On February 23rd, Canadians were encouraged to take a stand against bullying and wear pink shirts to show their support for safe and inclusive schools, workplaces and communities. Superior North Catholic District School Board is proud to recognize and participate in a cause that teaches empathy, compassion and kindness.
Superior North Catholic District School Board staff and students came together by wearing pink. They honoured the day with various activities that created awareness and education about bullying and ways to prevent it. Some classes did skits, watched videos, and drew and coloured pictures on bullying.
"Thanks to all who wore pink to shed light on an important topic - bullying. A young boy's experience in Nova Scotia has brought national awareness of something that is hurtful and unfortunately exists in the world. Our staff and students deserve to work and learn in an environment free of bullying and harassment. We should remember the essence of today every day. As a Catholic school system, civility and respect are part of the values we believe in. Those beliefs should be evident in our professional relationships and responsibilities." – Maria Vasanelli, Director of Education.
Superior North Catholic District School Board wishes to recognize and express our gratitude to Dilico Anishinabek Family Care - Mental Health Services. Dilico staff, Jenna and Lionel have been providing our Kindergarten classroom at St. Joseph Catholic School with programming that focuses on emotion identification. Students learned how they experience and respond to different emotions using the movie Inside Out as a platform to engage the students. Sessions focused on: joy, anger, sadness, and disgust to name a few.
Our students had so much fun interacting with the Dilico staff throughout the month of February. Miigwetch for all you do to support our students!
SNCDSB Positive Behaviour Support Worker, Nicole Piche, created a challenge to get students engaged, in Bell Let’s Talk, by opening up a colouring contest. Students were invited to colour a mandala and submit their creations for a chance to win a prize. Many mental health professionals recommend colouring as an effective way to practice mindfulness.
Mandala, meaning "sacred circle" in Sanskrit, is a circular art form often containing geometric and repeating designs. Similar to meditation, it focuses your attention on the present moment and away from worries and stress.
What beautiful creations from the Remote Learning Grade 4-8 class!
The grade 5 class at St. Edward Catholic School gladly volunteered on Feb. 23rd at 2:30 (once it finally warmed up) to help make some paths and mazes. for our kindergarten friends! Check out the snowdrifts! What a kind and compassionate crew! They were so happy to “serve” and do a good deed for our kindergarten friends! What an amazing group of kids!
SNCDSB Extends it’s ExploreLearning Subscription to Include FRAX Math to Support Learning Fractions
The Superior North Catholic District School Board Math Team is excited to announce that it has extended its current subscription to the ExploreLearning online math program to include Frax Math; an adaptive and game based program designed to help students learn fractions in a fun and engaging galaxy themed environment. Research-based instruction methods help students understand that fractions are numbers too by personalizing instruction for each student's needs. To learn more, visit www.fraxmath.com/
Previous to the Frax Math subscription, Superior North Catholic school’s had and continue to have access to Reflex Math; a fact fluency program for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Reflex Math has been a powerful tool in supporting mental math strategies and mastery of fundamental math concepts and skills in operations. Similar to Reflex Math, Frax Math will be available to all educators to support differentiated instruction for students of all ages and abilities.
The Math Team would like to thank the eight classrooms who participated in our 3 month Frax Math pilot project! Your time and dedication to the pilot, as well as your overwhelming positive feedback was a huge part of making this program available to all SNCDSB educators and students:
“My students loved it and were very excited to use it during class time and after class time! They would talk about their progress on Frax even after the math block.”
“Students loved using FRAX. They were very engaged. Their understanding of fractions has increased tremendously since using the program.”
After this encouraging feedback, the Math Team was confident that a full board subscription was a must!
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The grade 4 students at St. Edward Catholic school are excited to express themselves through the use of the makeup they received from the 2021/2022 Experiential Learning grant. For the remainder of the year, Mrs. Currie’s class will create projects based on the different subject matter and then transform their ideas into a living work of art using their own faces! This is a wonderful way for students to show their feelings, emotions and creative abilities using a unique form of medium. Many of these projects are cross-curricular in nature as they not only deal with drama but literacy, religion and numeracy as well.
First Lego League Challenge
Students at Superior North Catholic District School Board (SNCDSB) have many opportunities to learn through hands-on tools and robotics. SNCDSB has the strategic priority of Focus on the Future through the promotion of a modern, creative and leading edge culture. Thank you to Qualcomm and FIRST Canada for supporting over 55 students in Grades 5 - 8 to participate in this year's FIRST LEGO League Challenge Cargo Connect season. Superior North Catholic District School Board is pleased to announce that they have received over $5,000 in Class Pack grants from FIRST LEGO League and $14,400 from Qualcomm.
There are five schools participating in the challenge that promotes Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics. The program facilitates students’ problem solving, coding and engineering by building and programming autonomous LEGO robots. This year's challenge requires students to learn about how cargo is transported, sorted and delivered to its destination. Students will practice the engineering design process and identify, design and create solutions to transport cargo more efficiently. This year marks the first year that SNCDSB students will participate in the entire challenge by completing an Innovation Project, as well as building and coding a robot to compete in the robot game.
Peggy Scott has been working with educators and students for over four years, supporting STEM learning with LEGO. She is a treasured volunteer with FIRST Canada. In the past, pre-COVID, Peggy would travel to the SNCDSB and visit schools and facilitate hands-on learning with SNCDSB’s Technology Enable Learning Teacher, Sarah Clowes. All SNCDSB schools have had the pleasure of meeting Peggy and working with her. This year Peggy has been meeting with students virtually to teach students how to code using LEGO’s new Scratch-based programming - LEGO Mindstorms EV3 Classroom and LEGO Education SPIKE Prime.
There are many supporters who have made this learning opportunity available to SNCDSB students. We would like to recognize Annika Pint and Peggy Scott with FIRST Robotics Canada and the funders providing grants to SNCDSB, Qualcomm and FIRST LEGO League.
Our Mission is that "Together We Educate Heart, Mind and Soul." That concept of “togetherness” is something that is well-rooted in our Indigenous Education portfolio. The work we are doing to honour the Truth and Reconciliation - Calls to Action is reflected in our Multi-Year Strategic plan and is regularly shared with our Indigenous Education Advisory Committee. This committee is made up of parents or guardians of Indigenous students as well as Indigenous community members, organizations and partners. This committee is very important to the work we do in Indigenous Education as they provide our board with good guidance, feedback, suggestions and informs our next steps.
Indigenous Education continues to be focussed on increasing our own capacity to respond to the learning needs of Indigenous students, to have students see themselves in their learning, and to build capacity and cultural awareness with all of our staff and elected trustees. This focus supports quality education for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. We are very fortunate to work with our dedicated staff, to access the wisdom of our Indigenous Education Advisory Committee and Judy Wawia, a Red Rock Indian Band member, who is also the Chair of the Board of Trustees.
In addition, we are grateful to work with local companies and community members on in-class learning and staff Professional Development like Superior Strategies, Mercer Ray and Co. and local Elders, knowledge keepers, Indigenous organizations and committees to support our shared mission and goal of student success.
Come Learn With Us! Registration for the 2022-2023 School Year is now open!
Credits:
Apple Wagon Films, #SNCDSB Schools