| Welcome or welcome back to all our valued staff, students, and families of Cambrian Heights School!
As we embark on another exciting school year, I am thrilled to extend a warm welcome to both new and returning members of our school community. It is an honor to serve as the principal of Cambrian Heights School and to have the opportunity to work alongside such dedicated educators, enthusiastic students, and supportive families. To our new staff members, I want to express my heartfelt welcome. Your passion for education and commitment to our students' growth and development will undoubtedly contribute to the vibrant and dynamic atmosphere that defines our school. Your fresh perspectives and innovative ideas will enrich our learning environment and foster a culture of continuous improvement. To the students, whether you're beginning your first year at Cambrian Heights or returning for another chapter of your educational journey, I want you to know that this school is your space to learn, explore, and grow. Each of you brings unique strengths and talents to our community, and I encourage you to embrace new opportunities, make friends, and discover your passions. As we embark on this new school year, let's remember the importance of building relationships. A thriving educational environment is built on the foundation of trust, respect, and understanding among all members of our community. Whether you're a student, staff member, or parent, your contributions to our school's positive culture are invaluable. Our staff is looking forward to working together to create an inclusive and supportive environment where every individual feels valued and empowered. At Cambrian Heights School, we believe that when students feel secure and supported, they are more inclined to take risks in their learning and pursue their aspirations with confidence. Our staff is committed to nurturing not only your academic growth but also your social and emotional well-being. Throughout the year, you'll find a plethora of opportunities to engage in extracurricular activities, collaborate on projects, and develop leadership skills. Our school is a place where curiosity is encouraged, creativity is celebrated, and excellence is the standard we strive for. I am excited about the journey ahead and the potential it holds for each and every member of our Cambrian Heights family. Together, we will create a vibrant and inspiring school year filled with meaningful experiences, lasting friendships, and remarkable achievements. Thank you for being a part of Cambrian Heights School. Let's make this year extraordinary! Warm regards, Kevin Whitton, Principal, Cambrian Heights School
@MrWhitsClass
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| I am filled with a mix of emotions as we bid farewell to yet another school year and, for some, the end of an era. It is a bittersweet moment as we celebrate the achievements, growth, and countless memories made within the walls of Cambrian Heights School. As the Principal, I am honored to share this message of gratitude and farewell with each and every one of you. To our esteemed teachers, I extend my deepest appreciation for your unwavering dedication and passion for education. Your commitment to nurturing young minds, fostering curiosity, and instilling a love for learning has made a profound impact on our students. You have gone above and beyond, embracing innovation and adapting to new teaching methods to ensure that every child receives the best education possible. Your hard work and tireless efforts are sincerely valued and cherished. To our exceptional students, as we bid you farewell, know that you are the true heart and soul of Cambrian Heights School. It has been a privilege to witness your growth, resilience, and achievements throughout the year. You have faced challenges head-on, overcome obstacles, and embraced new opportunities with enthusiasm. You have inspired us with your unique talents, diverse perspectives, and unwavering determination. As you embark on new adventures, remember that the knowledge, skills, and experiences gained here will be the foundation upon which you build your futures. To our supportive parents and guardians, your partnership and involvement have played a vital role in our collective success. Your trust in our staff, your active engagement in your child's education, and your continuous support have made a world of difference. Thank you for entrusting us with the responsibility of nurturing and shaping the lives of your children. Your unwavering support has been the driving force behind the accomplishments we celebrate today. To the entire Cambrian Heights School community, including our support staff, volunteers, and all those who have contributed to the enriching environment we have created, I express my heartfelt gratitude. Each and every one of you has played an essential role in supporting student learning, providing a safe and inclusive space, and fostering a sense of belonging. Your tireless efforts have allowed our students to thrive and grow, both academically and personally. As we bid farewell to our beloved teachers and students who will be moving on to new chapters in their lives, I would like to extend my warmest wishes. May the roads you travel be filled with exciting adventures, new discoveries, and endless opportunities. Remember, the lessons you have learned and the relationships you have built at Cambrian Heights School will forever hold a special place in your hearts. To those returning to Cambrian Heights School in the upcoming school year, I eagerly anticipate the continued collaboration, growth, and learning that lie ahead. Together, let us embrace the challenges and opportunities that await us, confident in our ability to create a nurturing and empowering educational environment for all. As the academic year draws to a close, let us reflect on the achievements, challenges, and growth that have shaped us. It is through our collective efforts, dedication, and unwavering support that we have created a vibrant and thriving learning community. Thank you for being an integral part of Cambrian Heights School. Wishing you all a restful and rejuvenating summer. May the memories we have shared here at Cambrian Heights School forever inspire us to reach new heights and embrace the possibilities that lie ahead. All the best! -Mr. Whitton @MrWhitsClass
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| Happy New Year to everyone! Hope you all had a restful and healthy break. Did you know that each year, our school creates a School Development Plan with a focus on Literacy, Mathematics, and Well-being?
I am excited to share with you the focus of our school development plan for the year. At Cambrian Heights, we are committed to excellence in writing, math reasoning, and positive student interactions. You can read the full SDP on the Our School page, but a short summary is below. To support our goal of excellence in writing, we will be implementing a number of strategies, including the "I do, We do, You do" model and small group writing conferences. We will also be providing documented, actionable feedback to help students improve their writing skills. An instructional focus this year is on Joyful and Disciplinary Literacy strategies to increase student enjoyment and engagement in writing. In addition, all students have completed a reading fluency screener to support the identification and implementation of intervention for those who may need additional support. In the area of math reasoning, we will be focusing on visible success criteria and number talks to help students understand the underlying concepts and principles of math. Our goal is to foster a love of math in our students and to help them develop the critical thinking and problem-solving skills they will need to be successful in the future. To support positive student interactions, we will be using the Peaceful Problem Solving rubric and organizing a variety of community-building events, including clubs, a school wide Dance-Off virtual competition, cross-grade buddy classes, and learning assemblies. Our aim is to create a positive and supportive school culture where all students feel valued and included. I am confident that by focusing on these three areas, we can provide our students with the skills and support they need to succeed. Thank you for your continued support and commitment to the success of our students! Please attend our school council meetings for further information on our SDP progress! Kevin Whitton Principal @MrWhitsClass
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| Dear Cambrian Heights School families, Welcome back! What an exciting return to school it's been. We have welcomed many new staff and famlies, and our school community has grown to over 430 students! Can't wait to get to know everyone. It was wonderful to see so many families visiting at our Open House in August. We hope you'll be able to attend our Virtual Grade Team back-to-school information night on Thursday September 15. Please check the news story and your schoolmesenger account for your grade's time and Microsoft Teams Link. We'll also be looking forward to seeing you at our Parent-Teacher conferences on September 22/23, and at our first School Council meeting on Thursday September 29. If I haven't met you yet, please catch up with me in the school yard, office, or wherever and say hello!
Take care,
Kevin Whitton @MrWhitsClass (Promise to tweet more again this year!)
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| Dear families,
What a year it has been! Thank you and congratulations to all of our staff and students on such a successful 2021-22 school year. I wish each and every one of you all the best in the future, and hope you have a wonderful summer break.
Please keep an eye on your SchoolMessenger and our News Centre for information about our return in September.
Have a wonderful summer, and see you in the fall! Kevin Whitton Principal @MrWhitsClass
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| Welcome to all new or returning Cambrian Heights School families!
We are so excited to welcome you back beginning on September 1! Kindergarten, please remember you may have a different start date! This year, we are welcoming new students, new staff, and welcoming back many students who learned online in the Hub last year.
Our staff has begin the year with a focus on relationships and well-being. We appreciate that all of our students, staff, and families have had varied experiences over the past years, and we arrive with different feelings about back-to-school at this time. Our staff are collaborating to create a supportive, student-centred approach by reflecting on our CBE Holistic Lifelong Learning Framework and how we can use it to create a learning environment that takes into account each student's spirit, heart, body, and mind. The learning framework reflects the holistic understanding that an individual learns by engaging and meeting the needs of all parts of one's self. It illustrates the cyclical and interconnected nature of learning. I'll look forward to sharing more about the framework, and how it has been developed over several years in collaboration with our Indigenous Elders, at an upcoming School Council meeting. Please do ensure you have signed up for SchoolMessenger notifications, and have a look at the First Day of School news story and the information on the Back to School page as well. Please know that we are here to work with you to support your student's achievement and well-being in any way we can. Never hesitate to contact your child's teacher, our Assistant Principal Mrs. Laberee Lee, or me. We do better when we work together! Thank you for the amazing support you provide to your child and our school! See you soon! Kevin Whitton @MrWhitsClass
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| Dear Cambrian Heights School families,
We did it! Thank you to staff, students, and families for your tireless support this year as we worked to make teaching and learning as 'normal' as we could - whether online or in-person. Great work everyone! I hope you all have a restful summer, and have an opportunity to take the time to reflect and recharge. This has been a year like no other, and we appreciate that Covid has touched us all in different ways. Our staff appreciates the effort that our families made in the midst of trying to stay well, juggling schedules for student pick up, cohorting, providing masks, and so on. Thank you! When we return in September, we hope that school looks much more like we are used to, but we must be mindful about our re-entry. At Cambrian Heights, September will be a month about well-being, relationships, and building community. We'll use this month to get to know our students' individual needs in a way that honours the experiences and challenges that each learner has gone through over the past year. This will allow our teachers to program 'just in time' supports for their learning. We know we our learners may have many different starting points in the fall, but we have confidence that with the correct supports, all students can and will be successful in their learning. Please have a look at our website and e-newsletter for back to school information.
Thank you all once again for everything you do to make Cambrian Heights a great place to learn! Our staff has felt your support and appreciation all year long.
Have a safe and restful summer! -Kevin
@MrWhitsClass
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| Dear Cambrian Heights School families,
As in all CBE schools, at Cambrian Heights we continue to work daily to ensure that we have created a safe, caring learning environment that includes all of our diverse learners. You may already be aware of some of the school-wide learning we have undertaken through events such as Pink Shirt Day, Orange Shirt Day, Black History Month, and so on. We believe that the learning that takes place leading up to these days, and our actions following these days are critical to ensure that we maintain a focus on inclusion. Something I would like to ensure you are aware of is the work that we are undertaking to ensure that our day-to-day learning tasks and text selection promotes a similar vision of an inclusive learning environment. One of the guiding documents we access is the Alberta Education Guidelines for Recognizing Diversity and Promoting Respect Document. This document outlines many considerations necessary when programming for students by inviting us to explore how the resources and experiences we bring to students may or may not contain implicit or explicit statements, bias, or stereotypes, and how the content of our instruction honours diversity. We realize we must, as educators, consider whether the use of a certain learning resource will help each student to build a positive self-image by nurturing a positive approach to similarities and differences in our human experiences. The choice of instructional texts has been a particular focus for our staff recently. In this process, we consider an expanded definition of 'text', as below: A text refers to any object or experience that readers, writers, listeners, speakers,
viewers, and representers engage with to make sense of their world. Texts are
more than oral, print, visual, digital, and multimedia resources; they also
encompass cultural artifacts, encounters with the land, and everyday
communications. (Draft Alberta Curriculum, ELA Subject Introduction, 2018) When considering which texts we might engage in with students, teachers consider questions such as: -What are the essential understandings to be developed with the text(s)? -How are these essential understandings and the tasks taken up with the
text(s) connected to the Alberta Programs of Studies? -Will the text(s) engage readers, extend their understanding, and promote
meaningful literacy experiences? -Is the text(s) adaptable, inclusive and representative of different
communities, perspectives, and positive reflections of identities? -Have authentic authorship, connections to primary resources and
contemporary issues been considered? -Do the text(s) reflect Canadian content? Current content? -What additional resources support a wider lens inquiring into this topic,
concept, or time period? It has been our experience that these guiding questions have prompted many meaningful discussions about our varied human experiences, viewpoints, and values. These conversations are critical for the success and well-being of our learners. As always, we welcome your feedback and perspectives, as we believe an open dialogue helps us strengthen our learning community. Thank you for your ongoing support! Take care, Kevin @MrWhitsclass
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| Dear Cambrian Heights Families,
We hope you have had a restful break and are so looking forward to seeing our in-person learners back in the school on January 12! Hub families, welcome back as well!
At school, January is a time of new beginnings in a familiar place. We return to our work and learning refreshed and ready to continue. It is a wonderful moment to reflect as a community on the successes and challenges of the previous year, and to set direction and personal learning goals for the coming year. In doing so, I am once again humbled by the efforts and support of all members of our learning community under the most challenging of circumstances in 2020. Our staff have worked tirelessly to ensure the safety of students physically and emotionally, and we feel your support on a daily basis as we do so! We have all learned so much about ourselves during the past year, and have overcome so many obstacles. Let's ensure that we remind our children of this as well - that the positives in our lives far outweigh the negative. I would like to share with you a winter solstice teaching from one of our elders, saa'kokoto. The solstice is a time of many changes, and a time to be thankful for what has passed, and what is ahead. It is a time to plan our future, and to think of what is really important to us. At Cambrian Heights, we feel strongly our responsibility to support our community, and make a positive difference. We have shared saa'kokoto's message with our students, in particular his reminder to us that everyone can do something to make our community a good place to live - even you! Here's hoping that you and your family are walking into the new year with a good heart, a good mind, and to enjoy life. We will all be walking on green grass together soon. Please reach out to us if we can support you in any way.
Take care,
-Kevin
@MrWhitsClass
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| Dear Cambrian Heights School Community,
I would like to thank each and every member of our learning community for such a successful re-entry this fall. As we are into November, we can not express our gratitude enough for your support with the many changes to routines, ongoing updates to Covid screening documents, mid-day pickups and so on. We know that Scenario 1 is described as 'near normal conditions', yet we are aware that this normal is not nearly as near to normal as we would like. (That was quite a sentence, wasn't it?) Our staff has felt the amazing support and care that our families and students have extended toward us. Students are arriving on-time, prepared for learning, and are doing an amazing job keeping a bit of distance between one another - no small feat for young students! It means the world to us to know that we have the support of our community behind us, and that you are continuing to work with us. Only together will we find the calm at the end of this storm. This doesn't mean to say that the re-entry has been easy for any of us, by any means. Our teachers continue to work to support students with their well-being, to make social connections in a physically distanced environment, and to stay in touch with our families. We are finding that communication is a vital consideration right now, and we encourage all families to reach out to us with any questions, and if you are in need of support. Please be in close contact with your child's teacher and update them on any changes you see in terms of their well-being so that we can be aware and support them at school.
Please continue to check the classroom blogs, and Google Classrooms if you are not at school. If you need any help accessing classroom tasks, or are wondering about how your child is progressing, do not hesitate to reach out to us. As well, our teachers are building out resources for home study and practice on their blogs or Google Classrooms. These are wonderful ways for families to support learning at home, so please let your child's teacher know if you aren't sure where you can find them. Exploring the Google Classroom, Blog, and your student's Iris profile are further ways that you can keep up to date with the teaching and learning happening at school. We'll also look forward to 'seeing you' virtually at our December conferences.
Once again, thank you for your amazing support of our staff. I am exceedingly proud of the efforts of families, students and staff members, who are continuing to learn and grow in the most challenging cirucumstances. Thank you! Kevin @MrWhitsClass
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