Carrie Nelson Blogs!

For better or for worse, summer vacation is winding down and soon families will no longer be able to ignore those back-to-school ads on television. However, there are a few tips and tricks to get children excited for the upcoming school season, and St. Jude's Academy has a number of key events to attend this month in preparation for the return to school!

1. Back-to-school shopping. Children love to receive gifts, so take your kids shopping with you and allow them to pick out their own pencils, erasers, and backpacks. This will help them get excited for the upcoming school season by allowing them to pick customized supplies instead of getting regular business office supplies.

2. Organize a play-date with a fellow student. It may have been difficult for your child to spend time with their school friends during the summer, especially when everyone has different vacation schedules and activities. Arrange for a play-date before the official start of school, so the children can get excited about seeing each other every day in the classroom!

3. Sign your child up for extracurricular activities at the private school. Perhaps your family's schedule may have prevented you from signing up for sports this summer, but with the return to school comes the return of extracurricular activities! Encourage your child to participate in a sports team at your Mississauga private school, or even a lunchtime club. The key is to try to find a positive effect of having to return to school in September.

Starting this Monday August 29, St. Jude's Academy is hosting several orientation nights for various grades. This is a great way for SJA families, both new and returning, to hear important news and updates for the coming private school year. Families will also have a chance to meet with their child's teacher, and view their child's classroom.

And if you missed out this year, don't forget for next summer that St. Jude's Academy organizes and hosts an 8-week long camp for children in the summer! Each weekday is filled with fun activities like games, crafts, sports, and baking, and special events are planned for the children to embark on, like outings to parks. To learn more, click here.

Ontario's kindergarten classes are still overcrowded after the province instituted all-day kindergarten in 2014. In addition to the new play-based learning model that was implemented, elementary school teachers report an inability to effectively follow the new program of allowing children to move around the classroom freely and participate in low-key "playful" learning activities. This new administrative attitude to learning was expected to result in meaningful childhood development by reducing the time young children spend chained to a desk. However, due to the vastly overcrowded classrooms, kindergarten teachers are struggling to adhere to this new learning model which has great potential. With an inflated child-to-teacher ratio, public school teachers are worried that full-day kindergarten is de-evolving into an unmanageable and chaotic classroom experience. Heavy criticism is also coming from Ontario taxpayers because the shift to all-day kindergarten was a costly expenditure and continues to be a big provincial budget item.

I have said this before, but this is why one of the greatest advantages to enrolling your child in a private school is their small class sizes. The small student-to-teacher ratio prevents your child from having an overwhelming school experience. Instead they benefit from meaningful teacher interaction and a stress-free classroom with more available learning resources they do not have to compete with twenty other students for.

Source:

Caroline Alphonso, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/ontario-teachers-voice-concerns-about-overcrowding-in-full-day-kindergarten-classrooms/article17161517/

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/kindergarten/

What is the "whole child" philosophy, and why do so many educators support it, including those at St. Jude's Academy? It is a fairly recent education model adapted from Lynn Stoddard's book: Educating for Human Greatness. Take a moment to consider that the average person spends approximately 15% of their entire life in school, from junior kindergarten to grade 12. The "whole child" philosophy recognizes the immense role schooling possesses during childhood, and that great responsibility requires more attention to a child's growth and development than just a fixation with their measurable qualities and skills, i.e. standardized test scores and knowledge retention. It's about understanding the value of encouraging qualities that will serve students as they grow into adulthood and become civic-minded world citizens, part of a global network that has been set in front of us due to twenty-first century globalization and the Digital Age.

It is not prudent to ignore the inseparable social role schools occupy in addition to their educational role as centers of learning. Through the "whole child" approach, participating schools utilize holistic teaching models to augment and support children's "multiple intelligences" by tailoring lessons and instruction to focus on:

- cognitive-intellectual activity

- creative-intuitive activity (the arts)

- structured physical movement and unstructured (self-directed play)

- community involvement

Parents and university admission committees often cite "well-roundedness" as an ideal character attribute for students; yet how can a child become a well-rounded individual if they do not receive a well-rounded education? This is what the "whole child" philosophy seeks to rectify. When Lynn Stoddard surveyed parents for his book, he discovered that almost all parents believe that an education should provide character development for their children, not just an education strictly by the books. In today's school climate, the deciding factor for making the switch to private school is often cited by parents as the necessity for finding a school that provides equal support to developing a child's emotional and social needs in addition to their academic requirements.

Reference:http://www.educatethewholechild.org/what-is-it/

In order to prevent students from becoming passive learners and instead develop important life skills such as collaboration, critical thinking, and problem solving, IB World schools encourage inquiry-based learning in the classroom. This is when classroom learning and discussions are driven by the students themselves, whose questions are utilized by the teacher and guided to ensure all the material is being covered, but in a way that allows students to exercise their agency, become confident speakers in front of their peers, and be curious about their education!

Research has demonstrated that when students participate in meaningful classroom discussions and actively participate in their own quest for knowledge, they make deeper connections to concepts which results in long-term academic and professional benefits. With inquiry-based learning, when students ask questions educators are not simply giving them the answers like a lightning round Q&A session. Teachers work with students to discover the rights answers together. Students are not simply being taught the answers, they are being provided with the process to discover solutions, which they will learn to adapt and apply to other situations. This enables students to feel proud about their progress, and motivates them to participate in class and become more interested in the material being covered.

To learn about the concept-based learning model we employ at St. Jude's Academy, please check out Ms. Chin's post!

I hope you all have a wonderful day!

References:

http://www.edutopia.org/practice/wildwood-inquiry-based-learning-developing-student-driven-questions

http://blogs.ibo.org/blog/2016/02/04/when-the-student-becomes-the-teacher/

In a traditional Ontario public school, students are told that only their course averages from grades 11 and 12 count towards their university admission profile. While this is true, it leads to the creation of the mentality among students that for grades 9 and 10, you do not have to really worry about your grades, because what Canadian university will ever see them? I would argue that this is a dangerous mindset for students to adopt in their early high school years. There is a significant jump in the level of difficulty for coursework and lesson material between grades 10 and 11, from the junior grades to the senior. This jump already exists independently, but it becomes much more difficult for students to overcome when they have no practice seriously applying themselves in the previous years of high school. Grade 11 then becomes a stumbling block for some students and sets them back from their peers who, mostly thanks to their own good habits, are prepared for the sudden demands of senior high school.

IB World private schools in Ontario do not offer the traditional grade denomination as public schools. The Diploma Program (DP) is for students aged 16 to 18 and provides an internationally accepted qualification for entry into higher education, recognized by many universities worldwide. However, the Middle Years Program (MYP) is for children aged 11 to 16, thus covering and embracing a larger cohort of students than the traditional grades of 8, 9, 10 etc. do, which are single stand-alone entities. By belonging to an all-encompassing program, especially with the ultimate goal of graduating to the next IB Program, students are provided with the framework and support to achieve academically and stay on track towards pursuing their post-graduate dreams. Graduating to the IB Diploma Program is a great achievement within the private school journey, and motivates students to excel in their coursework during their time in the MYP. I strongly believe that this institutional organization of grades supports university-seeking students much more effectively than the status quo in our public schools.

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