Schedule
Friday, November 30: No after-school care for HOOSC students
Advent Calendar Fundraiser
ORDERS DUE FRIDAY (TOMORROW)!
Help us feed Vancouver’s homeless this holiday season! Your purchase will provide TWO meals to those in need. Order Advent Calendars online (http://www.giveafreelunch.com/#holiday-fundraiser) or with this form. Advent Calendars will be delivered to students in their classrooms on Friday Nov 30.
Order must be completed either online or by form by Nov 23.
Calendars are $10 each.
More details at http://www.giveafreelunch.com/#holiday-fundraiser
Or email help@giveafreelunch.com
Activities
Mad Science ends next week.
Term 2 Activities planning is underway. Moresports (basketball) & Expressive Arts will be doing in-person registration on Monday, Dec 3 at 8:30 am and 3 pm outside the school office. We hope to have the Term 2 Activities schedule out in the next 2 weeks, stay tuned!
Direct Donation Appeal
Our Direct Donation Appeal has begun. It’s later than normal this year. But your tax receipt eligible donation to fund required technology for the classrooms is needed to make sure the kids have fair access to needed equipment. Please see our Direct Donation Letter and Form here.
Winter Fair
The annual Winter Fair will be on Friday December 14th from 3.00pm to 5.00pm in the gym.
Come to enjoy the raffle, cake-walk, kids-only market, food, games, crafts, the Storybooth photo booth and award winning strolling magician Kelvin Ng.
TICKETS: Please make sure your ticket order forms, with payment, are dropped off no later than Friday 30th Nov. Forms were sent out in back packs last week but you can also pick-up one outside the office or print one here. Completed forms should be placed in the white PAC mailbox in the office. For further information contact Stella at hudsonclassrep@outlook.com.
DONATIONS
Kids-only market: Before you deck the halls, check your halls, closets, cupboards and crawl space for things you can donate to the Winter Fair!
The Kids Only Market – a very popular part of the Winter Fair – where kids (only!) use tickets to purchase gifts for adults and have them wrapped – needs donations. Please donate: new or like-new adult-appropriate presents (men and women please!). Think about moms, dads, grandparents, etc. Some examples are costume jewellery, wallets, home decor, toiletry sets, scarves, novelty items. Dollar stores and discount bins are also great places to pick up inexpensive trinkets to donate. We will also accept kid-friendly presents as some children may wish to buy for siblings etc. but the focus is on adult gifts as they’re harder for children to shop for and keep as a surprise. In good condition books, CDs, DVDs also accepted. Please drop unwrapped items to the girls change room in the gym either in the morning around 9.00am and after school around 3.00pm from Monday 3rd Dec onwards.
Raffle: We are seeking donated prizes for the raffle. If you or your company could donate a prize, gift certificate or experience for the raffle please drop it off in the school office with a note stating the value of the prize and your name or the name of the company. For more information contact Nina at njanepatel@gmail.com.
Cake walk: If you can donate a cake or set of cupcakes or cookies (home made or store bought) for the ever popular cake-walk please contact Stella at hudsonclassrep@outlook.com for more information.
VOLUNTEER: We still urgently need plenty more volunteers to make this parent-run event a success. We’ll be starting set-up at 12 noon on Dec 14th with shifts running throughout the afternoon ending around 5.45pm after the clean up. If you can spare some time to join the crew for all or part of the time that would be greatly appreciated. It’s fun and rewarding to get involved and we can’t do it without you.
Volunteer roles include: setting-up (a few folk capable of some moderately heavy lifting are especially helpful here), decorating the gym, food preparation, supervising one of the games or the craft table, selling tickets or food, wrapping gifts at the kids-only market, taking a turn directing the cake-walk and of course for the all important cleaning-up at the end. If you would like to get involved please contact Carly at carlykrug24@gmail.com. Thank you.
BCCPAC
The BC Government has just revamped its erase website.
erase = expect respect + a safe education
The website provides services and information on topics including: online safety, mental health and well being, bullying and violence, substance abuse, and sexual orientation and gender identity.
Hot Lunch Volunteers Needed
Hot lunch needs volunteers on Tuesdays from 9:00am – 1:00pm. Email Marina at musea79@hotmail.com if you can help!
New Curriculum Presentation from the November PAC Meeting
At the PAC meeting on November 14, teachers Victoria Lorieau and Jennifer Johnson gave a great presentation about the new BC curriculum which is being used in some Henry Hudson classrooms, and will be used by all classes next year.
Their Powerpoint presentation is available on the PAC website and below is a condensed version of their additional comments and links to the VSB and BC Ministry of Education websites that list all of the curriculum details.
Core Competencies and CSL: BC’s New (Redesigned) Curriculum Online – A Guide for Parents
Guest Presenters: Jennifer Johnson and Victoria Lorieau
Tour of the Ministry’s Curriculum website:
(https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/)
- Curriculum tab:
- Reorganized subjects:
- Health was tacked onto Physical Education, and now Careers are their own piece
- Applied Design, Skills and Technologies is new
- Reorganized subjects:
- Individual subjects (E.g. Mathematics 2: https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/mathematics/2)
- Each subject is broken into 3 ways to learn it: know, do and understand
- Big Ideas (What the students should understand)
- Curricular Competencies (What the students will be able to do)
- These are the skills we expect students to develop
- This is how teachers will present the content in class to promote understanding
- Content (What we expect them to know)
- This is the subject matter that will be covered in class
- On each subject page, the blue text expands to give a more detailed explanation
- These subject pages are supposed to foster collaboration with colleagues and students
- The are also supposed to give clear expectation to students of how they’ll be evaluated and what they’re supposed to know
- Each subject is broken into 3 ways to learn it: know, do and understand
- Core Competencies tab (https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies):
- These are three very important skill sets that we incorporate into all curriculum on a daily basis:
- Communication
- Thinking
- Creative Thinking
- Critical Thinking
- Personal and Social
- Positive Personal and Cultural Identity
- Personal Awareness and Responsibility
- Social Responsibility
- Each core competency page has a link to a PDF file with the “profile” of that competency described. (E.g. https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/sites/curriculum.gov.bc.ca/files/pdf/CommunicationCompetencyProfiles.pdf)
- In the profile, the competency is broken down into several sub-categories with examples and “I Statements” (e.g. “I recognize that there are different points-of-view and I can disagree respectfully.” or “I can understand and share information about a topic that is important to me.”)
- The end of the profile document has a rubric, with numbered levels, and each level describes that level of competency with I statements. This is to help define a student’s progress in that competency.
- The idea of these core competencies is that they should be a part of every student’s learning every day and teachers should look for “teachable moments” for all core competencies. E.g. Victoria described a scenario in class where one student offered an idea that would involve more work for everyone. Another student shouted “No! I hate that!” and the teacher was able to direct them to the ‘disagreeing respectfully’ skill.
- These are three very important skill sets that we incorporate into all curriculum on a daily basis:
CSL: Communicating Student Learning:
(http://go.vsb.bc.ca/schools/ltm/csl_resources/Pages/default.aspx)
- Keeps the learner at the center
- Based on strengths
- Considers areas for growth and proposes a plan of action (called “ways to support learning” on the report card). All of these are structured as anecdotal comments from the teacher
- 2 formal written reports and a minimum of 3 ongoing communications, such as goal-setting meetings or student-led conferences or email/phone from teachers, or a digital or paper-based portfolio, or parent-teacher meetings
- No letter grades at the intermediate level. Instead the teacher provides anecdotes and a 4-point sliding scale to rate the student’s development: Beginning, Developing, Applying, Extending (described on http://go.vsb.bc.ca/schools/ltm/csl_resources/Pages/Student-Competency-Scale.aspx)
- Self-Evaluation is a big part of CSL.
- Victoria’s experience is that the students are very accurate in their own assessments.
- Students are given the same rubric that the teacher uses and evaluate themselves against it (orally for primary grades)
- The rubric is quite objective – it’s a specific list of success criteria to analyze their work
Other information:
- Inquiry-based learning is making things more led by the students’ interests
- Textbook companies are still catching up to new curriculum, but doing so rapidly. Hudson has Grade 7 English, and recently got new 4/5 English textbooks that match the curriculum. Teachers are carefully purchasing and reviewing new textbooks as they become available.
- Teachers Victoria Lorieu and Jen Johnson welcome questions about the new curriculum. Their email addresses are: vlorieau@vsb.bc.ca and jjjohnson@vsb.bc.ca