Dear Parents/Guardians,

Hello everyone! It is great to be here today and always! I hope that you had a great start to your year. January seemed to go by really fast! Now here we are here in February and looking at class lists and who we will write our Valentine’s Day cards to!

As you all know our Kindergarten/Grade One Teacher Sage is pregnant. She has let us know that her last day at QQS will be Friday, February 12th, 2016. We wish Sage, her husband and their growing baby all of the best!

We will have Peter Boon job shadowing in the Kindergarten/Grade One class for the week of February 9th to February 12th, 2016. On Monday, February 15th, 2016 Peter will resume teaching the class in the interim. I will be putting a job posting for the Kindergarten/Grade One Teacher maternity leave position.

We will be making little shifts in our Education Assistant Schedules in order to accommodate the changes that are happening around the school.

Please find attached to this letter the February Lunch Program schedule, which was prepared especially for you by our wonderful cook Bridget.

The IMAX will be going through some upgrades on our anticipated Attendance Contest Field Trip day (Feb.19th, 2016). So we are going to EXTEND our Attendance Contest! We will be going on our trip on Wednesday, March 9th, 2016.

So please mark your calendars March 9th, 2016 is our new field trip day! 

I look forward to a very productive February! Have a great day friends and family!

Yours in Education, Roxanne Harris, Principal

Please remember that we have a no cell phone policy at our school. If you can remember back to September 2015 we had all of our students and parents sign our QQS Code of Conduct.

In our QQS Code of Conduct it states:

School Rules:

All electronics must be left at home. This includes; cell phones, iPods, mp3 players, hand held electronic games, etc. QQS will not be held responsible for any lost or stolen items.

Schools that ban mobile phones see better academic results…

It is a question that keeps some parents awake at night. Should children be allowed to take mobile phones to school? Now economists claim to have an answer. For parents who want to boost their children’s academic prospects, it is no.

The effect of banning mobile phones from school premises adds up to the equivalent of an extra week’s schooling over a pupil’s academic year, according to research by Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy, published by the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics.

“Ill Communication: The Impact of Mobile Phones on Student Performance” found that after schools banned mobile phones, the test scores of students aged 16 improved by 6.4%. The economists reckon that this is the “equivalent of adding five days to the school year”.

Parents and guardians, we need your help in enforcing this part of our QQS Code of Conduct. Your child(ren) are in school for only 6 hours per day. I am going to ask that our students leave their cell phones a home during the school day. We have land line that students can use when needed.

Thank you!

Dear Parents/Guardians,

I am Sarah Chickite - Nikki Wedholm’s Student Teacher from Vancouver Island University. I am in my fifth and final year of the Bachelor of Education Program at VIU. I have two practicums in which I will be teaching your child. The first practicum starts in February where I will be teaching one lesson per day. We will be working on a variety of subjects such as mathematics, social studies, science, art and dance.

When I return for the six-week practicum, I will be teaching 50-100% of the time over the six-week period. During this time, we will work on some projects that will deepen your child’s learnings and understandings of a variety of topics.

My teaching schedule is as follows:

Two-week practicum: February 9th to 19th

Six-week practicum: March 28th to May 6th

I am really excited to have the opportunity to teach your child. I am sure that we will have a lot of fun together over the next few months. I am really looking forward to the lessons that I will be teaching your child and the learnings that will take place.

If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please feel free to contact me via email.

Sincerely, Sarah Chickite, Student Teacher, Vancouver Island University

sarah-chickite@hotmail.com

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”