January 23-27, 2023

Report Cards will be available through your MyCBE account on January 30, 2023. Report Cards are strength based and focus on six areas of learning; communication, functional academics, regulation, social interactions, leisure skills and functional living skills. Learning activities in our EES classroom are specifically designed to build foundational skills in these areas. Our blog this week will highlight each area and give different examples of the programming to assist families in understanding their students report card.  

Students are also supported through their Individual Program Plan (IPP). Students will have brought their IPP's home on Friday. In the envelope are two copies of the IPP. Please sign one and return to the school. 

Communication - Supporting communication occurs continuously throughout the day from the very moment students step off the bus to getting back on the bus at the end of the day! Communication is all about the sending and receiving messages with others. Students are supported to develop communication skills in many ways through the use of classroom visuals, adult modelling communication, to the use of assisted communication both high tech and visual boards.  Our classroom has an AAC (Augmented and Assisted Communication) device with WordPower available for student use throughout the day. Students are being supported to use this device during shared learning and individual work tasks. 

Functional Academics - Students engage in functional academics through a variety of individual and shared learning tasks. Students are greeted every morning with work tasks set out on tables. These specially designed tasks focus on literacy skills, math skills, learning readiness skills, and help to support concepts introduced in shared learning . Literacy tasks develop skills in letter and sound recognition to reading comprehension and preprinting skills to functional writing. Readiness skills focus on put-in tasks and errorless matching tasks. These tasks focus on fine motor skills, academic communication, and work to increase students stamina for task demands. Math and numeracy tasks work to build number recognition, one to one correspondence and math concepts. Each table group is supported by an adult, and tasks range from familiar and practiced to introducing new concepts.  Students also participate in daily shared learning through songs, movements, interactive SmartBoard activities and inquiry learning. 

Regulation- Students participate in daily regulation. This ranges from daily check-ins using the 4 Zones of Regulation (Green, Red, Blue, Yellow) to activities to support student regulation. Students learn how to identify, in themselves and others, how they are feeling and the different tools they can use to re-regulated or get back into the green zone. Tools such as using fidgets while in shared learning, special areas for calming, big body movements, and different breathing techniques are used and practiced everyday, 

Social Interactions - Students spend time throughout the day building social interaction skills through a variety of activities such as group table play, buddy activities, turn taking games and shared learning.  Character traits are taught through the teaching of The 7 Sacred Grandfathers.  Each character trait is paired with an animal. Students learn and practice actions and behaviours that demonstrate how to be respectful like the buffalo, loving like the eagle, wise like the beaver, humble like the wolf, courageous like the bear, honest like the Sabe, and truthful like the turtle through songs, stories, and peer modelling. 

Leisure Skills - Students get time each day to participate in activities of interest.  Often preferred toys, sensory or movement activities are used as motivators using first/then language.  When students come into the classroom in the morning they FIRST complete three work tasks and THEN engage in preferred activities. Students participate in daily outdoor playground play, exploratory play, introduced to a variety of equipment in the gym and engage in whole group music instruction with our music teacher to further develop leisure skills. 

Functional Living Skills - These are skills that are developed through consistent daily routines that assist students with functional tasks. Building independence in self-care skills is an important part of our day. These skills include dressing during our arrival and dismissal routines, hygiene skills (hair and teeth), increased mobility, snack and lunch routines, and support with toileting skills. During community walks, students learn important safety skills and learn about environmental print, such as safety and road signs.  Learning about days of the week and months of the year through our daily calendar work also supports functional living skills. 

I hope this blog helps you to understand the learning outcomes in your students report card and IPP. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. I look forward to further discussing your students school successes! Stay warm this weekend!

Upcoming Dates

• Jan 30: Term 1 Report Cards released through your MyCBE Account.
• Feb 2: Winter Walk Day (see below)
• Feb 3: CBE Non-Instructional Day (no classes)
• Feb 16 & 17: Teachers' Convention (no classes)

Report Cards

• Your child's report card will be available online starting on Monday January 30.
• To see the report card you must log into your MYCBE Account. 
• Contact your child's teacher if you have any issues.

Winter Walk Day - February 2

Ethel M. Johnson School is planning on participating in the Alberta Winter Walk Day, Thursday, February 2, 2023.  Walking is a great way to enjoy a beautiful winter day.  We will walk outside around the block, on the sidewalk, weather permitting.  Students are asked to dress for the weather to enjoy the fresh, crisp Alberta air (i.e. coats, mitts, boots and snow pants).

Calgary Roughnecks Tickets

We are pleased to share that students will have the opportunity to experience lacrosse, Canada's official summer sport later this month. The program is through the Roughnecks and they have provided two free tickets to a game in February for each family!  Next week teachers will be sending home (a code) to redeem two free tickets. Stay tuned!

January 16-20, 2023

 

This week we continued our Space Inquiry with a focus on learning about the Sun. We introduced students to listening and reading informational text on PebbleGo. Our focus learning is that the sun is a star and all the planets in our solar system revolve around the sun. 

Students engaged in learning tasks with a space theme. These tasks target skill development set out in students IPP's such as reading comprehension, fine motor and preprinting, letter recognition, matching, and math concepts like probability, ordering, and patterning. 

Report Cards will be released in your MyCBE January 30, 2023. Student report cards will focus on six learning areas; communication, functional academics, regulation, social interactions, leisure skills and functional living skills.  Students build on these skills in various activities throughout the day. Next weeks blog will focus on each of these important areas. Here is a sneak peak of some of the activities that will be highlighted. 

This Sunday will begin the 15 Day celebration of the Lunar New Year. Students started to learn about the celebrations and traditions associated with this celebration through a visual core vocabulary board, songs, stories and movement.  We started our learning with The Dragon Dance. Click the link to see the dance. https://youtu.be/i2l9p0fmFSU. This upcoming week we will learn more about the Lunar New Year and The Year of the Rabbit. 

Your student's IPP (Individual Program Plan) will be coming home this upcoming week. There will be two copies, one for you to keep, and one to sign and return. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions. 

Upcoming Dates

• Jan 30: Term 1 Report Cards released through your MyCBE Account.
• Feb 2: Winter Walk Day (see below)
• Feb 3: CBE Non-Instructional Day (no classes)
• Feb 16 & 17: Teachers' Convention (no classes)

Winter Walk Day - February

Ethel M. Johnson School is planning on participating in the Alberta Winter Walk Day tomorrow, Thursday, February 2, 2023.  Walking is a great way to enjoy a beautiful winter day.  We will walk outside around the block, on the sidewalk, weather permitting.  Students are asked to dress for the weather to enjoy the fresh, crisp Alberta air (i.e coats, mitts, boots and snow pants).

January 9 - 13, 2023

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a great break. This week was all about getting back into our daily routine. Thankfully the weather was so much nicer than when we left for our break in December, that we got to enjoy lots of time outdoors this week as well!

Students were greeted Monday morning with some new morning work. Most of our morning work has a Winter based theme. Students work in different table groups on targeted tasks.  Many of the tasks are designed to focus on goals set in each students Individual Program Plan (IPP).

After completing three tasks students are given the opportunity to engage in some free choice play. One of the choices after task work is completed is our Movement Room. Students can bounce on the trampoline, crawl through the tunnel, walk on the bench, throw balls at the target, rock in the recliners, walk on the stepping stones, or use the body sock.  This room is among our students favourite!

This week we returned to our weekly library visits. Our visits to the library start with our librarian, Mrs. B, reading us one of her favourite stories. After the story, students are supported to choose a library book and then sign it out. Library books are kept in the classroom for the week and students can revisit their book as often as they like. 

During our literacy whole group learning we continue to build our sound and letter knowledge. This week we looked at the digraph /th/. Here is one of the videos we watched to learn more about the digraph. https://youtu.be/o3INXFPrfJM. Students are learning to differentiate sounds that are voiced or unvoiced by feeling the vibrations in the throat. Words like moth and thumb have an unvoiced sound, meaning that if we put our hand on our throat we don't feel a tickle (vibration), where words like feather and weather the /th/ sound is voiced, we feel the vibrations. 

This week we also started a new inquiry learning topic, Our Solar System. This week we learned about the job of an Astronaut. 

Students started an art project this week that we will finish up next week. We also introduced one of our fun space sensory bins. 

Upcoming Dates

• Jan 17: Student Council & Parent Society Meeting (virtual @ 6 pm)
• Jan 17 or 18: Community Walk, weather permitting
• Jan 19: Health Hunger/Fun Lunch (Deadline to order is Jan 14)

• Jan 30: Term 1 Report Cards released through your MyCBE Account

Have a wonderful weekend!