December 3 - Principal Update
|
December 3, 2023 Dear PHS Families, Thank you to all families who supported our Scholastic Book Fair. It was an overwhelming success, raising around $8500.00. We will receive half this amount in credits from Scholastic to spend on new books for our library! Calgary Opera Residency Our Grade 4 and 5 students had an exciting day last Friday with our Libretto Reveal. Our librettist from the Calgary Opera worked with the students over the past months to contribute to the opera story and it was presented in its final form Friday morning. Our Grade 4 and 5 teachers volunteered to read the parts and a title was given: “Brace for Impact.” This is a year-long project, and the final performance will not take place until May. We are so fortunate to be chosen for this project at no cost to the school. School Development Plan Please note that our School Development Plan is now posted on our web page, and we encourage parents to take a look at the document. This document combines both our school results from last year and our planned work for this year: This is a one-year plan as we wait to align it next year to the new three-year Calgary Board of Education plan. We are looking to build resiliency in our students through both a growth mindset and productive struggle. Specifically, we are aiming to infuse these into both literacy through decoding and student approaches to solving mathematical problems. Our staff is working to build our knowledge of the Science of Reading. We are engaged in the book study “Reading Beyond the Fray” and have incorporated the resources of Heggerty (phonemic awareness) and Ufli (phonics) into our daily work to align to our new curriculum. In both literacy and numeracy, we are wanting to build the ability to work through harder problems through the use of strategies including thinking routines. We know that being able to struggle productively requires a growth mindset. As the year progresses, we encourage you to ask your children about both productive struggles and growth mindset and how they can use these when they approach their learning. We are very excited about this work and know that this learning will take our students beyond their elementary years and into the future at both school and in life. School Service-Learning Projects We want to remind families, once again, of our Holiday Hope Tote with the Alex Centre and the Mayor’s Food Drive. Please see below for a description of what to place in the Hope Tote. Once complete, bring in the tote and add it to our collection. We know this is an extra expense and encourage you to, perhaps, build a tote among a few families as an option. We wish you a wonderful week ahead. As the weather continues to cool, please remember to dress your children warmly as we will continue to head outside for fresh air during recess.
Sincerely, Ms. Paull and Ms. Muir
|