| We had a great first week back in the school. Thank you to all our families for their part in making this a successful first week. This school year we will continue our focus on belonging, positive relationships, and helping our children to improve their reading, writing and mathematics skills. We also will continue our work around Indigenous Education which will include land-based learning as well as implementing new curriculum in several areas. We will have several new initiatives this year and want to take some time to highlight our school's soft entry which began this week. Students are welcome into the school beginning at 8:15AM and can enter through any of the doors. After that, students join their classroom and engage in a quiet start to their day which looks different in each classroom. At 8:30AM classroom instruction begins, and our school day formally begins. We encourage families to use our passenger zone in front of the school if they are driving their child as it is a safe and easy way to bring your child to school. We also strongly welcome your involvement in our school community in the ways that work best for you and your life – this may look like volunteering in the school, participating in our school council, or engaging in other opportunities to work together. We are here to support you and your family so please do not hesitate to reach out to our team. We are excited for what will be a wonderful year of learning, growth and connectedness at Falconridge School in 2022-2023!
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| We wanted to send you a quick message to wish you all a wonderful and safe summer.
Thank you for all of your support during a wonderful year of learning amongst another year of an ongoing pandemic. The way in which our team has come together in the work is truly remarkable and a great testament to their expertise, care and professionalism.
We will be wishing farewell to some of our staff this year including Mr. Kay (Grade 5/6), Ms. Bumstead (Music), and Ms. Sol (Lead Lunchroom Supervisor) who will all be moving to new schools next year. We also have some of our staff who were on temporary contracts whose contracts have come to an end and who we wish all the very best as they move forward in their careers. This includes Ms. Meldrum (Grade 3/4), Mr. Nicholas-Luong (Grade 4/5), and Ms. Beally (Learning Disruption Intervention).
We will have more updates around staffing in the new school year when we return in August.
Take good care and thank you again for your trust in our school with the education of your child(ren).
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| It is very hard to believe that December and Winter Break are just around the corner in this school year. Our staff and students have done an amazing job so far this year working together, learning together and ensuring that our school remains a safe and positive place to learn. Thank you to each family as well for your commitment to partnering with our school and we genuinely know that these are challenging times as the pandemic continues. We have finalized and published our School Development Plan (SDP) which will guide our work in not only this year but also in coming years. We will be sharing more information about our progress toward our goals as the year progresses. This plan has been posted here on our school website as well for your consideration. If ever you have questions please do not hesitate to reach out to us. Students at our school have had a number of opportunities this year including working alongside Knowledge Keeper Darcy Turning Robe, participating in the Terry Fox Run, Orange Shirt Day, the first ever National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Remembrance Day. Students also have done amazing work in our school through our PROUD Ambassadors program as well as other opportunities in the year including the Grade 5/6 after school basketball opportunities supported by teachers. We will be adding two staff members (one full time and one part time) for the next four months to our school community as well to support students who are identified as At-Risk through assessments that were conducted earlier in the year with Alberta Education. These staff will be working in our Grade 1/2 and Grade 3/4 communities of our school. We also would again like to pass along our appreciation for your engagement during the recent parent teacher conferences with nearly 75% of our families connecting with their child's classroom teacher! This is amazing and we look forward to continuing this ongoing communication together around your child's learning at Falconridge School. We wish you and your family as a safe and healthy remainder of 2021 and please do not hesitate to reach out to us at the school if you have any concerns or areas that we can offer support to your child! Stay well. Cheers, Jesse Hillas
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| Welcome back! We are incredibly excited to start a new learning year together. We begin this year with a strong sense of optimism, hope and positivity that is supported by our amazing staff here at the school. We will continue to have a strong focus on being a safe, caring and welcoming school that supports our students to build foundational skills, especially in literacy and mathematics. As the year progresses we will continue to reach out to yourselves as our community to partner, celebrate our student's growth and work together to address any areas where they are experiencing challenges. This year we have welcomed many new staff to our team and we trust they bring high levels of expertise, warmth and kindness. Lastly – please do not ever hesitate to reach out to us around how things are going for your child(ren) at our school. We are here to work together and to support your children to have a successful year both academically as well as in other areas of their development. Stay well and thank you again for all you do to support Falconridge School! Sincerely, Jesse P.S. Please be sure to sign up for all messages that come by ensuring you have signed up to receive them and also that we have your most up to date contact information.
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| Dear Falconridge Families, I want to take a moment as we end this school year to share a few thoughts with you as we celebrate our current year and look forward to a new year ahead. I must start by thanking each and every member of our staff for their tireless work this year supporting not only the learning of students in our school but also their safety each and every single day. Each and every member of our team provides expertise, support and guidance in our building and without them our school would not be the caring, welcoming and amazing place that it is to learn and work. We are so incredibly proud of our team and hope you join us in that level of pride and appreciation. For you as families we also wish to extend our heartfelt thank you. First a thank you for trusting your children with us each day and also a thank you for the ways in which you have supported us a school. Our school is truly a community and one that is deeply strengthened by the families with whom we partner in support of student success. Lastly, the students at Falconridge School were truly exceptional! Your hard work, kindness and enthusiasm make our school a vibrant and diverse learning community that we deeply love. You have overcome a great deal of adversity this year because of the global pandemic and have time and time again demonstrated such strength and resilience. Thank you! Be proud of yourself and what you have accomplished this year. As we look forward to next year, we remain strongly focused on developing the literacy skills of the students in our school in addition to their mathematics skills and ensuring that student well-being is attended to daily. We also will continue to support our diverse learning community and ensure that each and every student in our school sees themselves reflected in our school on the walls, in their classrooms and in the practices, we undertake as a team. We hope that you have a wonderful and safe summer. Our school office will reopen on August 12th, 2021 and our first day with students is on August 17th, 2021. Sincerely,
Jesse Hillas Principal, Falconridge School
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Dear Falconridge families, I wanted to start off this message with a heartfelt thank you for all of the dedication, care and support you are offering your children during our recent transition around learning. The thoughtfulness you display in reaching out to access technology, sitting alongside your children to get them going and the regular check ins with both them and our staff are deeply appreciated. Our staff continue to focus strongly on our school development goals relating to literacy and wellness. During the times of online learning this looks different, but still, so many of the amazing practices of intentional work, small groupings and student check ins live in our classrooms. Our staff are continuing to create opportunities that are meaningful and intentional to focus on student wellness at both a class and an individual student level. We look forward to sharing celebrations from all of this work in coming updates! We are working closely with the team at Terry Fox School around the transition for our Grade 6s to their learning community for those who will be attending in Grade 7. Please keep an eye out for messages relating to important dates/opportunities relating to this transition in the coming weeks. We also will be working with our Grade 6 team to find the best way to celebrate this exciting transition for these leaders from our school. We also will be sending out messages in coming weeks to families who are joining our learning community with Kindergarten students starting in August 2021 J For those of you already with our community, we look forward to adding additional children from your families to our learning community if they are starting Kindergarten this year. On a personal note, I am incredibly humbled and excited to join the Falconridge School family. The staff here are deeply committed to the success of our students and the students in our school are kind, thoughtful, curious and caring which shines through every single day. We will continue to work together to have honest conversations, support student learning and find the fun and joy along the way. Lastly, we are extremely proud of the work that our students and staff so far this. The days are busy and we know how many things are demanding our time, but if you can spare a few minutes, take a walk with your child, sit down with them on the couch and talk to them about how the school year has been so far and what they are excited about in the final weeks. We trust it will be time well spent for you and for your child. Stay well and as always please do not hesitate to reach out if you have questions that we can support as a school
Sincerely,
Jesse Hillas
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| I would like to thank our Falconridge School community for their support and caring during what has been a challenging school year. You have responded quickly to the continuous change from in school learning to on-line learning and back to in school learning. I am sure that this has put many pressures and stressors on your family life. Yet, you have done what needed to be done and we certainly appreciate your understanding as we all work to keep our community safe.
This week you have received additional supports of face masks and hand sanitizers from the City of Calgary Emergency Response team. We urge you to follow the guidelines set out by the government around gathering and use of masks.
When school begins on January 4th, all classes will be on line for the first week. All Kindergarten to Grade 6 students will learn from home. Teachers will send you an email to tell you when you child will meet with them on-line for class and small group meetings. Report cards will be completed and ready by the first week in February. As we move into our holidays, I would like to announce that I will be retiring and my last day will be January 8, 2021. I have had the great pleasure of working for the Calgary Board of Education for 45 years. I have truly loved working with the Falconridge Community and I wish you all the best as you continue to support your child's education. Stay safe and take care. Sincerely, Sue MacPherson
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| What an amazing fall we have had! Thank you to all of our families for your support in keeping our school safe. We are proud of the way our students care for the safety of their classmates which certainly reflects the values of their families. Continuing to remind your children to keep 2 meters apart and to come each day with a mask on the face and one in the backpack is important to maintaining our safety. Thank you for your diligence. Although the world is focused on Covid, we have moved forward with learning. We will continue with our goals to improve our reading and writing for understanding. We are also working at improving our perseverance with tasks. We continue to work at mathematical reasoning and problem solving. In our new reality, many of our ways of operating have changed. On November 19 and 20, you will have an opportunity to meet with your child's teacher through on line conferencing. Please go to our Falconridge website, then to the teaching and learning tab and then click on Parent teacher Conferences. This tab will lead you through booking a Conference. You may also use this link: https://school-edit.cbe.ab.ca/school/falconridge/teaching-learning/assessment-reporting/teacher-conference/pages/default.aspx We will activate the option soon, so look for a detailed instruction sheet to come home with your child. Falconridge students who are on the HUB will have their conferences on December 3 and 4. We will also have a virtual Remembrance Day assembly on November 10th and students will participate in their classroom to honour and pay respect to those who served our country.
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| Congratulations! We have made it through a very challenging
year and we would like to thank all our families for their perseverance and
support.
When we look back on our year, students engaged in some
wonderful learning opportunities. Our storytelling work with Mr. Jeff Stockton
was a rich learning experience and we were grateful for the financial support
we received from Education Matters and Alberta Foundations for the Arts. The
monies that we received from these grants allows us to bring people, such as a
storyteller, into our school and we collectively advance our learning as a
community.
Our school council supported many rich learning opportunities
through sponsoring busses and in school activities such as Alien in-line
skating. Our students enjoyed many opportunities to learn through off campus
experiences that enhanced all curricular areas. As you stated in our recent
survey, these experiences are important and we will continue to provide these
opportunities as much as possible. We very much appreciate the work of our
school council and their dedication to helping our students by enriching
learning activities.
Our staff truly stepped up to the new teaching challenges
that were presented on line and we thank them for the many hours of dedicated
work on behalf of Falconridge students. Every staff member worked at trying to
make our new learning environment the best space for children to learn.
We wish our Grade 6 students much success as they move on to Jr. High School. We know they will enjoy their new experience and we are proud of what they have accomplished at Falconridge.
We look forward to the new school year and wish you all a
very happy and safe summer. See you soon!
Sue and Heather |
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I would like to thanks all our families who came out to our
storytelling evening. We appreciate the strong support you gave to our group of
storytellers and to the individual tellers that performed in the classroom. We
were also fortunate to have the amazing experience of working with Mr. Jeff
Stockton who carefully guided our students as storytellers; teaching strategies
for language learning as well as developing confidence.
The art of storytelling has many benefits to students who
are developing language skills. When students create a story that requires a
performance, they learn to add rich vocabulary and sequence events in a way
that allows the audience to be drawn into the story. The story as a performance
needs expression, actions and different voice tone. Student develop confidence
in sharing their work and coaching each other to enhance the presentation.
Our students developed confidence in their performance and
their ability to create a piece of work that they could share with their
families. We will continue to use these skills and strategies throughout the
year as students develop their story writing and telling skills.
We enjoyed seeing many of our families during student led
conferences. Learning about how your child is progressing is so important to
your child’s success throughout their schooling.
Our swimming is well underway and we are looking forward to
Alien In-line skating during the month of December. If your child has a CSA
approved helmet, they can wear it for inline skating.
Check out the pictures on this site that shows the wonderful
work that is happening in the Learning Commons. Solving problems is the key to
great work in the Commons and students are busy solving math problems, robotics
problems, science problems and problems that develop in a good story. The look
on a child’s face when they solve a difficult problem and acquire new
understanding is priceless!
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