Windsor School News                                                                           December 2016

Principal’s Message: 

It is hard to believe that we are in the last weeks before the Winter Break. It has been a busy and exciting fall, full of activities. We had our Winter Concert on Thursday, December 8th. The theme for the concert was “Snow Biz”. The students did a wonderful job performing for us at both the morning dress rehearsal and the evening performance. A special thank you goes out to Ms. Braun, Miss Gillis and all the K-6 teachers for their efforts. Thank you to all that participated in the Book Sale as well. On Wednesday, December 21st the Choir is going on the road. They will be visiting St. Amant Centre and Dakota House where they will be performing for the residents there. After they have completed their performances they will be going to Boston Pizza for lunch. Thank you to our Choir members for rehearsals in preparing for this day. Students are also collecting Winter Clothing these last several weeks to provide clothing for those families that need through the Koats for Kids program. As well students are collecting toiletries for hampers that they plan to bring to St. Mark’s Church which is connected with Winnipeg Harvest. Collection of materials will happen these last two weeks before the break. Thank you to the students that are organizing our school’s efforts. Students will be dismissed at 2:15 on December 22nd, the last school day before the Winter Break. School resumes on January 9th. We look forward to many exciting activities that will happen during the winter months, such as the field trips to MTYP and WSO, basketball season, indoor track and field meets, the Choir singing at the Manitoba Moose game, as well as the Grade 7 & 8 Winter Band/Guitar Concert and Art Expo on Thursday, January 26th. On behalf of the staff of Windsor School, we greatly appreciate the ongoing support that is provided to us by you, the Windsor community, as well as the enthusiasm and willingness to learn that your children bring to school each day. As the holiday season begins, we want to ex-press our appreciation and wish everyone the very best of the season.

Inside this Issue Kindergarten News              2 Gr. 1/2 News               3 Gr. 2/3 News               4 Gr. 3/4 News                          5 Gr. 4/5 News               6    Gr. 5/6 News                                7 Gr. 7/8 News                    8—9 Art                10               

 7/8 Volleyball News           11 Library News                        12 Patrol News              12 Dates to Remember           12 Cold Weather            13 Report an Absence            13 Lunch Room News            13 Windsor School Pick‐up and Drop‐off      14 

   

News from the Kindergartens: In Kindergarten we have been getting ready for the winter con-cert. We have been practicing our song in music. We made snowflakes, a big winter mural and mittens. We have been reading winter books, snowflakes poems and sentences. We have been counting snowmen. We are excited for the winter concert. We love playing at school. We love gym and music.

Wow! It’s December already…where has the time gone?

Room 5 is learning new writing strategies to make our simple sentences into more complex sentences by adding more details. We are working on word families, which is helping with our reading and writing. We are using our hundreds carpet to learn skip counting, which numbers are odd and even and playing games to build it. We are having fun learning about position and motion in Science with Miss Poetker. We are beginning to work on a few winter art projects now that the snow has finally fallen. The students of room 5 are enjoying our visits with Baby Cohen and his mom in our Roots of Empathy program.

Wish you all the best for a wonderful holiday season!

English Language Arts We wrote “Family Stories”. – Jessie We made “Leaf Poems”- Anna We wrote poems about squirrels. – Kole We do silent reading and guided reading every day. - Grant Math In math we are doing cross number puzzles. - Jude We are learning subtracting. - Harper We are doing daily math. – Madden In math we are doing adding. - Declan Science We are learning about gravity and friction, like if a glass was in space the juice won’t fall out. - Jordan We have been studying about magnetic forces. We have also been writing a lot about it. - Damion We have been doing experiments on magnets. The metals that stick to magnets are iron, nickel, and

steel. The two sides on a magnet are North and South. We were testing if magnets attract or repel. - Brady

Social Studies In Social Studies we are learning about Peace and peaceful solutions. - Sienna In Social Studies we are learning about getting along and solving conflicts. – Payton Health We are doing All About Me—what sports you like, what you do in free time, what favorite places you have been to, what you like to do with your family. - Liam

Phys. Ed. We pass in Bobber Hockey- it means spongee polo. I love to play. - Mason In gym, we play tag games like pickle tag—when you get tagged by a tagger you go in the circle. I

like to play tag games. – Kobe Ollie Octopus is a tag game that we play in gym. – Donovan In gym we are doing spongee polo games. - Jaxon Music We are learning our Christmas Concert. We are learning our echoes! Echoes! Echoes! Echoes! Music

is fun!—Freyja and Gracie

Dear Readers: Recycling is Good for the Earth By Kaia and Fiona Would you like to hear how to take care of the earth? You do? Then here comes my friend Kaia. Thanks Fiona. What we did was in the library we sorted the recy-cling from the garbage. We dumped a garbage can onto a sheet of plastic. We learned that plastic bags cannot be put into the recycling bins. Yogurt containers can be put into the recycling, but the food should be cleaned out. Gavin helps everybody with recycling. He help us by coming into our class and takes our recycling. He puts it into a bigger bin. He is a very kind helper. Indigenous People and Using the Land by Rhyder and Brooke

Miss Lorraine (Indigenous Enrichment Teacher) came in and talked about Indigenous people that were here a long time ago. She brought in a bison box. Inside were items made from the bison; like a bison tail that was used for swatting flies and bison fur used for coats and blankets. She also brought in some plants that were and are still used for medicines. Tobacco is offered to say thank you to Mother Earth. Cedar is used for tea. It helps your sore throat. Sage is for smudging. It helps you clear your mind and take negative thoughts out of your head. Sweet grass is the hair of Mother Earth. It is braided into three parts.

Jack and the Beanstalk by Karrigan We retold different versions of Jack and the Beanstalk stories. We used Popsicle sticks and paper. We cut out figures and houses and of course we made the bean stalk. We made a vine by braiding confetti paper. We put the figures and houses on the vine. We used the apps on the iPads. We used Draw Pad, Pic Collage, the Camera, Photo Booth and some searched images all to make an iMovie. We recorded in the Kin-dergarten room where it was quiet in the afternoon. Hand Tools or Fidgets by Nathan and Riley Hand tools help you listen to the speaker. Your hands are busy, your eyes on the speaker and your mind is open and your mouth is closed. Some hand tools are animals like the cat and the dog. Kids use the hand tools at the carpet. Hand tools should be used ‘small’ in your hands.

Written together as a class Health – Project 11 –We are taking part in a mental health curriculum through the True North Foun-dation. It is called Project 11. It is called Project 11 because it is named after Rick Rypien, who was a Manitoba Moose player with the number 11. So far we have talked about what makes a good friend, friendship traits (good and bad) and healthy and unhealthy friendships. Halloween for Hunger – We collected non-perishable food items for a local food bank. We also col-lected unwanted Halloween candy. We went into classrooms to talk to students about what items are needed most at Winnipeg Harvest. We will be going to volunteer for the morning on December 19th at Winnipeg Harvest. Social Studies / ELA / Art – We chose animals to represent our family members on our family totems. We explained why we chose them for each member and we designed a family totem pole with drawings and colour. Science – We studied some of the systems of the Hu-man Body. We studied the digestive, the skeletal, res-piratory and circulatory systems. We had a scientist from the St. Boniface Research Center come and teach us about x-rays, cat scans, and MRI’s. We also dissect-ed pig heart and lungs. It was a very interesting morn-ing. STEM Challenges - (science, technology, engineering and math)- When we work on a STEM challenge we are given a task to work on, usually with a team. They have in-volved activities such as building bridges, creating tow-ers and constructing pompom launchers. We have had to budget our Windsor dollars to buy the supplies we need. Once our task is complete, we test it and often need to go back revise our work to get the outcome we desire, just like scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Music – We just finished performing our winter musical / concert, Snow Biz. It was a bizzy time, we were snow bizzy preparing for our roles. Thanks Ms. Braun for a snow stopping musical! Math – We are currently learning about factoring and prime and composite numbers. We are also learning about fractions.

Composed by the Grade 5/6 class, edited by Mme Neil

ELA\SS & Health In ELA\SS we read the book “The Breadwinner” by D. Ellis. We first made pictures and wrote about each chapter and at the end we made a venn diagram and compared our life to hers. We learned that we are very lucky to leave in a dem-ocratic country like Canada. We have each made a code of arms using our background and things that are dear to us. We made a foldable all about the Canadian government. Can you name our provincial and federal leaders?

Health - Project 11.We are trying out a new mental health curriculum sponsored by the True North foundation called Project 11. We learn about practic-ing good mental health. So far, we have learned about all the words that relate to friendships and learning about healthy and unhealthy friendships. We are writing about friendships and families and who we are close to and how they can support us when we are feeling sad or lonely. There are also a lot of videos in Project 11, about healthy eating, practicing mindful-ness, and taking movement breaks. One part of a video is called “Name that Jet”, and it’s a play on their names. The last one we did, the clue was “a quiet and nervous insect”, can you guess that Jet?? It’s a shy flea…get it? Français In French we have been learning how to recite the alphabet and our numbers. We also learned about how to say different school supplies and we just started to learn about different foods. We each made a list that had the food that we loved, that we liked and food that we didn’t like. If we want to get water or go to the bathroom we have to ask in French. Math In math our class has been working on place value, we have been working on decimals and their values. We also been working on rounding in small booklets and addition and subtraction in rounding. We just started multiplica-tion and soon it will be time to start division.

Sci/Art In science we have been learning about classification of living organisms (invertebrates and vertebrates). We

have recently started learning about temperature and climate so over all, the weather. We did two experiments that involved temperature. We also painted two pictures each of invertebrate and vertebrate animals. In Art we have all been working on a collage of things that we like. We have also made clay creatures that we made up. Partnership We do partnership in many classrooms. In Kindergarten we have been helping them with the laptops, learning how

to log on and then doing activities like Star Fall, Tumble-books, and making a monthly calendar. On every day two, we do gym leadership with the younger students, we help them do activities in the gym. In grade ½ we help do Art pro-jects and journal writing. With the grade ¾’s we’ve been learning about sus-tainability (taking

care of our earth) and problem based learning, right now we are recreating a poem about taking care of the earth, groups can make a video, a mural, a play, or use clay. Music/Phys. Ed. In Ms. Braun’s class/Music we have been practicing our winter concert songs. For example Snow Biz, It Comes out Snow and Catch My Drift. We have also been practicing our lines for example, the ice cream peddler, Suzy and Sunny snowflake and the postal worker gang. In Phys. Ed, we have played volleyball and now we are play-ing floor hockey, and hopefully soon we will be skating on the community centre’s skating rink.

We have been doing many interesting projects in school throughout the past month. In ELA we are working on a novel study. We each have chosen one of four books and are doing written and visual pieces on the book of our choice. At the beginning of the year we did a short story unit. We read three short stories and did a project on each. For the first one we did a speech, for the second one we did a movie poster and for the third one we did an essay. We are working on our I-Search projects. With I-Search we can pick a topic and research it enough to have a ten minute presentation on it in front of the class. We can either make a poster board on it, or make a power point. We also need to have a non-print source, such as creating a sur-vey, or showing a video. In Social Studies we are learning about human rights. We are making a power point about push and pull factors for why you would leave and come to a country. We visited the human rights museum. We took part in a program called Be An Upstander. At the beginning of the year we were learning about latitude and longitude. We drew maps of the world and had to add in the major lines of latitude and longitude. We are also working on a project called Genius Hour. It is where every student in our class gets to pick a project of their choice. It can literally be anything. It can take any amount of time you just have to have to have something to show at the end of the year. We are doing this in homeroom. In Phys. Ed we have fitness fun day every day 5. We have been learning how to play volleyball, floor hockey and table tennis. In volleyball we learned how to volley, bump and underhand serve. In floor hockey so far we have learned how to pass, shoot, and play as a team. We also play full court and half court. Now we are playing table tennis and ping pong; we have learned how to backhand and forehand hit the ball.

Grade 7 Math Mme Neil: In Math we just finished doing division and now we are working on per-centages. Math: We have been learning about multiplying fractions by each other and using different meth-ods and diagrams to find the answer. We have used number lines, fraction strips, and started using box method, also known as lattice.

In Science we are learning about the rock cycle, erosion, mountains to rock, and fossils. We just finished learning about plate tectonics. We made models and did presentations on volca-noes, earthquakes or tsunamis. We have been doing research and providing questions to put into kahoot so the class can try to answer it through multiple choice. Kahoot is a website that shows a question on the front screen, and four choices to answer on your laptop screen. You have to try to correctly answer quickly to get a higher score. Instead of just playing Kahoot, we are now creating them for the class to play. We are also finishing making kahoots in French, with questions based on clothing articles. Now, Ms. Cope (Mr. Prid-dle’s teacher candidate) has started teaching us directions. Once we can fully understand and properly speak these directions fluently, we will be partnering up and guiding each other from one classroom to another, while blindfolded. We have learned right (droit), left (gauche), in (dans) under (sous), and on (sur), and turn (tourner). Ms. Cope is also teaching us about population around the world in developed and developing countries in Social Studies. We have learned about push and pull factors for reasons why you might immigrate and find refuge in another country. We have been assigned a project where we will research a developing country of our choice and do research about population, birth rate, death rate, and find environmental, political, social, health related, and economic push and pull factors within them. This project is done with partner of our choice. Mr. Loney, has assigned the grade 7/8 Art class to work on a pinch pot creature. Which is a clay pot that is created by pinching the clay into the shape of a creature of your choice. As we are waiting for the creatures to dry we have started to learn about value. In Art, value is the development of how you use shading, in a proper technique that will help us make art visually stronger and appealing. In intermediate Band, Mr. Kay has been giving various new and interesting music that shows a different style and have need for different techniques to help us individually improve how we play. We have been working on 4 songs, some of which you may already know of, the songs are, Aztalan, Uptown Funk, Firework, Trumpet Voluntary. We have recently gotten a more challeng-ing piece, wildly famous as you most likely have heard of titled “Harry Potter”. In this piece of music there is a combination of pieces of songs throughout the series. In 7/8 band we have been working towards training our ears to be able to identify and interpretive whether a note is so in tune sharp, or flat. Now we are working on a song called “Dance of the Jabberwocky” from Alice in Wonderland. The beginner band is working on a piece named “Eye of the Tiger” which is another popular song throughout music history. In Guitar we have several pieces of music, such as, Come Together, Love Yourself, Dust in the Wind, and we have been working on rock riffs as well, which is small pieces of famous music. Now we are doing a fun challenge where we have only parts of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, and we have to try to figure out the missing notes, the first people to complete and perform the song gets a prize!

 

Happenings in the Art Room 

Pop Art Pop art reflects images  that are popular in our  society. Here are some  images that represent  

2016. 

 The art room is always crea ng. Stay tuned for our clay crea ons soon to 

be completed. 

VOLLEYBALL We have had a successful volleyball season. We had three teams this year, a grade 6 & 7 Girls team, a grade 8 Girls team and a grade 7 & 8 Boys team. There were 43 students playing volley-ball, which is a great turn-out. The skills of the students improved as the year progressed and all teams showed their improvement in the play-offs with very well played matches. We were able to have the Glenlawn Varsity Boys and Girls teams come out one afternoon to help our stu-dents with developing skills. The Glenlawn students provided great instructions to all our stu-dents in grades 7 & 8. A big thank you for the students for attending practices and games. Thank you to the parents in supporting students with rides and cheering them on for the games. Finally, thank you to the coaches for taking the extra time with students this season. Already basketball season is beginning with practices. Two teams will be representing Windsor this school year.

DECEMBER PATROL NEWS

Grade 4, 5, 6 patrols work hard to provide a safe crossing to our students. They come to school early and leave late; their priority is to help students cross the street safely. We thank them for their dedicated service! Patrols cross students in the morning, lunch and at the end of the day at the corner of Killarney and Cunnington Avenue. Patrols are on duty from: 8:30am until 8:50am, 11:40am until 11:50am, and 3:25pm until 3:40pm. On days when the wind chill is colder than -32°C patrols will NOT be on post; between -29°C and -31°C patrols will be on post for no more than 10 minutes. Thank you for your support, Mme Neil – Patrol Supervisor

Library News

Take advantage of all the wonderful ac-tivities Winnipeg has

to offer during the Break - outdoor play, skating, tobogganing - anything to make

your cheeks glow red. There are muse-ums and art galleries to visit as well as music and theatre performances.

Don’t forget to check out the resources and programs offered through the Win-

nipeg Public Library – all family-oriented and free. You can check out

the schedule at http://wpl.winnipeg.ca/library/

Mrs. Fowler and Ms Zaidman wish

everyone a safe, happy holiday. See you in 2017.

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Dates to Remember

Thursday, December 22nd

2:15 PM early dismissal

Winter Break December 23 to January 6

Classes resume

Monday, January 9th – Day 5

Monday, January 9 Home and School Meeting 6:30

Monday, January 24th

2: 15 PM— Early Dismissal

Wednesday, January 26th

7/8 Winter Band Concert & Art Expo Gym doors open 6:00 PM

Concert 7:00 PM

Call to Report Absence

Please email carolyn.perera@lrds.net

or call the office at (204) 237-4057 or to notify us of your child’s absence. Messages can be left on the school answering machine at any

time.

Your help with this important process

eliminates time spent communicating

redundant information

and expending unwarranted concern regarding your child’s whereabouts.

  

Cold Weather Dress-up As the temperature drops we encourage parents to ensure that you child comes to school dressed appropriately to go outdoors. Toques, mittens, boots, ski pants and warm coats will allow students to enjoy the Manitoba weather. Please make sure that all items are labeled so that can easily found if misplaced.

Please note: Students may enter the building at 8:52 a.m. and 12:40 p.m.. Please en-sure that you arrive at school no earlier than 8:45 a.m. and 12:35 p.m.. If the weath-er is a problem, you may come in and wait inside the entry doors until the bell rings. Students may be allowed outside for a maximum of 15 minutes when the wind chill reaches -27° C. Students will not be allowed outside for lunch or recess when the wind chill reaches -30° C.

Lunchroom News

Cutlery: We often have students coming to the office looking for cutlery. Parents. if your child brings a lunch to school that requires cutlery please make sure you pack a spoon or fork. Our school is not equipped to provide cutlery for every child.

Attendance: If you child is enrolled in the lunch program and you plan to take them our or if they are going to a friend’s home during lunch hour please makes sure that the office is

aware of your child’s absence at 204-237-4057 or email

carolyn.perera@lrsd.net.

Your co-operation in this matter is much appreciated.

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The Staff of Windsor School

Would like to wish the students and their families a very

happy, peaceful holiday season.

And a very prosperous and healthy New Year in 2017

Windsor School Pick-up and Drop-off

Student safety is of utmost concern at school and here are some reminders in ensuring that students are kept safe on their way to and from school. The school car park is a particularly dangerous place with traffic coming to the school and to the Community Centre and so it is of utmost importance that the following occur: Students should be dropped off on the side roads around the school: either Killarney Street or Cunning-

ton Avenue for example. Students should walk on the sidewalk and enter the school grounds by the bike racks or the Cunnington

entrance and at no time should students walk through the school staff parking lot. Grade 7 and 8 students should exercise the utmost caution when walking through the Community Club

parking lot to their entrance. Students should arrive at school at 8:52 AM, just prior to the entrance bell. Under no circumstances should parents’ cars enter the staff parking lot to drop off students as this can

be extremely dangerous when vehicles reverse and drivers may not be able to see small children. Thank you in advance for your compliance in this matter as we all work together to ensure the safety of our children. Please talk with your child about the need to follow the above procedures and avoid the parking lot at all times.

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