Reminder: Report Cards go home on Thursday Feb 16

When reviewing your child's report card, spend time in a conversation with your child discussing the learning skills.  These are important skills for students to develop as they are foundational for student success and achievement in school and in life, in general.  Teachers work together with students to develop the criteria used to assess learning skills and work habits.  Please refer to the evaluation of these areas on the report card and talk to your child about what he/she feels they do well and those areas that need to be improved.  Most importantly, together identify a goal for term 2 and some strategies to support the goal.  As with all learning, parents are partners in education. Supporting your child with learning skills will support your child's overall achievement in school. 

We have a large number of students who are late for school on a regular basis. We will be calling parents of those students to determine if there are ways that the school can assist you to ensure that students arrive to school on time.   Arriving late for school is disruptive for the learning of others and may result in missing some key instruction.  Arriving on time, teaches and reinforces a valuable life skill, that arriving on time for work or in this case, school is both important and expected.  

We do recommend that students gradually increase responsibility in getting ready for school each day.  Some or all of these responsibilities can be the child's, depending upon the age of the student:

• pack knapsack the night before with all materials needed for school 
• lay out clothing needed for the morning the night before
• use a timer for eating breakfast or getting dressed in the morning 
• make lunch the night before so that it can be quickly put in a lunchbag in the morning 
• aim to arrive at school between 7:50am - 8:00am 

Considering Perspectives in a Novel

Students in one of our Grade 8 classes have read the novel Freak The Mighty by Rodman Philbrick and used Edward De Bono's 6 thinking hats to view a situation from every perspective. Students discussed the events using each perspective to arrive at a conclusion or evaluation. At the end of the book the students used the same process to respond to an overarching question and also used a mind map to display their thinking. The Blue hat response is the final response to the central question of, "How does the story of Kevin and Max help us see beyond the disability? "   Here is a sampling of a final mind map. 

Poetry Slam

Inspiring, emotional and goose-bump worthy.   5 of our Grade 8 students participated in a Poetry Slam competition with other elementary schools this morning.  A poetry slam is a competition in which individuals or teams perform their own personal poetry before an audience, which judges the poems and the artists' performances.  All of the students who participated delivered poems on topics ranging from homelessness, discrimination, culture, beauty, stereotypes, bullying and self esteem.  Congratulations to our team of 5 who placed first in this quarter finals!  They will represent Silver Stream at the semi-finals in March. 

Wear Red or Pink on Tuesday!

To remind all of us to show kindness and care about others, everyone is reminded to wear the colours of love, RED or PINK on our School Spirit Day on Tuesday February 14. 

REMINDER: Parenting Speaker

LAST DAY for Pizza Orders is MONDAY!

A reminder that the last day to order Pizza is Monday February 13 for the remainder of the year.  The new orders start on Friday February 24.

Intermediate Science Fair - Feb 16

Silver Stream P.S. is excited to announce our Annual Science Fair on Thursday, February, 16, 2017 taking place in our gym. 

The fair will be open to family and friends from 8am Thursday morning until 3pm.

Why is a Science Fair so important?

Providing a meaningful and engaging intermediate science and technology program is a challenging task. Project-based science and technology is the natural culmination of a program that involves students in developing inquiry and design skills. These skills help students to connect science and technology to each other and the outside world. Students selected from one of three different inquiries; 1) Research based 2) Innovation or 3) Experimental; for their projects.

What Happens to Our School Fair Project Winners?

Through authentic investigations, students constructed an understanding of how science works, and developed critical thinking skills that will serve them well in their future endeavours. Award winners from our school-based fair will be competing in the Regional Science Fair taking place in April.  This science fair includes all schools in the York Region area competing to receive an award and continue on to the Canada Wide Science Fair.

We believe important connections exist between projects, a classroom program that is both hands-on and minds-on and the Ontario Curriculum in science and technology.

We hope to see our families on Thursday, February 16, 2017 and help make this exciting event a successful new learning experience for everyone!