Weekly Update: March 27, 2015

Hello Robina Families,

I hope you are all having a fantastic start to your spring break. I will do a quick recap of a couple of items/events from last week and give you a quick look into our schedule for when we are all back.

Spell-a-thon:

As many of you have already heard, our Spell-a-thon was a HUGE success. Thank you to everyone who participated. We raised $9,600 for technology in our school. Fabulous job RBES students, parents and staff! After the presentation of the prizes, Mrs. Tewitz and Mrs. Forchuk gave all students and staff an ice cream treat. What a fabulous job they both did organizing this event!

Book Fair:

Thank you to all who attended and supported our Book Fair! A big THANK YOU goes out to Mrs. Becker and her volunteer crew for another fabulous event! The Book Fair is a lot of fun, but also a lot of work goes on the scenes to make that happen. As I heard many students and staff say this week, "We LOVE you Mrs. Becker" "You're the Best!" and I would completely agree. Thanks to all of this effort our students will see $3,000 in new products for our library very shortly!

Student Led Conferences:

Student Led Conferences were very well attended and many parents had the opportunity to have a peak into their child's world of learning. Thank you for taking the time to come out to this Celebration of your child's learning - I know many of them were excited that you came!

Google Conference follow-up:

Our google conference kiddos met with Mr. Maltais this week to create a presentation to be shared with all of our grade 4 students. What a great job they did! I can't wait to see them teach this after spring break!

Grade 4 anti-bullying slide shows:

I wanted to send out a big Congratulations to all the students in 4S who completed anti-bullying presentations based on their learning with the Saffron group last week. A number of these will be presented at the assemblies in the upcoming weeks. One of the most powerful videos used in one of those presentations was this one shared by Nakisha that I posted earlier on FaceBook. It captures the message beautifully.

New Website:

Our new website is up and running. THANK YOU to Mrs. Horrocks as she did the majority of the data transfer. The new site looks fabulous and now has a common look to BGRS and the other schools who have transferred over to the new platform. By June all BGRS schools will be under this new format. Until the link is updated on the BGRS website, here is the address for you to save to your favourites. http://rbes.blackgold.ca/ 

Browse around to see where everything is. Our most important link - the Calendar, has it's own tab and is still the same google calendar, so if you have already bookmarked it, that has not changed.

After Spring Break:

Tuesday, April 7th: a number of our students will be running in the Klondike Relays. Mr. Henderson posted an update of information on FB at this link: RBES FB

Tuesday - Friday, April 7-10: Alberta Dental Health Services will be in to visit the K-2 students.

Saturday, April 11: RBES Fundraiser Scrapbook Crop! Use this link to register if you are interested: http://goo.gl/forms/L6YuRQcOHG Details and information are in the poster below:

School Counil / Fundraiser Update:

NEXT MEETING: 

Wednesday, April 29: SOS Fundraiser meeting at 6:30 pm, PAC school council meeting at 7:30 - Mark your calendars and plan to attend!

***There will be a survey sent to all parents shortly to gather information for the fundraising committee. Please watch your inbox.

Enjoy a great week with your families and have a HAPPY EASTER! See you on Tuesday, April 7th when we return to classes!

Warmest Regards,

Weekly Update: March 20, 2015

Hello Robina Families,

First . . . A message from our Fundraising Committee:

Help us sell our extra cookie dough and juice!

**Since we had to purchase in case quantities, we have a few items left.

Chocolate Chip

Oatmeal Raisin

Rainbow Candy

Dark & White Chocolate Chunk

Apple/Raspberry juice

The cookie dough is $18 each and the juice is $14. Please email Claire Webb at clairewebb40@gmail.com to place your order. First come, first served!

The Council of School Councils meeting was held on Thursday, March 19th at Dansereau Meadows School with a presentation from International Speaker, Simon Breakspear. His big take-away message for parents:

"As educators, we are preparing your children for their future, not ours!" He talked about the direction of education around the world, gave some excellent food for thought and asked us all to reflect. He was a very innovative, energetic and refreshing speaker.

The Grade 4s had an excellent speaker from the Saffron organization on Friday, March 20 - sponsored by Devon FCSS - on bullying. We hosted the grade 4 students from Holy Spirit. The picture below gives a clear definition on what bullying is. This sparked some great discussion and the grade 4s will be doing a follow up project on bullying over the next couple of weeks.

Congratulations to the following students who were our Student of the Week winners at this assembly. What a fun beachy day for these students. Stay Tuned next week for Pizza with the Principal draw!

As you are already aware, this coming week is a short one as Friday, March 27th is a PD day and there is NO SCHOOL for students. This is also the start of Spring Break for students and school is back in session on Tuesday, April 7th.

Wednesday, March 25 is our Student Led Conferences. All parents are welcome to drop in anytime between 3:30 - 7:00. This is an important chance for your child to share what he/she knows, so please plan to attend.

Students, parents and staff will have a chance to visit the book fair on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (March 23-25) during the day. We will also be open until 7:00 pm on the 24th as well as 8:00 pm on the 25th during the Student Led Conferences for your shopping convenience! Thank you for supporting Reading and our Book Fair.

REMINDER: SPELL-A-THON money is due on Monday, March 23. If you forget, please bring it in as soon as possible.

The classroom blogs are filled with amazing pictures from all the events of last week. Be sure to visit, your child's blog on a weekly basis to see all that is happening in their classroom.

To end the Weekly Update, I would like to share some more beach day pictures from Friday.

Have a fantastic week,

Weekly Update: March 13, 2015

Hello Robina Baker Families,

I hope you are all having an opportunity to enjoy the beautiful sunshine these last few days! I know it has certainly changed the energy level and excitement of the students!

POWER ANNOUNCER

Thank you to everyone that sent in updated phone and email information. Power Announcer went live on Tuesday for absence phone calls. You will receive a Voice Message and a text if you have both a land line and a cell phone number as a reminder if you haven't already called in to report your child's absence. Sending our other communication digitally will now also improve and be easier. Please remember to report any changes in contact information as soon as you can. We had a situation last week, where all 4 phone numbers for one family had changed. If there is an emergency, we need your most current information. The good news is we are happy to report that we have at least one email address for each family in our school, which allows any quick communications to be sent out easily. Thank you for your help with this.

FRIDAY ASSEMBLY

Thank you to 2S and 2MT who did a fabulous presentation on bucket filling. You can see the video of the presentation at this link on our FB page: 2S, 2MT Bucket Filling video

Goes out to this week's Student of the Week Kiddos!!!

THINGS TO KNOW FOR THE COMING WEEK:

Monday, March 16: Grade 1s have dental presentations
Tuesday, March 17: Grade 4s are going skiing, St. Patrick's Day - wear Green or fear the pinch of a Leprechaun
Wednesday, March 18: Yoga, School Council Meeting at 7:00 pm with the SOS (Fundraising Committee) to follow right after
Thursday, March 19: Spell-a-thon Test!
Friday, March 20: Beach Vacation Day, Hot lunch orders are due and a special presentation for grade 4 students from SAFFRON

**There are more details on the Calendar; use this link:  http://www.rbes.ca/calendar.html

STUDENT LED CONFERENCES

Conferences are being held on Wednesday, March 25 from 3:30 - 7:00 pm. There is no formal schedule; we will be using a drop in format. The students have been excitedly getting ready to show off what they have been learning! Expect to spend approximately 20 minutes with your child on this evening. Please understand, because of the level of traffic on this night, there will be no individual interview times with teachers. If would like to speak with your child's teacher individually, please phone or email them and they can arrange a time with you on another day. Many parents utilize these individual meetings regularly and our hope is that if there is a concern or you require a meeting that you let us know as the need arises. We hope to see all of our families out on this evening!

BOOK FAIR

Just a reminder to all that our spring book fair is being held the same week as the student led conferences: March 23-25. Specific hours for this event will be sent out shortly. We hope to see you there!

Please note: I will be away at an admin conference from Monday, March 16 - 18. If you have any questions or concerns, please direct them to Mr. Henderson.

Enjoy the beautiful weekend,

Weekly Update: March 6, 2015

Hello everyone! Wowsers! What a super busy week. In addition to all of regular classroom work, the school was buzzing with events this week. The following are a few highlights. **Warning: Long post with lots of pictures . . . items to note for this week are at the bottom of the post, so be sure to scroll all the way down.

We started the week with some exciting news that I have been waiting to share. Wilhauk Beef Jerky (Alberta Meat Packers) donated $1,000 for a TV screen and picture frames for our front foyer. As noted awhile ago, the TV will host our announcements, news items and picture slideshows of events around the school. The special snap in picture frames will be for displaying student art work by class on a rotational basis. A BIG THANK YOU goes out to Trent Wilhauk for making that donation!

Our grade 4s finally got to go skiing on Monday. Check out Mr. Henderson's blog for some great photos . . . http://www.rbespe.blogspot.ca/ .

On Tuesday we had these fabulous guests in for pizza with the principal. Lots of great conversation.

On Wednesday, we had our SPELL-A-THON kickoff assembly. Mrs. Tewitz and Mrs. Forchuk, as organizers of the event, shared how the spell-a-thon will work and showed and shared all of the prizes that can be won. The test will be on March 19th. There is still lots of time to practice and get your sponsors! Money will be due on Monday, March 23.

An extra special thank you goes out to Dairy Queen for donating an ice cream party to the winning class, Tim Horton's for donating a free donut, cookie or muffin to each student who gets 100% plus five $5.00 gift cards, Florida Pizza for donating 2 large pizzas, Subway for donating seven $10.00 gift cards and Home Hardware for donating outside play items.

Thank you ladies for getting this organized! It is a huge undertaking and is very much appreciated. The above photo shows all the prizes and all the local businesses and how they are supporting this event.

On Thursday was our Family Dance and Cake Walk. Oh what fun was had by all. Thank you to all the volunteers who worked hard to make this event happen. It was a wonderful community event and a great fundraiser for both the grade 4 Drumheller trip and our school. Enjoy the following pictures!

Google Summit:

Three of our Grade 4 students got the chance of a lifetime to attend a student Google Summit conference on their day off. We all learned so much and can't wait to teach others what we have learned. Thanks for a great day Kiara, Riley and James!

And last but certainly not least was our RBES Grade 4 girls floor hockey tournament. We hosted other schools and had two teams of our own. Congratulations to the gold team who won the Bronze Medal and the Blue team who won the Gold Medal. Both teams played their hearts out and there were a few very close exciting games. Thank you again to all the volunteers that came out to help to make events like this possible. A couple of extra special thank yous to: Mr. G for reffing - nice to see you back; Mr. Henderson and Mr. Beck for coaching the girls and Mr. Henderson for organizing the tournament;  as well as all the staff who baked and donated goods for the concession. Last but not least I'd like to thank Mrs. Horrocks, her daughter and my 3 children. They put in tremendously long hours in concession prep on Friday and worked all day Saturday. We couldn't have done it without your help!

What to know for this week:

• Klondike Relay and Grade 3/4 Boys Floor Hockey practices start.
• Short assembly on Friday: Student of the Week and one class presentation.
• Bantam B Hockey Game on Friday for a few classes.
• Magical Munsch School Tour on Friday at 1:30. All parents are welcome to attend.

PRE-K and KINDERGARTEN for 2015-16

More information will be coming out soon regarding PK and K meetings for next year. Registration forms are available in the office. PK is $800 for the year and K is $110. Black Gold will be doing online fee payment this year with the option to pay $80 per month for PK. A request for fees will be sent out in April. Registration preference spots will be given to those whose fees are paid. This is a new policy across the district. In order to determine accurate class numbers and planning for next year, please get your registrations in as soon as possible. If you have any questions, please call the office or send me an email.

POWER ANNOUNCER

We have a new addition to the Power School portal. It is called Power Announcer. Attendance phone calls will be sent out immediately by the system via automated voice messaging and text messaging.

Next week we will be accessing the email feature and all office emails will be sent out through Power Announcer. This system also allows us to send out emergency info, bus cancellations etc to all parents in less than a couple of minutes to your phone, SMS and email

**It is very important to keep your information updated in the office. If you have phone number changes or email address changes, please let the office know asap. Thank you for helping to keep our communication system accurate.

More information items to follow very shortly by email.

Have a great week,