October 21st, 2016

Math Night

Congratulations to our lucky winners of the Rangers’ tickets – Hyewon L, Gordon E., Aiden and Easton M., and Kristina and Oksana S.!  The tickets have been sent home and the Rangers have been notified that you are attending.  We are very grateful to the Kitchener Rangers for their community outreach!

We want to teach our students the important skill of asking mathematical questions. Many great questions were asked and answered about the boxes of Smarties.  The questions related to counting, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, fractions, comparing, estimating, counting the faces and entry points on the box and asking about favourite colours.  Most importantly, “Do you eat the red ones last?”

Continuing the math theme, here are some interesting numbers from this week:

  • 47 of 215 families returned their math night home fun to be entered in the draw.
  • 5 families tweeted out their homework and earned extra ballots.
  • 49 families participated in our QSP fundraising initiative resulting in approximately $2000 being raised for the school.
  • Alpine now has 149 followers on Twitter up from 106 in August.
  • 246 (85%) of our students are linked on SchoolDay, up from 93 (31%) on September 9.
  • Approximately 75% of the pizza sales were paid online.
  • Instant translation into more than 100 different languages is available with just a click of the mouse on SchoolDay.

A great Ministry of Education resource, Doing Mathematics With Your Child, is available on line and also in print.  We have many print copies (in different languages) at school; please send a note in your child’s planner if you would like one.

Thanks to all of our parents for their interest and support in learning at Alpine!

Staff Updates

Welcome to Kortney Weichel in grade 5.  Miss Weichel took on the challenge of setting up our new grade 5 classroom and was the successful candidate in the round of interviews for the LTO position.  We are very pleased that she will be teaching the grade 5 class until March.

Congratulations to Mrs. Alana Howell (currently on leave from K-3) who was the successful candidate for a teaching position at Forest Hill.  On Monday November 7, Alpine will be welcoming a new contract teacher, Miss Kelly Kittel, to K-3.  Miss Kittel loves kindergarten, has had several kindergarten LTO positions and is thrilled to be joining the Alligators.

The wonderful Mrs. Lindsay Marshall who has been teaching K-3 has been the successful candidate for an LTO position beginning Monday, October 24 and continuing until the end of June at WTT.  We are very grateful to Mrs. Marshall for her love for our students – she has worked tirelessly to set our students up for success by engaging them in their interests and preparing “just right” learning opportunities.

In the interim, we will have an occasional teacher in the classroom and are confident that Miss Linkletter and Mrs. Nispel will support the children through this transition.

SchoolDay

To support those without access to the internet, a Chromebook is now available in the office for families to use.  And, we are here to help.  We would like to get to 100%!

Safe, Caring and Inclusive Schools (SCIS)

Our first of four meetings of our SCIS team will take place on November 14.  This team includes staff, students, parents and admin and focuses on how we can improve and ensure that everyone feels safe, cared for and included in our school community.  Feel free to share any ideas or concerns with Ms Givlin.

School Council

All parents and guardians are welcome at school council.  Our second meeting of the year will take place on Wednesday, October 26 at 6:30 p.m. in the library.  All are welcome.  The agenda will follow.  Can’t make the meeting?  Read the minutes on our website or on SchoolDay.