Newsletter #3
October 16, 2024
Dear Highland Park Husky families,
We had an amazing performance at our school last week on Thursday, October10 called Ventastic. As a ventriloquist, performer Michael Harrison worked in comedy and even some magic. He incorporated many student volunteers into his show. Our students were fully engaged and very excited by his tricks. It reminded me how important wonder, curiosity and laughter is to bring a school community together. The looks of absolute astonishment on the faces of our students were priceless. If you wish to read up on future performances, CLICK HERE for more information.
A big thank you to our PAC for their coordination of our Welcome Back to School Event that took place on September 19th. It was so nice to meet our parents and officially bring in the new school year. A big thank you to Mr. Hazlewood and his band, Hat Trick, for the amazing music and entertainment.
In our most recent whole school assembly on October 2nd, we recognized 14 students, one from each of our 14 divisions, for going above and beyond to show caring behaviours. It was our focus from the September whole school assembly on the Circle of Courage quadrant, BELONGING. Demonstrating behaviours that show caring positively contributes to a school where everyone feels like they belong. While our focus on belonging will continue, as well as showing caring and kindness to others, our October focus in on demonstrating behaviours consistent with goal setting. Goal setting is important in becoming a self-directed learner and connects to the Circle of Courage quadrant on INDEPENDENCE. Students learned about the importance of believing in themselves as learners, growth mindset, asking for and accepting feedback to focus on areas of growth.
At the most recent pro d day, the focus of learning for staff was on the development of Assessment Capable Leaners by co-creating criteria with students, with a particular focus in the area of writing. This process is believed to support students in the area of goal setting and provide self assessment opportunities. To access our School Improvement Plan containing our 5 school learning goals, CLICK HERE. While these have been shared previously, it is important to keep these learning goals and our collective efforts at the forefront in all we do with our students.
Yesterday we started to incorporate student voice into our daily morning announcements. We have a variety of grade 5 student leaders volunteer to help out with these. It’s been great to have them involved in this way.
We have a number of important procedures and routines in place at our school in order to keep students safe and accounted for. We are finishing our seventh week of the 2024-2025 school year and in addition to our school being a caring place for our students, it is a busy place. I wish to take this opportunity to provide a few reminders to help us focus on prioritizing learning.
- All visitors are required to sign in at the office (except for morning drop off and after school pick up outside). If you enter the building (beyond the office) to drop off your child to their classroom or volunteer, we ask that you sign in when you arrive and out when leaving. Volunteers should be scheduled by the teacher or staff member in advance and must be approved by the office.
- Please contact the office if your child is absent AND include the reason. We will notify the teacher on your behalf. You can phone and leave a message at 250-546-8723 or send an email to hpe@sd83.bc.ca.
- Please sign your child in at the office if arriving late.
- Please contact the office if you need to pick up your child early. We will notify the teacher and endeavour to have them ready at the office for you to sign them out. We are only able to release students to their guardians.
- Supervision is available starting at 7:40 am. Students are welcome to arrive after 7:40 am. While the warning bell rings at 7:57 am, instruction starts at 8:03 am.
- The school is responsible for your children from the time they leave home for school until they return home after school. For this reason, students are expected to go home immediately at the end of day bell, unless of course their guardian is present to supervise. Our bell rings at 2 pm and there is supervision for bus students only. Students are not allowed to be behind the school at the end of the day, unless of course their guardian is present to supervise. If students wish to return to school to play after checking in at home, the parent assumes responsibility for their child’s safety.
- Please ensure your child is aware of their after school plan each day. If you wish to provide a change to their usual plan, please contact the office at 250-546-8723 before 1:30 pm so we can ensure your child is aware. Our office phone is not available for student use to make social arrangements.
I hope you all had a fantastic long weekend and found much to be grateful for this Thanksgiving. If you have questions or inquires with regard to any and all aspects of Highland Park School, please contact me 250-546-8723.
Warmest Regards,
Mrs. Cull 😊
Changing Weather: The weather is getting colder and wetter so I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you to ensure your children have what they need in their back packs for all kinds of weather conditions. We value the importance of fresh air and outside time but staying warm and dry is a must so we can keep our priority on learning during our learning times. Thank you very much. In addition to water resistant outdoor gear (ie. puddle pants, gloves, warm winter jacket, rain jacket, toque, snow pants, etc.), ensuring your children have extra clothing in their back packs including dry socks and pants is important. As it gets colder as we approach winter, water resistant gloves are important and even an extra pair. Thank you for your attention to this. As we head into the winter months, please know that we consider many aspects of the weather before calling an inside day. During the winter, typically if the temperature is colder than -14, we will keep students inside.
Foundational Skills Assessment: Our grade four classes have been busy completing the required Foundational Skills Assessment, which is an assessment tool developed by the Ministry of Education and Child Care. To read more about this assessment, CLICK HERE. Samples questions can be found HERE. A promise that I have made to myself, our students and our school community is to ensure our students get the time they need to fully complete the various portions in Literacy and Numeracy. This will enable us to extract greater meaning from the assessment results. The assessment results are used by the province, our district and our school. We look at the results as a grade 4 cohort and by individual students with grade 4 classroom teachers and plan school improvement efforts accordingly. Each child will bring home their completed assessment booklets along with their individual results before Winter Break. Students complete a similar assessment in grade 7 as well.
Parking Lot: Our round about area and KISS and RIDE drop off/pick up zone is getting better. I’d like to thank parents for continuing to circle the parking lot loop at the end of the day until you see your children waiting for you before maneuvering into the drop off/pick up zone. This has helped to speed things up at pick up time. Thank you for utilizing the IPE grounds for parking and even at drop off and pick up times as this helps to ease the traffic using the loop. We would like to request that you avoid getting out of your vehicle while in the drop off/pick up zone. We would also like to request that you avoid the back parking lot area at morning drop off and afternoon pick up times as this area is too congested with parents accessing the day care. I am currently working with our Operations Department to make some changes in our back parking lot area that will hopefully help.
Silver Star Winter Recreation (Grade 4 and 5): We are excited to be able to offer three Winter Recreation days for our students in grades 4 and 5. More information will be coming soon. In the mean time, please save the following dates on your calendar: Monday, January 13th, Friday, January 17th and Monday, January 20th. It is tradition to remain at the hill until 2:45 so please start making arrangements for a later pick up time on these dates. Students should return back to school around 3:30 pm. Thank you.
Communicating Student Learning: We are excited to welcome you to our Family Conferences as our first informal learning update on Thursday, October 17th. A reminder that this is not a regular day of school for students. Students only attend during their booked conference time. The booking link was sent out to families last week on Tuesday, October 12th. If you haven’t yet booked a conference time, please do so. If there are no conference times available that are suitable to your schedule, please contact your child’s classroom teacher to make arrangements. As communicated in the email, the Student/Teacher/Family conferences serve as an informal learning update and are an opportunity to share student strengths, areas of growth, and ways to support learning, particularly in the areas of literacy, numeracy, and social emotional learning. Teachers may choose to include student goal setting as part of the conference format, or they may choose to facilitate goal-setting activities with students at another time, prior to the December Written Learning Update. Written Learning Updates will be available to parents online on Tuesday, December 17th. Conferences are 15 minutes in length.
Please schedule one conference per child. We kindly ask that all guardians of the child work together to coordinate a mutually agreeable conference time to ensure progress and any goal setting is heard by all. In order to ensure that students have the undivided attention of their teacher and guardian(s) for their scheduled conference time, we recommend that you find childcare for siblings. However, we completely understand that in some circumstances this is not possible. If you are unable to find childcare, our preference is that you keep your children with you during conference times as there will be no supervision outside.
CLICK HERE to access information about Student/Teacher/Family conferences shared on our website.
Further to what was reported in our Newsletter #2, I am happy to report that a date has been set for our second informal learning update happening in the Spring. Student Led Conferences is the format that most teachers have chosen and they will be happening after school on Wednesday April 30th from 2:15 – 4:15 pm. If your child’s teacher has chosen a different format, you should have been notified by now. Please save this date in your calendar. More information will be coming home soon.
District Name Change: Announced in the Board of Education Meeting Update (CLICK HERE for the Update) and communicated to parents through school messenger yesterday, our district is undergoing a name change. This new name we have been gifted will accompany our new district logo. Practicing our pronunciation is a small act toward reconciliation, an important value in SD83.
Spirit Days: Show your Husky pride on the following HPE SPIRIT Days planned by our Spirit Day Committee. CLICK HERE to read more about our upcoming events. SOCKtober is coming up next on Friday, October 18th with the Halloween Costume Parade on Thursday, October 31st. Teachers will be messaging families directly about any specific classroom expectations regarding Halloween.
Halloween is on Thursday, October 31st: Students are invited to wear a costume to school on Halloween – Thursday, October 31st. If students prefer, they can wear fall colours or orange and black instead. If students choose to wear a costume, these are the expectations to keep in mind when choosing a costume for school:
- NO weapons or weapon like items or accessories – if it’s meant to harm others, it’s a weapon, please leave it at home. Weapon or weapon like items are not allowed on school property at any time. Even if fake.
- Masks are allowed in classroom spaces ONLY. Please leave masks off while outside or in common spaces like the hallways and washrooms. This is to ensure students are identifiable and feel safe.
- Keep the gore to a minimum and content appropriate for a k- 5 elementary school setting. Blood splatters, gore and very scary costumes can be too frightening for some children.
- Be respectful of our existing dress code in SD83. Choose a costume that does not limit your participation in school activities, including participating in gym, recess and lunch. Ensure your costume choice does not degrade, denigrate, incite hatred, prejudice or discriminate based on race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, religion, marital status, family status, physical status, physical or mental disability, sex or sexual orientation and gender identity or expression (prohibited grounds set out in the BC Human Rights Code).
Bus Evacuation: On the morning of Wednesday, October 23rd all students will be participating in a bus evacuation drill with our transportation staff.
Safety Drills: Each year, we are expected to have 6 evacuation/fire drills, 1 earthquake drill, and 1 lockdown drill. A lock down drill is designed to practice our procedures when a threat or intruder is in our building. With staff only we will conduct a Hold and Secure drill to practice our procedures when there is a threat outside in our general vicinity. Please be reassured that these are introduced to students as important practices for what to do in the case of a real emergency situation. CLICK HERE to access a post from after our October 3rd practice where we also gave notice of our October 7th drill. Today, October 16th our annual Earthquake Drill took place at approximately 10:00 am as part of the Great Shake Out world wide event. Mrs. Cull will talk through the steps of our earthquake drill process over the PA.
Coaching Opportunity: If you have interest in volunteering to coach volleyball this year, please contact the school to let Mrs. Cull know at 250-546-8723.
School Fees: School fees are trickling in nicely. Thank you so much for getting these paid on time. If you need more time or are experiencing financial hardship, please contact principal, Shelly Cull at the school, 250-546-8723. We have several options in order to support our families who may be experiencing hardship. CLICK HERE to access our fee schedule.
Remembrance Day Assembly: We are excited to have Shawn Coady return to HPE to present at our whole school Remembrance Day Assembly which is scheduled to take place on Thursday, Nov. 7th at 8:20 am. The focus will be on Remembering our Canadian Soldiers. The presentation topics will include what is Remembrance Day, why do we remember, who do we remember and symbols of remembrance – poppy, memorials, two minutes of silence. Present will be a Colour Guard of veterans from the Legion.
Remembrance Day Legion Contest: Please CLICK HERE to read more information about a poster contest for students in grades k – 12, a literacy contest for students in grade 4 – 12 and a video contest for students in grades 7 – 12. The due date for all entries and accompanying parental consent form is Friday, November 29th to the office.
Update from PAC: Our next PAC meeting will be on Wednesday, November 13th in the library. It’s been so great to have so many parents participate in our meetings. The more the merrier, so please consider attending. Child minding will be provided for parents who are attending the meeting. PAC is looking for additional helpers to serve soup on Wednesday soup days: October 30, November 13, November 27 and December 11. More dates will be coming soon for the new year.
For ongoing information pertaining to the happenings at HPE please visit our website: www.sd83.bc.ca.
See below for a list of important dates and upcoming events including hot lunch dates and even our Winter Concert Date:
Tuesday, October 1 – Thursday, November 7
Foundational Skills Assessment Administration – Grade 4 only
Wednesday, October 16
Great Shake Out – Earth Quake Drill
Hot Lunch (PAC) – Soup Day
Kindie field trip to St. Anne’s Pumpkin Patch – approved volunteers only
Thursday, October 17
Student/Parent/Teacher Conferences – students only attend school for their scheduled conference time
Wednesday, October 23
Hot Lunch (PAC) – Askews
Bus Evacuation Drills (all classes)
Monday, October 21 – Friday, October 25
Take Me Outside Week
Friday, October 25
PRO D Day – Provincial
Wednesday, October 30
Hot Lunch (PAC) – Soup Day
Thursday, October 31
Halloween
Wednesday, November 6
School Photo Retake Day
Hot Lunch (PAC) – Subway
Thursday, November 7
Remembrance Day Assembly – 8:20 am
Friday, November 8
PRO D Day
Monday, November 11
NO SCHOOL – Remembrance Day
Wednesday, November 13
Whole School Assembly
Hot Lunch (PAC) – Soup Day
PAC Meeting 2:30 pm
Wednesday, November 20
Hot Lunch (PAC) – Opa
Monday, November 25 – Friday, November 28
Provincial Career Week
Wednesday, November 27
Hot Lunch (PAC) – Soup Day
Wednesday, December 4
Hot Lunch (PAC) – Pizza
Wednesday, December 11
Hot Lunch (PAC) – Soup Day
PAC Meeting 2:30 pm
Thursday, December 12
Winter Concert Day – more information will be coming soon
Tuesday, December 17
Written Learning Updates available online
Wednesday, December 18
Whole School Assembly
Hot Lunch (PAC) – Askews
Friday, December 20
Last Day of School before Winter Break
Monday, January 6
First Day back to School after Winter Break
Monday, January 13
Winter Rec Session #1 at Silver Star (grade 4 and 5 only)
Friday, January 17
Winter Rec Session #2 at Silver Star (grade 4 and 5 only)
Monday, January 20
Winter Rec Session #3 at Silver Star (grade 4 and 5 only)
