James Potter Public School 905-595-1495

Principal: F. Housdon

Vice-Principal: C. de Nottbeck

T. Paiva

Office Manager: B. O'Toole

Superintendent: T. Byers

April 2014

Student Attendance Check!

Please call: 905 595-1495

It is important to call the school

each day your child will be absent

from school. Leave a message on

the answering machine stating

your child's name, teacher and

reason for absence. The answering

machine is available 24 hours a

day.

PARENT ENGAGEMENT TOOL KIT

(from the CODE Resource: Building Parent Engagement) OERB Ontario Education Resource Bank

“I really want to help but I don’t understand what the

teacher expects. When I went to school we didn’t do it like that.”

You don’t need to know how to do the homework to help. Talk to your child’s teacher.

When teachers and parents are on the same page students do better in school.

TIPS: 1. Praise successes.

2. Don’t dwell on mistakes.

3. Give them the confidence to seek help from their teacher. 4. Help them track their progress.

5. Use a problem-solving model to work on assignments and projects.

PARENT TEA Please join us in the library for our next Parent Tea. Our librarian, Mrs. Johnston will be going over the re-sources we have available in our library, and will also be sharing some very helpful reading strategies to help encourage your children to read. Date: Wednesday, April 2, 2014 Time: 8:45 a.m.—9:45 a.m.

PRIMARY SPRING CONCERT AND BOOK FAIR NIGHT Our grade 1, 2 & 3 students have been working with Mrs. Hartley and Ms McKay to prepare for our annual spring concert. Please save the date: Wednesday, April 16, 2014. The concert will be in the gym beginning at 6:30 p.m. As a special treat — our Dance Team will also perform. See the April office calendar for more details.

Our spring book fair will also be available on that day from 3:00-6:00 p.m.

We hope that you can come.

Autism is a general term used to describe a group of complex de-velopmental brain disorders, caused by a combination of genes and environmental influences. These disorders are characterized in varying degrees by communication difficulties, social and be-havioural challenges, as well as repetitive behaviours. There is currently no medical help or cure for autism.

In April, we would like to shine a light on autism by bringing awareness to James Pot-ter Public School. We wish to "light it up blue" by coming together April 2 and throughout the month to raise awareness to those affected by autism. In addition, our Librarian Mrs. Johnston, will be reading books to your students on autism and answering questions on what it means to be a friend to or to know some-one with autism. Similar to a puzzle piece, each student at James Potter Public School is different but when we all come together, we make a wonderful class and a fantastic school. Every puzzle piece (and student) has something special to add that no other piece has.

To kick off March Break, James Potter held a ‘Beach Day’ on Thursday, March 7. Staff and students came dressed in their best summer attire in anticipation of the warmer weather ahead. MRS. WEBER’S GRADE 2 CLASS CELEBRATES

BEACH DAY IN STYLE!

PEEL TECHNOLOGY SKILLS CHALLENGE

On March 25th, Mr. Wilston accompanied two teams to the Peel Technology Skills Challenge. Navreet, Diya, Hemish and Haris designed and built a moveable bridge while Hadi, Sarojini, Tanvi and Manav used Lego to design and build a race car. All eight students represented James Potter and our community well. Way to go!

Presenting our James Potter Dance Team!!!

We practiced, practiced and yes, practiced some more for our big dance debut! Our James

Potter Dance Team participated in auditions to become part of the team and have been

working very hard to put together a dance routine choreographed by Mrs. Weber and Ms.

Smith with the support of many of the James Potter staff. In the true spirit of inclusion, we part-

nered up with Edenbrook Public School’s dance team in a combined performance at the

Mississauga Living Arts Centre, on Wednesday, March 26th to a sold out audience! As repre-

sentatives of James Potter Public School, we were honourable representatives of our school

and performed very well at the showcase. If you missed our performance, you can see us

perform live at the Spring Concert on Wednesday, April 16 at 6:30 pm.

SCHOOL COUNCIL We would like to thank Aig and MD, our School Council Co-Chairs, who collaborated with our Administration Team to create a Parent Engagement survey. We thank all of our families who took the time to complete and return these surveys. We will be making our draw for the Family of Four Cineplex Movie Pass in April. We plan to

review your responses at our April 9th School Council meeting. This will help us plan

engaging activities for our Family Community for the 2014-2015 school year!

This is how we feel during practice! This is how we feel about people not

Including others

Members of the dance team: Varna,

Khalia, Tanya, Vivian, Gabrielle, Josh,

Waiza, Kourtney, Rudra, Aliyah, Ananya,

Tanvi, Druti, Teneeya, Joshua.

MATH PLAY DAY

On March 3rd, Student Leaders from Huttonville P. S., joined us for our First

Ever Math Play Day! Gr. 1-5 students engaged in Rich Parallel-Math Tasks

throughout the day. We celebrated with a Pizza Lunch and a video montage

capturing various moments of our problem solving! This day was such a huge

success that we look forward to make it an annual event!

Parent Engagement Club

Parents please come and join the Parent Engagement Club at James Potter Public School. We meet once a month to

learn about different topics, share our ideas and socialize with one another. Watch for our fliers coming home with infor-mation on our future workshops.

Upcoming dates and topics are as follows:

April 22, 2014—topic: Cyber-bullying

May 13, 2014—topic: Learn How To Camp June 17, 2014—topic: Summer Activities for your Child

For more information please contact Rumina Sandha at 647-302-5418 or rumina.sandha@bmccentre.org

EQAO ASSESSMENT

Students in Grade 3 and 6 will be participating in the province-wide EQAO assessment from May 26th –June 7th, 2013 . This assessment is based on The Ontario Curriculum Grades 1-8 and will give our students the opportunity to show what they know and how they can apply their knowledge. Students will be participating in assessment tasks in reading, writing and mathematics over four days.

If you have a son or daughter currently in grade 3, please refrain from scheduling appointments or holidays between May 26th –June 7th.

SCHOOL SUCCESS PLANNING

On March 25th and 26th our Grade 1-5 teachers had an opportunity to meet again

with Krista Harris, our Resource Teacher and Jane Heidi-Knapp, our Early Literacy teacher. They brought

along student work samples to share and reflected on the ’30-Day Challenges’ that they’d created as a grade

level in February. Some teams are continuing their focus on the same area of learning, while others created

new ‘Theories of Action’.

David Cruz, our Technology Resource Teacher, spent the day with our Grade 3 team on March 27 th,

facilitating a collaborative-inquiry learning session, focused on math. The team had an opportunity to co-plan, co-teach and co-

debrief a 3-Part Lesson in Math. They explored how iPads could be used by students to document their work and to communicate

their mathematical reasoning. This was a powerful session and built upon the various ways to naturally incorporate technology into

our teaching and learning practices.

FULL-DAY KINDERGARTEN ADDITION

Over the March Break, three of our portables were re-located in order to make room for the

construction crew and equipment that will be on site within the next few weeks. Pre-construction meetings are scheduled for the first week in April. We are aware that construction during mid-

year may cause some disruptions, though we want to assure you that we are working closely with

all parties involved to ensure minimal disruptions and to promote everyone’s safety. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to call the school and ask to speak to either Ms

de Nottbeck, Mrs. Housdon or Mrs. Paiva. Fingers n’ toes crossed that with this early start to our construction, that the addition will be completed on time and ready to welcome all of our FDK staff and students on

September 2nd!