St. Patrick's Blog Week of February 3rd, 2014

St. Patrick's Blog

Week of February 3rd, 2014

We are hoping our student community enjoyed the extra holiday this past Friday as staff worked at the school on professional development tasks.  A number of activities involving our students took place this past week.  Our student services department lead by Mrs. Paniccia worked with grade 7 students on goal setting with the “My Blueprint” computer program.  This program allows students to set goals and revisit them in the future, while planning course selection and high school pathways in grade 8.  In the spring, our grade 8 students will use the program to pick courses for grade 9.  

On Wednesday this past week, a large number of student volunteers from our youth group travelled to the Shepherds of Good Hope and St. Patrick’s Home to assist with our community.  At Shepherds, students prepared sandwiches for the clients beforehand and received a tour of the facility. Participants were then able to ask questions before working in a storage area to separate donations to the agency.  At St. Patrick’s Home, our students visited with the seniors and shared stories before several groups entertained in the large chapel with songs and dance.  The seniors were very thankful for the company and our show!

On Thursday last week, a group of students participated in the Board’s cardboard boat race.  This is an opportunity for students to collaborate on plans and organization as they construct a boat made of cardboard that must transport them across a pool.  The students had a great time and worked on a number of skills that required creativity and cooperation!

February is Black History month and we currently have some students working on some awareness projects for the next few weeks.  We will share some of these initiatives with you as we put them in place at the school.

Our school community continues to raise money for our Me to We project as we support the building of schools across a number of countries in Africa.  We have devised a number of classroom “rewards” for the groups that raise the most money during our collection period.  We bring the activity to a close this week with a cake auction that will see sweet delectables being bought by each of our homebases!

We would be happy to see as many parents and guardians as possible at our School Council meeting this Tuesday evening at 7:00 in our Learning Commons space in the main building.  We will be updating the group on school activities while working on a parent/guardian volunteer survey that we will share with our parent community in the next few months.  Joining our School Council allows parents and guardians of our students to share in the celebration of our school while helping to shape some direction going forward.

We encourage all of our school community to check important dates on our school calendar, available on our website or at the bottom of this blog page.

Have a great week;

Sean Kelly