May 2021 Newsletter Website: www.winnipegsd.ca/schools/lordselkirk 170 Poplar Avenue, Winnipeg MB R2L 2B6 Phone: 204.667.8495 Fax: 204.667.0753 Principal’s Message Happy May! It’s hard to believe that there are only two months of school le" in this school year. The sta% at Lord Selkirk School work collabora&vely throughout the school year eet our targets for our learners. Every year we establish school wide goals and strategies )based on research) that will have the greatest i pact on student learning and growth. We are all very proud of the learning that has happened at Lord Selkirk this school year. May arks that & e where we for ally take a look at our school goals and begin this very i portant evalua&on process. ,o ing up on May 3rd. our teachers will be working on our school goals for ne/t year and celebra&ng the success we have had along the way. We always look forward to this day as we assess the work we’ve done. and deter ine where we need to go ne/t to con&nue to provide the best learning e/perience for our students at Lord Selkirk School. 0ur focus this year has been in the three areas. 1) 1cade ic )Literacy2Nu eracy) 4 We have been con&nuing to enhance our reading instruc&on. crea&ng targeted groups focusing on i proving reading for eaning )co prehension) and reading for accuracy )decoding). Teachers have con&nued to strengthen the reading2wri&ng workshop odel. using conferences to provide & ely feedback to students. 2) Educa&on for Sustainable 5evelop ent6 We con&nue our work as a Roots and Shoots school. with each classroo co ple&ng an ac&on pro8ect that enhances the El wood co unity. Teachers have learning ore about Truth and Reconcilia&on and Indigenous perspec&ves in connec&on to developing a ore sustainable society for all. 3) Safe and ,aring Schools6 We are con&nuing to strengthen our Trau a Infor ed Prac&ces. teaching the students to use the 9ones of Regula&on. as well as teaching of social skills through our P:IS odel. In June. we will be su arizing our work. and school year priori&es in our “School Report to the ,o unity” at the end of June. We welco e feedback fro our parents and encourage parents to 8oin us once a onth at our Parent ,ouncil Mee&ngs. In late 1pril. our focus and a?en&on turned to our sta@ng as we begin to plan for the upco ing year. 0ur sta@ng co ple ent is decreasing slightly. for ne/t year. We are currently at 2A0 students which is signiBcantly lower than previous years. We have seen a decrease in enroll ent. as so e fa ilies chose ho e schooling. the virtual school op&on and2or chose not to send their children who were Nursery2Cindergarten age this year due ,0DI541A. We e/pect to see any of our fa ilies returning to Lord Selkirk School in the fall. There will be so e sta% changes for ne/t year as so e of our teaching posi&ons presently at Lord Selkirk are Eter posi&ons’ and we have so e sta% who will be on Maternity Leave. In May and June. Mrs. Petrelli and I will be conduc&ng interviews for posi&ons that are open for the 202042021 school year. 1 special thank you to our EPink 5ay ,o i?ee’ for their work to organize ac&vi&es and celebrate this special an&4bullying ca paign. We strive for every day to be a EPink 5ay’ at Lord Selkirk and I appreciate the co it ent of students to work on aking Lord Selkirk School a great place to be. We are e/cited that the ES5 co i?ee will be hos&ng the Mother’s 5ay sale this year to raise funds for our school playground beau&Bca&on pro8ect. We con&nue to accept Nursery and Cindergarten registra&ons in our o@ce for our new school year beginning in Septe ber. If your child will be 4 years old by 5ece ber 31. 2021 they are eligible to begin Nursery and for our Cinder4 garten progra ing children ust be 5 years old before 5ece ber 31. 2021. Please contact the o@ce for ore infor a&on. We can arrange to send electronic copies of the registra&on package to fa ilies by e ail or you can contact the o@ce to arrange a & e to pick up a registra&on package. We are open fro 8I00 a. un&l 4I00 p. each day. Yours in learning. Ms. Johnston Lord Selkirk School May 2021 Page 1 Room 1 NURSERY and KINDERGARTEN Mr. Katopodis Room 1 had a great month of April, learning about how winter never really leaves! We have now finished reviewing how to write the letters of the alphabet. We are becoming experts in the alphabet and will now take our next step and use our knowledge of the alphabet to explore writing and reading! As writers we will use our knowledge of letter sounds to sound out words and inventively write the letters to the sounds that we hear. A big part of writing is to convey a message, and in Nursery/Kindergarten an important way to convey a message is to draw a picture. We will continue to develop our drawing skills by following directed drawings and then trying to add some words to our story. We will also be using our sight words to create some sentence starters such as "I like..." and "Look at the...". We will continue to focus on reading by recognizing our sight words and creating many strategies on how to figure out new words (such as using the picture). Our sight word list is expanding and in May, students will be taking books home to read together with their family. Please make sure you give lots of time for your child to read the book, and always remember to ask questions about the book before, during and after reading. In April, we had great success with our new exploration bins that are focused on mathematics. Students were able to count, compare quantities, create patterns, and sort objects during exploration time. During our question of the day, we are voting and comparing the votes together to practice the “more than”, “less than” comparisons as precursors to addition and subtraction. Room 2 FULL DAY KINDERGARTEN Ms. Romaniw This month we have continued to grow as writers and readers in so many different ways. We have been continuing to practice our sight words, which helps us read books. We are starting a “Buddy Reading” time every day after lunch. During this time, we read a sight word book to our partner all by ourselves! One of our big highlights this month was celebrating completing Rhyme Time in Room 2. After participating in a lot of fun rhyming activities we held a book celebration to share a story written and illustrated by Room 2. We all did a great job reading our funny rhyme sentences. In math we met “Mr. Number Bond”. He is a big, strong number ( whole ) that carries two parts that equal himself (i.e. 3 + 2 = 5)! Number bonds help us see that numbers can be “broken” into pieces supporting me with developing a strong number sense. You can help me practice this at home too by giving me a random number and having me count the correct objects into a big circle. Then ask me to separate the number into the two smaller circles (parts) and discuss the variations that I come up with! We have been having so much fun learning, growing and exploring together in Kindergarten! Lord Selkirk School May 2021 Page 2 Room 4 GRADE 1 Ms. Feliciano April has already come and gone, it is amazing how quickly the time is moving in Room 4! In Writer’s Workshop we have officially kicked off our opinion writing unit! Thank you to the families that sent their child with a collection to help us with our writing. Room 4 has been writing away, using some new strategies to help convince their readers about their opinions. We are continuing to work in targeted reading groups with three different teachers with the students in Room 4. These groups will focus on specific reading strategies that will help us grow independently as readers. In Math, we have been using everything we know about numbers to help us learn about subtraction. Room 4 has been practicing working with a partner to help with their problem solving skills! We continue to practice counting by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s and participate in daily number talks to help understand numbers. We also continue to use Dreambox in class. As always here is the link to access for some extra practice at home: https://play.dreambox.com/login/d7qd/lords In Science, we have started an investigation about what objects are made of! So far we have discovered that certain materials can be used to make many different things and that some of the same objects can be made out of different things! We are excited to keep learning about what kinds of materials work best to help when we eventually work on our own building projects. In Social Studies, we have teamed up with Take Pride Winnipeg to help us with our Roots and Shoots project! Take Pride Winnipeg has offered to send our class cleaning supplies to help us with our clean up.