Capilano School January 3, 2017

One of my New Year’s resolutions will be to try and blog again. I shut down last January, and never found the willingness to restart.

In 2017, I hope to blog about class activities, student action projects, or other things about Capilano I find interesting.

Today I spent some time in Mrs. McFarlane’s music/fine arts class, where she was working with one of our grade 6 classes. There was a lot of positive energy and creative children expressing themselves through drama. It was a wonderful opportunity to see children demonstrating risk-taking behaviours and showing support for one another. Great job grade 6 students.

I hope everyone had a wonderful break.

Take care

One of the joys of being an elementary school principal is having the opportunity to read with students or to hear students read aloud to one of our reading volunteers.

Today one of our students is reading to a volunteer in my office. Space is at a premium some days at Capilano, and we have run out today. Our library was being used for a grade 2 & 4 buddy activity, the atrium was being used for grade 7 science (experiments with dry ice), and the music room was filled with band students.

One of the only free spaces remaining was my office. Our volunteer has set up shop and is now listening to a grade 2 student read The Elves and The Shoemaker.

Do you read aloud to your child? It’s a good idea. When I taught grade 7, I made sure that reading to my students was a part of my weekly schedule. My favourite read aloud at the time was The Hobbit.

Here are a couple of links about reading:

• Reading Aloud With Children of All Ages
• 5 Hidden Benefits of Reading for Kids
• How School Librarians Can Assist You: Reading with Your Children

Find time to read together. You will all enjoy it.

Take care

Thanks to division 7 for the Happy Holidays images.

We hope everyone has a wonderful winter break and enjoys time with family and friends.

See you in the new year January 4th.

Take care

One of my ways of paying attention to the world is following people and groups on Twitter. Every once in a while, I will post some of my favourite tweets or retweets.

From @TheAtlantic – Let Girls Learn Michele Obama’s article on Addressing the global crisis in girls’ education.

Shared by @c_todd Researchers Studied Kindergarteners’ Behavior… What have we learned from Kindergarten.

Shared by @connie_walker Terabytes of Testimony: Digital database of residential school stories opens to the public

From Blogging Through the Fourth Dimension – On Slow Readers…

Shared by @ChrisWejr Movement is NOT a Reward

From The Financial Review – How the most productive people start their work day

If you want to follow me on Twitter, please feel free to check out my feed – @dwbeveridge

Take care

Capilano is a polling station today. We have seen a steady stream of people coming in to vote. The polling station is in the gym, so thank you to all the students who gave up gym time today to allow us to vote.

Thanks to the volunteers in the gym who invited classes in to see how the process works. During some slow points in the day, the electoral officers allowed classes in to discuss the steps in voting.

Many of us will be leaving school quickly to vote in our local ridings. Have you voted yet? If not, I hope you plan to soon.

Take care