Hyper Link, Net Books, & 4D

Mr. Deverdenne and his grade four students were using hyper link to access websites to find pictures and information on birds in Alberta. Next, they were writing descriptive sentences/paragraphs about the bird of their choice.  Mr. Monty enjoyed pressing the sound button and hearing "cheese burger, cheese burger".

2W Feelings

My guest celebrity and I enjoyed spending time with Mrs. Weatherby's grade twos this morning.  Mrs. Weatherby and her students were talking about sharing feelings and filling the buckets of others.  The students said that fillng someone's bucket means doing something nice for that person.  After reading a story to the children, the students worked in groups drawing emotions, labeling them, writing how they could fill this person's bucket, and preparing to present their emotion to the class.  David Hasselhoff stopped by to sing "Hooked On A Feeling", and Mr. Monty rocked it out!

Notice the chart paper!

Math, Manipulatives, and 6May

Using the story, "Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday", as the new information, Mrs. May had her students figure out just how much money Alexander's grandparents gave him.  Then, to practice their problem solving abilities using strategies they learned in class, Mrs. May divided the students into groups and had them attempt to solve four problems involving whole and decimal numbers demonstrating their understanding of multiplication and division of decimal numbers.

Resistance Is Futile

Mrs. Weatherby and friends have been teasing me about my love of group work and chart paper when presenting to adults.  Well, one of her "teasing friends", Mme Hjertaas, was caught this morning using chart paper with her students.  Resistance is futile!

Mme Hjertaas and her grade six students were writing sentences focusing on subjects, verbs, and appositives.  Mme Hjertaas gave them scrambled words/sentences from their anthology, and students had to rearrange the words creating complete sentences.  Stick with me, Mme, and you'll go places:)

3S Word Choice & Wordless Books

Mrs. Stewart's gr. 3's were learning about authors and their writing styles, and today they focused on Chris Van Allsburg.  Students compared Van Allsburg's style to Roald Dahl's and Megan Macdonald's styles.  After reading "Ben's Dream" and brainstorming ideas for words to write on the pages, students worked in groups writing a story to go with the "wordless hockey story pictures". 

Like all of our staff, Mrs. Stewart uses the GANAG lesson plan format.  For more information on this style of lesson plan, refer to the book "Improving Student Learning One Teacher at a Time".



Mrs. Stewart being dramatic



ÉCPS Staff Collaboration

During Wednesday's staff meeting, staff focused on identifying student learning activities focusing on higher order thinking skills and student engagement.  Great Things are Happening at ÉCPS.

Je peux faire des additions jusqu'à 12

In pairs, our grade one French Immersion students created their own addition equations using dice, white boards, and smarties.  Students were so engaged they never once asked to eat the smarties!  Finally, Mlle. Grenier drew two addition equations on the smart board and students demonstrated their understanding by writing the equations in their math journals. 

Canada's Weather & Clothing

I just spent an enjoyable 60 minutes in Mrs. Huber's grade one class.  The class was extremely engaged in Mrs. Huber's dramatic reading of "Thomas' Snowsuit"; she had me laughing too - maybe she will read for the staff one lunch hour.  Later, the children cut out pictures of articles of clothing and glued them to pictures of the four seasons.  Grade 1H is a beehive of activity.

ECS - D

I continue my quest to observe each teacher at least once for 60 minutes before the end of January.  Being in the classrooms and providing teachers with instructional leadership is the most important aspect of the principalship; however, other duties can easily get in the way.  So, this year I've decided to schedule classroom visit time.  This morning I spent an hour in Mme. D's ECS class.  Watching her juggle the demands of 18 kindies was amazing: hats off to her and all ECS teachers; you are truly amazing people.  Following are  few pictures of the class working on patterning.

Learning Lab

“I don’t have time to do my homework.”  Students say it, parents are frustrated with it, and teachers hear it too often.  At École Corinthia Park School, we’ve decided to hear what was being said and do something about it. 

We have established the École Corinthia Park School Learning Lab: an after-school program enabling us to provide teacher support and the conditions our students need to complete their homework.  Our goal is for the Learning Lab to be a place of learning, not a punishment for not doing homework.  Students will get what they need: group work, one on one assistance, or independent study.  No homework will be left undone.

The learning lab is open to all students wishing to receive extra help with homework from 3:30 to 4:30pm Monday through Thursday.  Corinthia’s teachers and High School students volunteer to supervise the lab. 

Below is Jenelle, a grade twelve student, assisting in our learning lab.

Classsroom Visits

Great things are happening at ÉCPS!  I spent 60 minutes in Mme. Gill's ECS class yesterday, and my visit was wonderful.  Mme. Gill developed her lesson using the GANAG lesson plan format: Goal - Accessing Prior Knowledge - New Information - Apply Knowledge - Generalization.  Everyone was a teacher, and everyone was a learner.  The students were creating their own rules for sorting buttons; then they drew pictures of their favourite sorting rule.  The children sorted by colour, size, number of holes, texture, etc.  Attached are a few pictures of the class.