September 7, 2017

Volume 1 Issue 1 Mossbank School 120—1st Ave W Box 460

Mossbank, SK S0H 3G0

Phone: (306) 354-2449 Fax: (306) 354-2848

http://www.prairiesouth.ca/mossbank

Prairie Lightning News

Nurturing Learning in a Caring Environment

September 2017

3 4

5 Day 1

1st Day back

Grade 1-2

Students

Wear Pink Day

6 Day 2

7 Day 3

8 Day 4

9

Sections

Grass Golf

10 11 Day 5 12 Day 6 13 Day 1 14 Day 2

QSP Kick-off

15 Day 3

16

District Golf

17 18 Day 4

Early

Dismissal

Day

19 Day 5

STARS

Presentation

20 Day 6 21 Day 1 22 Day 2

Picture Day

23

Golf Provin-

cials

24 25 Day 3 26 Day 4 27 Day 1 28 Day 2

29 Day 3

30

Please return your completed forms to the school office as soon as possible. Thank you to everyone who has already returned their forms!

Upcoming Events:

• September 4-Labour Day no classes

• September 5-1st Day of School 1-12; Wear Pink

Day

• September 6-1st Day of School Kindergarten

• September 14-QSP Kick-off

• September 18-Early Dismissal Day

• September 19-STARS Presentation

• September 22-Picture Day

• October 3-Wear Pink Day

• October 9-Thanksgiving

Nut Alert

We have students and staff attending our school with life threaten-ing allergies to nuts of all sorts and any residue from products made from nuts. Parent/Guardians please do not send your child with snacks or lunches containing any form of nuts. Thank you for your continued support in helping us make our school a safe place for all.

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Focus On/ New Staff Members

Hello, my name is Miss Rohrke, and I am an Intern here at

Mossbank School in Mrs. Stark’s Grade 5/6 class. I am original-

ly from Humboldt, SK and I have been living in Regina while

attending the University of Regina. I am so excited to be at

Mossbank School, and I am looking forward to getting involved

with various activities and learning from the students, staff, and

community!

Hi, my name is Mrs. Miller. As a long time Mossbank resident and past student of Mossbank School, I’m excited to now be a part of the staff as an Educational Assistant. I live in Moss-bank with my husband Dallas and kids Tia and Drayden. I’m looking for to working with your children and having a great year.

Hi, my name is Ms. Volkmann. I am happy to be back at Mossbank School this year with Grade 2 and 3. I am looking forward to being back at school after my maternity leave. This is going to be a great year!

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Mossbank School Update – Sept. 7th, 2017

Welcome back to school! We hope everyone had a great summer. We are so excited to be back and see all of our students. Welcome to Ms. Volkmann, Miss Miller and Miss Rohrke as they join our staff. We have 109 students in the school this year (107.5 FTE). We will be having our annual Meet and Greet on Sept. 13th, 7:00-8:00 pm--come on out and see your child’s classroom and talk to the staff. Hope to see you all there, but if you are harvesting, we understand.

First and foremost, we want to remind you that Mossbank School is a NUT FREE school. Please do not sent nut products to school. We have a student who has severe allergies to nuts, and we want to keep ALL of our students safe.

We will be continuing our School Academic Goals, focusing on writing grades 1-12. This is the second year we will be focusing on writing. Our goal states “By June 2018, 80% of grade 1-12 students will write at grade level as measured by the Ministry Rubrics.” We will again have periodic updates of our school goals and how we are doing as we go along. This year, we will be submitting data at the end of the year to the Ministry of Education for grade 4, 7, and 9.

Early dismissals will be about once a month, starting Sept. 18st. Students will get out of school at 2:25 instead of 3:25. This is when our teachers network in their LIT’s to work on our writing goals in a team format.

For our Student Well-Being goal we will be continuing on creating a “Growth Mindset” for students and staff. This will be measured by a survey. This year, we want to focus on using the Growth Mindset opposed to just knowing what it is. We will keep you in the loop with activities throughout the year.

The policies and procedures of Mossbank School appear in the front of the student agenda books and on our website. All of the students get an agenda book, so you can have a look at those. Periodically we update policy and procedures as needed, so if you have any questions, please ask. It is good to get students into the habit of using their agenda books, as they are also a great communication tool between home and the school/teachers.

Again, in terms of attendance, please contact the school by note or phone for absences. A note can go to the homeroom teacher or Mrs. Anderson or make the call to the office. Students need to catch up on any work they have missed. Students are also expected to be at registration and in classes on time. Remember, the first morning bell is at 8:50 and the first afternoon bell is at 1:01 (elementary) and 1:11 (high school). Only grade 11 and 12 students are allowed to leave during their spares, and they MUST sign in and out at the office. Also, if students leave during the day, they must check in at the office to say they are leaving the building, even if they are going with their parents. For safety reasons, we need to know who is and isn’t in the building. We will be monitoring attendance, so periodically, you may get a let-ter of awareness about your child’s absences if he or she hits 5, 10, 15 or more absences. It is hugely im-portant that you children attend during instructional times.

Supported Learning is from 12:40 to 1:10 in the library. This is in place for students to finish their work from class or do homework in a quiet, supportive environment. It is supervised by our EA’s. If students skip out of Supported Learning and do not get their work done by the next day, they will then be placed on detention. In other words, school work has to get done—it is not an option. This in-cludes online classes to ensure that students are keeping up with their due dates.

Please be aware of the new technology device procedures in our school. It is a privilege for student to be able to have their cellphones etc. at school. This year, our technology depart-ment has put restrictions into place for the student “bring your own device” access. Students will not be able to access Snapchat, Facebook videos, Netflix, or iTunes Media Store. These web-sites take up excessive amounts of bandwidth from our school, and create a problem for lagging computers in instructional time and in online classes. A letter is being sent home pertaining to this information. If you have any questions, let us know.

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We do have a dress code policy, so we ask that everyone dress in a respectable manner--no slinky/gaping clothes, plunging necklines or short shorts; also no alcohol/drug labels, or rude/explicit sayings, and underwear should be covered up (no blatant displaying). We reserve the right to request students to change or cover up. We appreciate your support in this and teaching the students when and where things are ap-propriate. Remember, we are a K-12 school and little eyes are always watching.

Bell times remain the same this year: warning bell-8:50; announcements and O Canada- 8:55 followed by the first class. Noon hour for HS students is 12:16 to 1:11 (warning bell) and classes resume at 1:16. Noon hour for elementary students is 12:16 to 1:01 (warning bell) and classes resume at 1:06. Home time is 3:25. HS has 5 minute breaks between classes, while elementary students have 2-15 min. recesses. Kindergarten is every even day on our 6 day rotation. There is a rotation calendar posted on our website in case you lose track

We will continue with Wear Pink Day on the first Tues. of every month. We will allow students to wear clothing and accessories that are pink (ex. Shirts, hats, ties, wrist bands, boas, hair bands, socks, rib-bons, tape, etc.) Remember, we wear pink to support the idea that we will not put up with bullying. Our first official Wear Pink Day was Sept 5th.

We will hold emergency drills once a month. These drills will consist of different emergency proce-dures like fire drills, intruder/lockdown drills and tornado drills. Staff will walk students through everything they need to know and do.

We respectfully ask everyone to abide by our parking lot rules: DO NOT walk between the buses; DO NOT walk through the staff parking lot on the elementary side; and DO NOT leave the parking lot in a vehicle at the end of the day, unless the buses have left before you. And, a please do not exit the parking lot by going over the curb. Please drive in a cautious manner whenever you are on the streets around the school, obey the stop signs, and always be on the look-out for children in the school zones.

We encourage students to snack on healthy foods at breaks and bring nutritional lunches. Energy drinks are banned at school--they will be confiscated and poured out. We also ask high school students to not keep 2L pops in their lockers or 6/12-packs of pop. Water is a healthy alternative—it is nature’s nutrition-al drink! Please do not send pop for elementary students at all, and we will be asking organizations who sell food in our school for fundraising to offer juices or water (instead of pop) and nut free snacks.

If you DO NOT want your grade 7/8 student to go down town at lunch hour, please notify us. Ele-mentary bus students are not allowed to go down town unless they have permission from home. Town stu-dents may go home for lunch as usual.

Please remember to send the forms back promptly to the office. That helps us to keep things running smoothly. We will continue to contact families by email this year, so please be sure to keep you email ac-counts in working order and include your correct email address on the registration form. We also have a Fa-cebook account (Mossbank School) and frequently convey information that way. We may occasionally use our school-wide announcement system called Synervoice that will contact you by phone (more so if it is a school-wide emergency). It is an automated system, so you may hear Mrs. Anderson or Mrs. Rutko give you particular school information of high importance. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us. We hope all of the staff and students have a great year, and we hope to see you all at our school events.

---- Leanne Rutko Leanne Rutko Leanne Rutko Leanne Rutko –––– Principal Principal Principal Principal ---- Kind Thoughts; Kind Words; Kind DeedsKind Thoughts; Kind Words; Kind DeedsKind Thoughts; Kind Words; Kind DeedsKind Thoughts; Kind Words; Kind Deeds

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2016-2017 Staff Assignments

Leanne Rutko-Principal; ELA 20/A30/B30

Deanna Krauss-7&8 Math; 7&8 IP; 7&8 Science, 9&10 Science; 9&10 PAA; 9&10 Art; Health Science 20; Chemistry 30; Biology 30

Brett Tiffen-7&8 Social, History 20; 6, 7&8 PE ; 9 PE; 10 Wellness; PE 20&30; PAA 7&8; PAA 20&30; Health/ Career Ed 9&10; Life Transitions 20; Social Studies 9

Michelle Schepp-7&8 ELA; 9&10 ELA; Math Foundations 20&30; Math Pre-Calculus 20&30; Math Workplace & Appren-ticeship 10/20; Math Foundations 10; Math 9; 7&8 Health/Career Ed

Katie Letnes-Student Support Teacher; 7&8 Art; 5&6 PE; 3&4

Ashley Young-Kindergarten; Grade 1

Kathy Volkmann– Grades 2&3, Grade 5&6 Math

Anita Clarke– Grades 4

Crystal Stark-Grade 5&6, Grade 2&3 Science/Social

Kaitlyn Rohrke-Intern

Terry Clements-Library Associate

Jackie Dayman-Educational Assistant

Misty Eastwood-Educational Assistant

Jennifer Miller-Educational Assistant

Mona Vandurme-Facility Operator

Carolyn Anderson-Administrative Assistant