​Dear Parents,
As mentioned last week, our staff is currently engaged in creating our annual School Development Plan, which outlines our goals for the year.  As a staff, we look at our data, identify areas of growth, and develop instructional targets that will guide our collaborative work. This year, our school’s goal is to “Embrace the Challenge.”  We will be looking to provide our students with strategies that build resilience, perseverance, and determination, while helping the students to understand that challenges are a critical part of the learning process.  Throughout the year, staff and students will be utilizing strategies that help them identify a challenge, work through the challenge, and reflect on whether that strategy was effective. 
On our Professional Learning day last Friday, teachers already began to plan how they can begin to incorporate our goal of “Embracing the Challenge” this upcoming week.  From book selections, to role playing activities, the students will begin to hear this language throughout the school. More information about our SDP and the strategies we will be using will be shared with parents throughout the year, in hopes that these ideas can also be reinforced at home.   Teachers spent the rest of the Professional Learning day in cross-grade groupings, sharing information with the grades above and below them in order to better understand all of our students.  
This past week, some of our students had the opportunity to really “Embrace the Challenge” when our K-3 students participated in Alien In-line skating.  I saw students fall and get back up ten or more times in their session, yet they continued to persevere and try it again. It is impressive to see how much they’ve improved during the residency this week!  Our grade sixes also overcame challenges this week at Outdoor School - especially related to the snow. There were also some who were homesick. It was great to hear how proud they felt that they had overcome a challenge.T Outdoor School built resiliency and determination in our oldest students - and they’ve returned that much more independent and confident! 
As always, if you have any questions, please reach out to us at the school.  We hope your families enjoyed the extra time together this weekend, and we are excited for another fun and busy week at Altadore!
Meagan Lundgren
Assistant Principal
mllundgren@cbe.ab.ca