Professional Documents
Culture Documents
MICHAEL SCHOOL
4511 8th Avenue SW, Calgary AB, T3C 0G9
Phone: 403-500-2021
Fax: 403-500-2221
PARENT REMINDERS
DRESS WARMLY!!
Bottle Drive
From November 26-28th, we will be having our first of
two Bottle Drives for the Grade 9 French Immersion Trip
to Qubec City. We will be collecting bottles during our
Parent / Teacher Conferences on Thursday November 26
from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm as well
as on Friday November 27 from
9:00 am to 3:00 p.m.
On
Saturday November 28, we will
be circulating in the schools
surrounding communities to
collect bottles as well. If you have
bottles and cannot get them to
the school, please phone or email us and we will have
your bottles picked up for you. Save your bottles to
support this activity! Merci!
Staff Spotlight
We have lots of new staff joining our St. Michael
Team this year. Each month, wed like to
introduce some of the staff to you.
Mrs. Hepton!
Mrs. Hepton is a new staff member at St. Michael
School. She is originally from Fort St. James
B.C. and has taught at
several Calgary Catholic
Schools including St. John
XXIII, St. Benedict and
Msgr. JJ OBrien and even
taught in Seoul South
Korea! She is now sharing
her teaching talents with
one of our morning Kindergarten classes and has
created a beautiful teaching and learning
environment.
Mrs. Hepton loves to travel and take photos. She
has been to more than 20 countries and hopes to
go to South America soon! She scrapbooks all
her photos and enjoys snowboarding and reading.
Mrs. Hepton has been a great addition to our staff
and she has embraced the St. Michael
community. She says that she loves the smiling
faces that greet me each day. I love kindergarten
and all that we will explore this year! Every day
is an adventure that we navigate together.
Mrs. Hepton has easily become part of our St.
Michael Family and she likes the great sense of
community that exists within the walls of St.
Michaels. She says I love the energy and the
warmth in this school! You feel it when you walk
in the door! Thank you for sharing with us Mrs.
Hepton and we welcome you to St. Michaels
Community of Caring!!
Audition Call!
Auditions will be held this month and next for our Spring
Musical Annie Jr. Students in Grade 6-9 are encouraged
to pick up an audition package and read through the
information
to
see if being part
of the school
musical
is
something they
would like to
commit to this
year. There will also be opportunities for students to be
involved in non-acting areas such as lighting, make-up,
stage hands and concession help. These opportunities
will be posted in January.
Once again
this year, we
will
be
conducting
our
Tell
Them From
Me Survey
on the week
of November 23, 2015. The students from
Grades 4 to 9 will be answering questions about
our school. This survey takes approximately 3040 minutes. The Tell Them From Me Student
Survey is a dynamic web based evaluation
system designed to provide accurate data on
student engagement to meet the ongoing
planning needs of teachers and school
administrators.
WATER WARRIORS
St. Michael Water Warriors make a big splash at
CAWST's Wavemaker Youth Summit
October 21, 2015
This years participants: Leah, Rory, Mackenzie, Dominic, Sagine,
Georgia, Jac, and our parent volunteer Mrs. Christine Marayag
Warrior Athletics
X-COUNTRY
A big congrats goes out to
our cross-country team as
St. Michael took the Tier 3
banner for 2015! We had
seven members that placed
top ten at Optimist Park on
October 1st and were able to
compete at the city finals
meet at Ascension School on
October 8th: Rewina Asefa,
Alizee
Duthoit,
Marina
McClare, Bronson Gregor, Jefferson Chukwuezi, Olivia
Rymkiewicz and Lauren Su. Way to go, Warriors!
WARRIORS BASKETBALL
Basketball starts early this year! Monday December 7th
will be the first day of the season. Try-outs will go all
week for all interested gr.7/8/9 students. We are
planning an ice-breaker tournament
this year which will happen on the
week before we go away for the
holidays. A schedule for the season
will be available on our website as
we approach the end of wrestling.
Basketball season goes until the end
of February.
If you have any questions, please dont hesitate to
contact Mr. Dreyfuss (sr. girls coach) or Mr. Heffernan
and Mr. Amour (sr. boys coaches).
CLASSROOM LACROSSE
We had a great couple of weeks learning the
fundamentals of lacrosse from a member of the
Calgary Roughnecks. Students were challenged to
learn how to scoop, pass, receive and shoot with
lacrosse sticks. A big thank you to Curtis for making
this a fun an interesting experience for all St.
Michael students.
WARRIORS VOLLEYBALL
The Sr. Boys Volleyball season has
come to an end. The Boys team,
composed primarily of new
players,
showed
incredible
improvement with every play. The
final two league games of the
regular season ended in nail-biting
three-set matches before the Boys put up another good
showing in a playoff game against St. Isabella. The
coaches would like to congratulate all the players for
their great attitudes and dedication to improvement.
Remember that quality serves are the backbone of every
successful team. We hope you will all continue to make
volleyball part of your athletic activities in future years.
Mr. Csikos & Ms. Matos
The members of the 2015-2016 Senior Girls Volleyball
Team represented St. Michael School with poise and
pride. The season saw the team enter the playoffs with
a four wins and two losses record (both losses to the
same team), and a second place finish at the St. Joan of
Arc Invitational Tournament. The girls successfully
accomplished their goals of maintaining a positive
attitude throughout each game and practice, resiliency
and team work. They were incredibly hard working and
very skilled. The year saw them gain momentum in the
areas of floor coverage, communication during play,
three strong hits, consistent serving, and player support
in times of error. Mrs. Bass and Ms. Dunne were thrilled
to work with such a wonderful group of young athletes.
We will miss the athletes moving on to high school and
are greatly appreciative of your leadership and
dedication to the program at St. Michael School. Thank
you for all you have contributed to our school
community. We are also very excited as we look to next
year and eager to work with the returning athletes
during the 2016-2017 season. Please find below a
contribution to this newsletter by our team captain,
Catriona McFadden.
Since grade seven Ive been part of the St. Michael
Senior Girls Volleyball Team. This season was by far the
best. As a team we made loads of memories and had so
much fun. We may not have won, but in my eyes it was
a successful season. The girls bonded and we enjoyed
ourselves, that to me was a success. Catriona
McFadden grade 9 student and Senior Girls Captain.
Warrior Athletics
continued
WRESTLING
Wrestling for grade 7 to 9 is currently running on Mondays,
Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 3:15 to 4:30. We urge
parents that are picking up wrestlers to arrive at 4:30 so that
wrestlers can leave promptly after practice. There may be times
practice will run late for those who wish to stay, but we want any
students who do stay past the 4:30 time to be able to leave
immediately as the coaches have a very tight time schedule and
very often must leave for other commitments promptly after
practice. Everyone is welcome to join our wrestling team whether
they want to compete or not. All wrestlers who do wish to compete
MUST have at least five practices to go to a Tri-Meet and MUST have
attended a Tri-Meet to attend the City finals.
Can-struction
St. Michael School is participating in Can-struction, an event
where schools and engineering firms compete by building
structures out of
cans, which are
then donated to the
Calgary Interfaith
Food Bank. The
need for food is
higher than ever
and this initiative
helps to replenish
the food stocks
depleted during the
Christmas Season.
Some families at
our school access
the food bank, and
this opportunity to give back to the community is important to
our students.
We are asking for a monetary donation to help with
purchasing nutritious canned food or an item that can be used in
a school raffle. The theme this year is Nature, and our goal is
to be able to donate at least 2500 food items. To complete our
project we need raise a minimum of $2000 in order to buy the
cans and supplies that we will need to build our structure to
support the Food Bank.
To show our appreciation of your contribution, we can
offer signage on our banner during Can-Struction (which will be
on public display for a week) and a thank you in our school
newsletter, website and Twitter feed.
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not
hesitate to contact us; we would welcome the opportunity to
discuss ways we can work
together to assist this worthy
cause.
Please
call
either
Alexandria Matos or Madeleine
Carrier at St. Michael School at:
403.500.2021
or
email:
alexandria.matos@cssd.ab.ca,
madeleine.carrier@cssd.ab.ca .
French News
In FLA, the Grade 7 Early Immersion class just
finished a short story unit with an exploration of
Fables and Comic Strips. In November, the
attention will turn to Informative Writing and
Newspaper articles. The Grade 7 Late Immersion students are
finishing their unit on constructing their ideal school. In Grade
8, the Early French immersion
students are doing a novel
study looking on family
secrets and the Late French
immersion
students
are
working on the elements of
communication. The Grade 9
students are reading a novel
by Stanley Pan, set in Montral and they will be writing a
business letter to the author, and hopefully Skyping with him
later in the month.
In Math, the Grade 7 students are working on decimals and the
Grade 9 students are working on symmetry and surface area.
In Science, Grade 7 French Immersion students have been
looking at the interactions and components of ecosystems and
will continue with this unit until November in order to explore
it in further dept to understand the complex web of relationships
and interrelationships that exist.
In Math, Grade 8 French Immersion students have been working
with fractions which will conclude shortly and this knowledge
will be applied to the study of ratios, rates as they engage in
proportional reasoning to solve problems from daily life and the
world around us.
In Social Studies, the Grade 7 Late French Immersion students
are studying the culture for the First Nations as well as the
culture of the French and English settlers. The Grade 9 students
are in a Model Parliament unit.
In science, the Grade 8 students are learning about the cells and
its structure and function. In Grade 9, the students will focus on
Space Exploration.
Also, to enhance the French culture in our program, we will
present French movies to our French Immersion students this
month. Titles, dates and times have yet to be determine, we will
keep you posted!
Confirmation News
This Wednesday the grade 8
and
grade
7
classes
participated in a confirmation
retreat at Saint Michael's church. The retreat was aimed to
encourage us, the students, to continue our faith journey
through the last sacrament of initiation- Confirmation.
Throughout the day we watched some Alpha Youth videos
(that were actually pretty cool and surprisingly good quality)
that showed us more about what it is to believe and to have
faith in God, but also what Confirmation will do in our lives.
After each video, we talked, in groups, about each other, our
faith journey, how we can advance in our faith and what
Confirmation means to us.
Although most of the parents probably only heard about the
donuts they gave us after lunch, we wanted to tell you what
this retreats message was and how it affects us. When we
talked to Mrs. Maureen Ross (the sacrament director at Saint
Michael's Church) about the
main messages during the
retreat, she told us about how
we need to be proud of our
faith community and truly
understand why it's important
to partake in Confirmation and
the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit (this was one of the big focuses
at the retreat) we get after being confirmed. She talked about
how to receive confirmation and how the retreat was an
amazing way to prepare for being confirmed.
We encourage the students of St. Michaels to continue
practicing their faith especially after this retreat and take the
next step- whether that is joining a church or getting
confirmed, we hope their parents can support them through
this journey. Mrs. Ross left us with some very important
words we live in a pretty hard world and we need all the
strength and gifts we can get, I know that the other students
were inspired by this retreat and the many words of wisdom
we got on Wednesday.
By: Grace Whitely & Aidan Laudersmith
Grade 8 Amour
World of Science
On Tuesday, January 26th, 2016, St.
Michael will host its 4th annual
Science Fair for MYP students.
Stay tuned for upcoming events and ways in which our school intends to participate in local and global initiatives.
~Giovanna Longhi
MYP Coordinator
Counsellors Corner
Happy November from the counselling
office. With the days getting shorter and the
weather getting colder, I know that getting
your child up and at em in the morning is
not getting easier. Often I ask students about
their sleep patterns when they are struggling
at school and I am surprised to see how many
students are unaware of their own sleep
patterns and routines. Sleep is something we
struggle with even as adults, so starting to implement sleep routines in
children is really a lifelong skill that can prove to be very beneficial.
Much focus with children is spent on meeting important basic needs,
such as nutrition, exercise, social and emotional development, however
it can be just as important to check in and make changes to sleep
patterns in childhood and through the teen years. Below are some easy
tips from the national sleep foundation that may help discussing the
importance of sleep with your child.
FACTS:
Teens
need
about 8 to 10 hours of sleep each night to function best. Most
teens do not get enough sleep one study found that only
15% reported sleeping 8 1/2 hours on school nights.
CONSEQUENCES:
Not getting enough sleep or having sleep difficulties can:
Cause you to eat too much or eat unhealthy foods like sweets
and fried foods that lead to weight gain.
SOLUTIONS:
Naps can help pick you up and make you work more
efficiently, if you plan them right. Naps that are too long or
too close to bedtime can interfere with your regular sleep.
Make your room a sleep haven. Keep it cool, quiet and dark.
If you need to, get eyeshades or blackout curtains. Let in
bright light in the morning to signal your body to wake up.
"If parents and teens know what good sleep entails and the benefits of
making and sticking to a plan that supports good sleep, then they might
re-examine their choices about what truly are their essential
activities," says Mary Carskadon, Ph.D., Director of
Chronobiology/Sleep Research at the E.P. Bradley Hospital and
Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown Medical School
in Providence, R.I. "The earlier parents can start helping their children
with good sleep habits, the easier it will be to sustain them through the
teen years."
2015
Acceptable %
Excellence %
Grade 6:
English Language Arts 6
Mathematics 6
Science 6
Social Studies 6
School
CSSD
Province
School
CSSD
Province
School
CSSD
Province
School
CSSD
Province
91.7
95.2
91.3
81.1
87.4
80.4
86.1
90.8
84.8
81.2
85.9
78
13.9
23.9
21.5
5.4
17.0
15.3
16.7
31.2
28.8
6.1
22.1
21
97.6
95.2
90.6
83.3
91.4
90.1
95.2
89.7
84.2
97.6
85.6
78.7
45.2
22.5
19.5
21.4
18.6
17.0
57.1
30.1
27.6
51.2
20.8
18.6
School
CSSD
Province
School
CSSD
Province
School
CSSD
Province
School
CSSD
Province
School
CSSD
Province
92.7
91.0
85.5
91.3
87.8
89.3
83
78.2
73
88.3
87.4
82.4
84.5
79.4
73.4
34.5
17.6
16.3
30.4
10.0
10.5
33.9
21.7
20
45
30.3
25.4
39.7
24.9
26.6
93.0
91.9
86.4
94.7
91.1
89.3
91.3
79.5
75.2
93.1
86.5
81.8
91.2
78.4
73.9
22.8
19.8
17.0
5.3
13.1
11.5
19.0
21.1
19.4
27.6
27.5
24.7
15.8
23.0
22.4
Grade 9:
English Language Arts 9
Mathematics 9
Science 9
Social Studies 9
Patrol News!!
We were having a little
difficulty getting everyone
out in the morning, but
after a tweak of the
schedule, we rearranged it
to suit everyone better and things have been
going well. It is getting cold so I am asking
patrollers to dress for the worst weather and
hope for the best. I ask our parents to keep in
mind that students are crossing the street as
they come to and leave from school and
sometimes it gets icyplease leave more
time to stop. J-Walking continues to be a
problem, with students zipping out across the
street usually from between parked cars. If
the police do show up and ticket, it is a
$250.00 fine for anyone caught J-Walking.
Thats a lot of video game money!
NOVEMBER 2015
Sun
Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat
2
FAITH DAY NO
CLASSES
3 Day 6
Special Lunch:
4 Day 1
5 Day 2
EARLY
DISMISSAL
6 Day 3
Special Lunch:
9
Remembrance day
liturgy 10 a.m. gym
10 Day 4
HOJA Follow your
dreams Concert! 2
p.m.
Special Lunch:
11 Day 5
12 Day 6
13 Day 1
14
REMEMBRANCE
DAY- NO CLASSES
EARLY
DISMISSAL
Special Lunch:
17 Day 3
-Gr. 4 Reconciliation
Retreat at the Parish
-Dental Screening K-1
-Special Lunch:
18 Day 4
19 Day 5
SCHOOL COUNCIL
MTG 6:00 PM IN
WORK RM
EARLY
DISMISSAL
23 Day 1
24 Day 2
25 Day 3
Special Lunch:
15
22
16 Day 2
26 Day 4
BOTTLE DRIVE
EARLY DISMISSAL
P/T CONFERENCES
4-7 P.M.
29
30
PROFESSIONAL
DAY- NO CLASSES
20 Day 6
PHOTO RETAKES
PROGRESS REPORTS
GO HOME
Special Lunch:
21
CONFERENCE
MANAGER OPENS
FOR P/T
INTERVIEWS
27
28
CRAFT FAIR 10
A.M.-3 P.M