Hello, hello R7A families –

Welcome to week 3! I hope you found some time to have fun and to rest this weekend. Maybe some of you took the opportunity to ride Ottawa’s new LRT system. This is one of my goals for the week. The individual stations are supposed to be beautiful, full of local, commissioned art.

This is another full week for us here at Vincent Massey with our first, big field trip on Friday to Macskimming Outdoor Education Centre. You all should have received permission forms last week from your R7A student. Please ensure the forms and $12.00 fee are returned tomorrow or Tuesday and go over the field trip day with your children. This will be a long, wonderful day outside from 9:00 am to 2:00 p.m..  Friday promises to be sunny with a high of 26 degrees. We will be learning how to orienteer in the woods with compasses, building shelters out of natural materials and making small campfires with flint and vegetation. Students should have plenty of water, healthy snacks and lunch. They should have a hat, sunscreen, and jacket and good footwear. If a student has an epipen, they must carry the epipen with them and let me know.

If fees are an issue, please contact me as soon as possible. It will be a great day, and we will all be back by about 2:30 before dismissal.

This week, in Language Arts, we will be completing our goal setting and framing our photos and goals. We will finish the time capsule exercise with letters to our June 2020 selves and find out more about phobias and fears in guided reading on Wednesday. Slowly and steadily, Ms Shiau and I are learning more about the writing and reading skills and strengths of R7A. Next week, we will start brief assessments of reading levels. I am hoping that we can start reading buddies with Mrs. King’s kindergartners very soon. Always a lot of fun, and lovely to see how kind and caring the older children are with the “kinders”.

We start Geography by learning about maps and latitude and longitude. I will be showing the students some photos of my recent adventure/trek around the Mont Blanc massif through France, Switzerland and Italy. I know they will have a lot of questions and many personal connections to make given their own experiences and travels. All of our new students seem to be getting the geography of Vincent Massey and are getting to classes faster. We are working on the students being prepared for class with all necessary materials. It is a lot to learn but we will get there. On Mondays, the class and I, with Ms Prokaska and EF7B, will be climbing the VM staircases covering and recording our metres upward, working toward “climbing” King Mountain in Gatineau Park. We will go slowly and steadily, and we will climb those mountains!

PIZZA! Vincent Massey has a pizza program which will be starting up on Thursday, September 26th. You can order and pay on-line or use paper forms. Pizza choices are: cheese; pepperoni; and gluten-free. Information, forms and access to the on-line system are in the link below:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LUf7pfeJCJjAHDBqqwGdiGIgEoe0GmYin4R_wJM7ZBs/edit?usp=sharing

Meet the Staff is this week, on Thursday, September 19th. From 4:00 to 5:00, families and students are welcome to visit the classrooms and meet their teachers. These will be brief “hello, nice to meet you” meetings as there will be many people. From 5:00 – 6:00, we will go outside as a community, eat pizza and have some fun. Please do come and say hello. Steadily, Ms Shiau and I are meeting the families of students with IEPs. Please check your e-mail for the invitation I sent last week.

Last week was challenging for all as we took on FIVE days of school. R7A is learning about expectations and how to be more independent in their learning. They are also learning how to walk through the halls safely, manage their workload and successfully open their combination locks. Many had important breakthroughs with locks, including Travell pictured below with new buddies, Ludwige and Ismail. Congratulations, Travell! It is always important to celebrate life’s small victories!

Please, please, please, encourage your children to read every day and to limit their screen time. Here is a shot of some of the read-aloud books I have chosen for my classes this year.

This week, we will also be talking about how we can make the Golden Rule  (treat others as you would want to be treated) come alive in our time at school. We dealt with a few incidents last week where students were forgetting about how to take care of each other. It is all a matter of feeling comfortable with yourself and exercising some self control – the ongoing lesson for all of us, especially those in grade 7.

Take care of yourselves. Lots going on in Ottawa this fall, including the LRT. 

Many of our museums in Ottawa offer free admission on certain days and times;

• Admission to the permanent collection at the National Gallery of Canada is free on Thursday nights from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. Or, if you visit a special exhibition, you also get access to the permanent collection.
• The newly renovated Canadian Museum of Nature offers free admission on Thursday nights from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.
• The Canada Agriculture and Food Museum offers free admission between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. each day. The adjacent Central Experimental Farm is a great place to cycle or run.
• The Canada Aviation and Space Museum offers free admission between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. each day.
• The Canadian Museum of History (formerly the Canadian Museum of Civilization) and the Canadian War Museum offer free admission on Thursday nights from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.
• The Canada Science and Technology Museum offers free admission between 4:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. daily. A visit to the Museum will allow the visitor to push buttons, turn dials, and pull levers to experience science and technology first-hand, as you discover artifact-rich exhibits featuring marine and land transportation, astronomy, communications, space, domestic technology and computer technology. 

Ms Swail

Here are two photos from my summer adventures: a shot of the Duomo Belltower and one of our camping sites in the Alps.

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