available at www.schoolbuscity.com and by calling 1-877-330-3001
Inclement Weather and Bus Cancellations
Information sessions for the French Immersion (FI) program will take place at Elder’s Mills PS on January 16, 2014 at 7 p.m. FI registration will begin January 17, 2014. In order to streamline the registration process, parents or guardians of Senior Kindergarten students entering Grade 1 in 2014, and wishing to enroll in the FI Program, can visit or call the school office and request an Office Index Card - short version. The Office Index Card must be signed by the principal of the home school. Parents or guardians then take this form, along with one piece of identification showing their address to [school name] to register between January 17 and February 14, 2014. This eliminates the need to provide duplicate enrollment information or to pre-register. YRDSB’s FI Accommodation Plan provides long-term consistency and equity of access to all students in York Region and will enable YRDSB to continue to offer the FI program to all who wish to enrol. The FI program will be offered in Dual Track or Single Track settings, in a variety of configurations. In order to meet commu-nity needs and optimize available space in our schools, a community's Grade 1-8 FI program may be provided over more than one school during the course of a student's FI education. This will allow flexibility in addressing community needs and the opportunity to use existing space in schools. More information is available on the Board’s website: www.yrdsb.edu.on.ca. Please note: Some of the FI accommodation plans will require facility modifications or the development of new schools and will require short-term transition plans that might include overflow while we work toward the long-term vision. Overflow refers to situations in which the Board directs students to attend a school other than their community school or optional program for a specific period of time, as defined in Policy #108.
TOY MOUNTAIN & FOOD DRIVE The Elder's Mills Community has done it again! Our Toy Mountain was a huge success! We collected over 200 toys that were delivered to the Salvation Army and CTVs Toy Mountain campaign. A great big thank you to all parents, staff and students who participated. Thank you to all those who contributed to our Food Drive as well which was delivered to the Vaughan Food Bank for those in our community who are in need.
FAMILY MOVIE NIGHT—January 30, 2014
January 30, 2014 at 6:00 p.m. Save the date and plan to join us for our first event of the New Year, Family Move Night on January 30th! Admission is free, so bring your mats or blankets and get ready to cozy up to a family friendly movie with your kids. Movies shown will be: Turbo and Epic - with pizza and popcorn available for all to enjoy! Look for the food pre-order form to be sent home with students in mid-January. So get the kids in their pajamas, and come one, come all for a great family night out! Next School Council Meeting: Wednesday, January 22, 7:00 p.m. Child care will be available. On behalf of the parent School Council, we would like to ex‐
tend our good wishes
Beginning February 3, all school doors, including the front doors, will be locked 15 minutes after the morning entry bell. The doors will remain locked for the rest of the day. Anyone arriving at the school after that time must buzz in and sign in at the main office.
Measures will also be put in place for parents/guardians to buzz in and pick up students participating in before and after school programs. More detailed information will be available in January. Our school continues to be a safe place where parent and community member involvement is welcomed and encouraged. This additional step will enhance the measures we already have in place, and ensure that all visitors sign in at the main office upon arrival.
SCHOOL SAFETY—LOCKED SCHOOL DOORS
Triple P– Positive Parenting Program Series
For our “Coins for Philippines” campaign we also sold rainbow loom bracelets created by our students at The Upper Canada Childcare after school pro-gram. We want to thank them for their efforts and all those who donated their coins for this worthy cause!
