Newsletter

December 2014

PINKHAM SCHOOL

The Winnipeg School Division Val Mowez - Principal 765 Pacific Avenue Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3E 1G1 Phone: 204 786 5749 Fax: 204 783 0597 https://www.winnipegsd.ca/schools/pinkham

Dear Parents/Guardians, Congratulations to all our families that participated in Parent-Teacher-Student Conferences! 88% of our families participated. If you did not have the chance to attend the conference, please schedule a conference with your child’s teacher as soon as possible. At your conference you will also receive your child’s report card. This is a very important opportunity for you to meet with your child’s teacher to learn about your child’s strengths, needs and next steps in learning. I would also like to acknowledge the students and their families that had perfect attendance during the first term of the school year. 40 students in Nursery to Grade 6 had perfect attendance, that is 23% of our students. I would especially like to thank our parents and caregivers that support their children in being in school and on time every day. If your child is ill or will be away on a school day, please ensure that you call the school office at 204-786-5749.

Wishing you a safe and restful holiday and all the best in 2015! Ms. V. Mowez

, Principal

Dates To Remember December 4, 2014

Volleyball Tournament @ Victoria Albert School

December 5, 2014

Volleyball Tournament @ Greenway School

December 11, 2014

Grades 1/2 at MTYP Family Make and Take 4:30 p.m.

As the weather gets colder, please support your child in dressing for the weather including a warm jacket, hat, mittens, scarf and boots. If you require support with accessing these items, please contact our Community Support Worker, Sherrie Houle, or our Home Learning Assistant Susan Galego.

December 12, 2014

Kelvin Holiday Breakfast a.m. Whole School attends All N/K students attend in the a.m.

December 15, 2014

Gingerbread House Day

December 17, 2014

Parent Council 5 p.m. Holiday Turkey Lunch- whole school

December brings with it many special events at Pinkham School:  Holiday Make & Take December 11 4:30 p.m.  Kelvin High School Holiday Party December 12 a.m.  Holiday Turkey Lunch December 17 Noon  Pancake Breakfast December 19 8:30 a.m.

December 19, 2014

Pancake Breakfast 8:30 a.m. School Assembly 9:15 a.m. All N/K students attend in the a.m. Last day of classes

This will be our last newsletter for the 2014 school year. I wish you and your families and friends a holiday season filled with much health, happiness and peace. the best in 2015!

Monthly Assemblies Parents are welcome to attend our monthly assemblies. This is an opportunity for our school community to come together to celebrate the past month’s learning, learn about upcoming events, and to hear special announcements. Assemblies are held the last Friday of each month at 9:15 a.m. in the gym.

Pinkham School Newsletter December 2014

Room 115 Nursery/Kindergarten Ms. Pelley Thank you to all families who attended the conferences in November. A child's first and most important teacher is his or her parents. Communication between parents and teachers is essential to the success of a child. In November the students in Room 115 continued with alphabet recognition activities, identifying and printing our names, drawing pictures with details, listening, responding and retelling stories. We read the story “The Dot” by Peter H. Reynolds. This is a story about a girl named Vashti who thinks she can't draw but then she ends up making beautiful pictures with dots. Afterwards the students created dot art of their own. In Numeracy the students practiced rote counting to 20 and building sets of objects to 10. We read the story “Mouse Count” by Ellen Stoll Walsh. This story builds on the students ability to count forward to 10, count backwards from 10 and to build sets. We explored many activities that connected to this story. Reminders: Indoor shoes: If you haven’t done so already now is the time to bring in an extra pair of shoes for your child to leave at school. Home reading books: Thank you for all your support with the home reading program. The students look forward to bringing books home to share. Please remember to send the home reading bags back everyday. If you have lost the book bag let us know and we will give your child a new bag. December 12 Kelvin Breakfast: Both AM and PM classes will attend school in the AM only. No PM Nursery/Kindergarten Classes December Assembly: Room 115 and room 118 will be hosting the December 19th assembly in the gym. Both AM and PM classes will attend in the AM only. No PM Nursery/Kindergarten classes. Have a happy and restful holiday!

Room 118 Early Childhood Behaviour Treatment Program (ECBTP) Ms. Stone The month of November encouraged a discussion on peace. Peace is a relevant and meaningful connection to the exploration of our community and our world. The intent is for students to make a connection between our world and how we can show peace to the people and the environment around us. We have been discussing peace and what it means to show peace. Students brainstormed ways we can show peace to others and when situations arise we refer back to our brainstorm session. We ask, is that showing peace? Students say what is and what is, “not showing peace”.

Students created pictures of what peace means to them.

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Pinkham School Newsletter December 2014

Room 215 Grades 1/2 Ms. Cardoso In Language Arts, we have been reading the story of Peter Pan as a class. We have written predictions for chapters and discussed different story variations. We will be attending Peter Plan live on stage at the MTYP as part of an extension of our learning. This month we also celebrated the 50th Day of School! On this day, we completed a variety of activities surrounding the number 50. We developed a class book, “When I am 50…” and participated in math stations using problem solving, estimation, representing numbers and skip counting. We have also been working on our next steps in Math. One group is working on multiplication strategies and are thinking in groups to solve math problems more efficiently. In Social Studies, we have been talking about Canada. We have looked at maps to locate where we are as a country and have focused in on provinces and cities. We understand that we are part of a even larger community and are learning where we are in the world. We look forward to sharing with you our “Where I Live” project soon!

Room 217 Grades 1/2 Ms. Garcia November was an exciting month of learning in Room 217! It was great seeing families during parent teacher conferences. Thank you for taking time to see your child's progress I am very proud of all! Students continue to work hard during Daily 5. Everyday we are getting better at building sentences, using punctuation and capitalization through our Daily Edit. Students enjoy learning the 6 traits of writing and are focusing on organization by putting their ideas in order. In Math we are continuing to work hard on our goals using our math Learning Cards. We also have our math bins full of math resources and games that have helped us work independently. Grade 2 students continue to have spirit of math drills. Daily drills continue to help students retrieve information quickly, practices using the facts and train their brain to focus. We finished compatible numbers to 20 and are currently practicing our skip counting skills. Students’ continue to record their scores on a graph in their books and celebrate their progress. Students are keeping track of their class average and have reached their goal for compatible numbers to 20. In Science we are exploring characteristics of objects and materials. We will be going to the Manitoba Aviation Museum on December 10th to further our understanding. I am very proud of the students in Room 217. They constantly demonstrate the Pinkham C.A.R.E. principles. Keep up the great work and continue to make good choices!

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Pinkham School Newsletter December 2014

Room 218 Grades 1/2 Ms. Burns This month in Room 218 for ELA we have finished our novel of Peter Pan and went to MTYP to see the play Peter Pan. We also will be watching the Disney classic of Peter Pan and will have the task of comparing and contrasting each rendition. How are they the same? How are they different? We have had Ms. Burdey in our class again and she has helped us start our Our after recess first of five word chant lists. This is daily activity and we add a new word to our chant every day. In our relaxation yoga guided reading groups we have been making word splashes to develop time. vocabulary and to keep up in our classroom to help us with our writing. Word splashes are similar to picture dictionary words where we write a word and attach a picture to go with it. We passed our 50th day of school and decided that it would be interesting to think about when we are 50 years old. We came up with some great ideas about what it might be like for room 218 to be 50, like having 16 children, being a police officer or taking their wife on a date! Feel free to come read all of them, as they are posted on our bulletin board and in the class. For Remembrance Day we created our own Remembrance Day wreath. We discussed the meaning of why we take time that day to remember those who fought in the war. We also discussed and brainstormed our own ideas of what peace is. Some of our ideas of peace were, Peace is helping somebody, Peace is a happy house, Peace is feeling safe and Peace is helping other people stand up against bullies. We have begun an inquiry into the human body, room 218 is doing research by looking through many books that we took out of the library. We have drawn pictures of our skeleton, learned about what cells make up blood and what happens in our digestive system. In spirit of math our grade 2s are now working on skip counting drills, we hope to make our collective goal of 8 out of 10 as soon as possible!

Room 205 Grades 3/4 Mr. Radawetz The month of November just flew by! The students in Room 205 worked on a number of writing assignments which included “What Peace Means to Me”, Haiku poetry and have started working on the Seven Aboriginal Teachings. The students have created posters on their perspective on Human Rights and the class is in the process of creating a video on Human Rights. Guided reading groups have started where students are working in small groups working on improving reading skills (comprehension and fluency ) and writing skills. In Social Studies we are continuing to learn about Canada and in Science we are studying “How Plants Grow.” This month we had a University of Manitoba student from the Wise Kid-Netic program visit our classroom presenting a lesson on Bridges and Structures. In math, we continue to working on place value, mental math strategies, compatible numbers, addition and subtraction and on multiplication.

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Pinkham School Newsletter December 2014

Room 216 Grades 3/4 Ms. Kabani Thank you to all the families that came out to our parent/teacher conferences to discuss your child’s progress, accomplishments and goals for the year. Our unit on rocks and minerals is nearing an end but we will continue to use the information we have learned in class as we travel through our Manitoba study. Using our knowledge of sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rock formation we will discover where in our province these deposits can be found. We participated in another exciting workshop presented by the WISE Kid-Netic Energy program. Students worked in collaborative groups to design and build bridges using straws. One of the highlights this month was our field trip to the Living Prairie Museum and the Assiniboine Forest. We experienced a prairie habitat, forest and a wetland habitat right in our city. At the Living Prairie Museum we met Joe McLellan. Joe McLellan is an author, educator, storyteller and a Deacon. He has written several children’s books about Nanabosho. Nanabosho is the teacher and protector of the Anishinabe people. We have been very fortunate to have Ms Burdey, Pinkham’s Learning Support Teacher, work in our classroom helping us with our 6 traits of writing. In particular we have been learning and practicing how to write a paragraph.

Room 203 Grades 5/6 Ms. Valentim

In Room 203 we have added another piece to our math program. Everyday we solve a “Problem of the Day”. Doing this allows students to practice their mental math skills and develop their current math knowledge. It has also sparked great discussions about how we each solve the problems differently. Students are having a wonderful time with the added challenge. We are also continuing to work on Paragraph Writing, learning about the organization of our ideas and exploring the importance of a topic sentence, supporting details, as well as a conclusion sentence. Much of this is being done through group work to ensure everyone’s ideas are being shared with each other. We are also finishing our Science unit in which we have discussed some of the main nutrients our body needs to stay healthy. We then went on to show our learning through a drawing of the human body in which the skeletal system and the different organs were represented by food. The big idea was that “You are what you eat!” It has been a month filled with wonderful learning and amazing 5 discussions! Great work Room 203!!

Pinkham School Newsletter December 2014

Room 210 Grades 5/6 Ms. Capelo November has flown by for Room 210! Students have been hard at work exploring the sun and the different planets in our solar system. Within the next couple of weeks students will have the opportunity to explore the planets of our solar system even further through group projects. In English Language Arts, we have been focusing on selecting ideas for writing and organizing our thoughts before the writing piece begins. From here we will be exploring how to use paragraphs to apply ideas in a structured and logical way. In Math, we have been looking at understanding place value. Within the next month we will look at different strategies for estimating numbers as well as begin our individualized group study on the concepts on multiplication, division and fractions.

Music Mr. Budlong November has been a great month for music at Pinkham School. Student in Grades 1/2 have begun working on learning notation, and game songs. Students in Grade 36 have continued work on recorder and xylophone skills. The last day of October featured the Grade 1/2 classes performing a Halloween song called Five Little Pumpkins. At the Service of Remembrance on Nov 10, the students in Grades 3 and 4 performed a song called There Will Be Peace. In all classes, we discussed the use of music in solemn occations such as this, and the type of music that is most often used. Pinkham School has been provided the Djembe drums for a second time at our school. The drums will be here for the 3 weeks before the holidays, and for the first week of January as well. While the drums are in the school, every class will be creating a piece and recording it. All classes will still work on songs for Make and Take on December 11. As in past years, these will include songs that everyone in the gym can join in singing, as well as songs that the students have prepared in their classes for the event. We invite any parents who wish to sing with their children to feel free to join us at the Make and Take.

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Pinkham School Newsletter December 2014

Physical Education Mr. Comia Grades K-4 classrooms will focus on balance and bouncing skills. We will strive to bounce a ball initiating contact with our fingertips. We will practice bending and straightening our wrists and elbows to push the ball. We will learn to bounce the ball in front of and to the side of our bodies. We will play a variety of bouncing activities from keep away to relays in order to improve our bouncing skills. We will also work on improving our static and dynamic balance by participating in a variety of balance games and using balance boards and other equipment. During this month our Grades 5-6 classrooms continue with volleyball. We had been working on underhand passing, volleying, serving and proper footwork. Now, we are focusing on actual volleyball games, working on rotation, team play and substitutions. Our volleyball team continuous to practice from 8:30 AM until 8:55 AM. Ms. Burns and Mr. Comia have been sharing the coaching duties. We will be participating in two volleyball tournaments in December. Our Competitive Team plays on December 4 (Day 6) at Victoria Albert, while our Non Competitive Team play on Dec 5 (Day 1) at Greenway. Mr. Comia will take the team to Victoria Albert and Ms. Burns will be coaching the team at Greenway

Our indoor soccer team continues their season with games at the Seven Oaks Soccer Complex. This indoor soccer facility is located beside the Garden City Shopping Centre. During our first few games in November we displayed excellent sportsmanship, effort and team play. We also play at the Inner City Soccer U of M Jamboree on January 29, 2015. This will be an all day tournament featuring some of the best soccer players in the Winnipeg School Division.

Resource Ms. Barnett The Power of Environmental Print Environmental print are the words, symbols and signs we see in our daily lives. Environmental print is the first print a child learns to “read”. The letters and numbers found on products and stores such as McDonald’s, Wal-Mart and Campbell’s soup provide opportunities for young readers to interact with print they see in their daily lives. Environmental print is everywhere: walking down the street, on the fridge, riding the bus and at the store. Environmental print is free. Environmental print is meaningful to children. Children get excited when they can “read” the print in their environment. Environmental print helps to build confidence in young children. When print holds meaning for them, children will learn much faster and begin to make connections.

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Pinkham School Newsletter December 2014

Community Support Worker Sherrie Houle Our Parent Room is a welcoming place for families of Pinkham School students. Some of our resources and information include computer/Internet, telephone, faxing, free clothing depot and coffee. Information on parenting, housing, health and nutrition. All Parents/Guardians are always welcome! Any questions/concerns or ideas for information sessions please feel free to call me at 204-774-6854 or email me at [email protected]

Winter Make and Take - Please join us for the Pinkham School Holiday Make and Take on Thursday, December 11th, from 4:30—6:00 pm. Parent volunteers prepare all the necessary supplies needed to get ready for this very popular family event. If you are available anytime during the day to help with preparations please drop by the Parent Room anytime during the week before this event.

School– Wide Turkey Lunch for Pinkham Students- Our 5th annual Turkey Lunch will be on Wednesday, December 17th. It’s a time when all the student’s, staff and volunteer’s enjoy a turkey lunch together. Granny’s Poultry, Safeway, staff and volunteers all donate to make this lunch a success. We will be needing volunteers in the kitchen for preparing the meal. If you would like to help please let me know.

Pinkham Parent Council Our 2014/2015 Elected Council Members Co-Chair - Ttonra McLeod

Co-Chair - Bianca Ballantyne

Treasurer - Maxine Meekis

Secretary - Katherine Redhead

The Parent Council meetings are held the last Wednesday of each month alternating times of 9:30 am and 5:00 pm. any changes will be posted here. Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, December 17th at 5:00 pm in the Parent Room. At Parent Council Meetings we discuss School/Community happenings as well as fundraising and school events. Some items we discussed at our last meeting were the new Winnipeg School Division Code of Conduct document, our new Computer on Wheels and we gave a requested $125.00 to go towards our grades 5 and 6’s to attend The Museum of Human Rights. Please join us for our next meeting. We are now at capacity for our lunch program. No new students will be accepted. We will let you know of any changes. We have recently received a few lunches that have contained Nutella sandwiches, which is made from hazelnuts. A reminder that we have a No Nut policy in our lunchroom. Thank-You for your cooperation. Thank-You for your continued support in all of our fundraising endeavours. All monies made go to help fund school related activities such as subsidized field trips. 8

Pinkham School Newsletter December 2014

Come prepared to learn Actively listening Ready to participate and inquire

Everybody belongs

C.A.R.E. Awards One student from each grade in each classroom is selected by the classroom teacher to receive a C.A.R.E. Award each month. These students exemplify the C.A.R.E. principles. These awards are presented each month during our assembly on the last Friday of each month and family members are always welcome to attend. Last month’s C.A.R.E. Awards recipients are: Rm. 118 Nicholas

Rm. 205 Serenity Majid

Rm. 115 Olivia Tiara

Rm. 216 Damien Nigist

Rm. 215 Billy Joe Aisha

Rm. 203 Paige Bryn

Rm. 217 Raine Lawrence

Rm. 210 Danny Hailey

Rm. 218 Jayda Aron

Congratulations to all of you! Keep up the great work!

I Caught You Caring Award Environmental Recognition Award Jaylene is recognized for her enthusiasm in recycling at our school. Thank you for taking care of the Pinkham School and community environment.

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Pinkham School Newsletter December 2014

Congratulations to the following students who had perfect attendance during Term 1! Room 203 Aduk Aurora Ayesha Kryzler Bryn

Room 118 Michael

Room 218 Evan Skylynn

Room 115 Alyssa Keinan Logan Mikayla Tiara Aurora

Room 205 Stacie Lazarus Tristan Majid Quadric Phoenix Lala

Room 210 Rayne Dipesh Jamie Victoria Francis Danny Natasha

Room 215 Caitlyn Lauren Jordan

Room 218 Julia Qishia Edmond

Room 216 Abdullah Rama Jayden Keo Sarah Alesha

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Pinkham School Newsletter December 2014

Parent Teacher Conferences

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Pinkham School Newsletter

December Calendar Monday 1

Tuesday

Day 2

Music Group Noon-1 p.m.

2

Day 3

Wednesday 3

Day 4

4

Day 5

Volleyballl Tournament at Victoria Albert School

Filipino Class 3:30-5:00 p.m.

Friday

Thursday 5

Day 6

Volleyballl Tournament at Greenway School

Social Justice Club Noon

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Day 1

9

Day 1

10

Day 2

Music Group Noon-1 p.m.

Grades 1 & 2’s to the Aviation Museum

Filipino Class 3:30-5:00 p.m.

Dance Class 3:45-4:30 p.m.

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Day 3

Family Make and Take 4:30 p.m.

Day 5

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Day 6

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Day 1

Parent Council . 5 p.m. Gingerbread House Day

Filipino Heritage Class

Day 4

Kelvin Holiday Party a.m. whole school attends All Nursery & Kindergarten students attend in the a.m.

Nutrition Bingo 9:30 a.m.

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18

Day 2

Social Justice Club Noon

Dance Class 3:45-4:30 p.m.

NO CLASSES IN THE P.M.

Holiday Turkey Lunch

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Day 3

School Assembly 9:15 a.m.

All Nursery & Kindergarten students attend in the a.m. Pancake Breakfast

Last day of Classes before Winter Break

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29

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Winter Break Begins

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JANUARY UPCOMING DATES: January 5, 2014 January 7, 2014 January 15, 2014 January 21, 2014 January 28,, 2014 January 30, 2014

Classes resume RRCC Agency day- Grades 3/4 Family Fun Night Parent Potluck 9:30 a.m. Parent Council 9:30 a.m. School Assembly 9:15 a.m.

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