“Through the spirit of harmony and generosity, our aim at Clifton School is to foster a caring, safe, and inclusive learning environment where the best in each child is expected and nurtured.”

CLIFTON SCHOOL NEWSLETTER “Where The Eagles Soar”

December 2020

1070 Clifton Street Ph. 783-7792 Nancy MacTavish, Principal Winnipeg, MB. R3E 2T7 Website: winnipegsd.ca/schools/Clifton (nmactavish@wsd1.org)

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December is here and here comes the snow! November was a great learning time. The highlights included our students writing persuasive, informational and narrative pieces, reading fiction and non-fiction, learning mathematical concepts, Dreambox, Raz kids and Epic books. Teachers have been busy teaching, assessing and writing report cards. This year, due to the restrictions, we were unable to host a book fair, how-ever we are still having Parent/Teacher interviews which will be ei-ther virtual or a phone conference. Clifton Head Clerk, Vanessa Balitaan has emailed all of you to let you know how to go on-line to schedule your interview time(s). This is a new way of scheduling your interview times. You will be able to go on line and choose your own date and time spot. If you need any support in scheduling, please contact the office.

Our 2020 Winter Concert this year is called:

Nutty Holiday It will be on sent to you via school messenger on Thursday, December 17th. This will be a video taped per-formance of your child. Ms. Hanton, our music teacher extraordinaire, has been hard at work preparing your chil-dren for an epic performance. On Behalf of the Clifton Staff, I would like to wish you and your family the very best of the upcoming festive sea-son. May the winter break allow you to have a well-deserved, restful time with friends and family as we look for-ward to a peaceful and productive year in 2021. Have a safe and Happy Holiday.

Yours in Education, Nancy MacTavish Principal

COMMUNICATION Please be sure to provide the office a valid email address for all parents/guardians. Clifton School sends out many notices/reminders to parents/guardians using the School Messenger program. Please also ensure to inform that school immediately of any changes in phone numbers as they occur throughout the school year. STUDENT SAFETY We are very concerned about traffic safety in front of the school. Please respect the traffic signs on Clifton Street and pick up your children in the safest way. The speed limit on Clifton Street is 30 km/hour between the hours of 7:00 AM and 5:30 PM from September to June. Please remember • Walk your children across the

street. • Children are to exit vehicles on

the same side of the school • Do not make U-turns. This is

dangerous. Let’s all work together to ensure the safety of our Clifton Kids.

CLIFTON SCHOOL CALLBACK ABSENCE REPORTING Just a reminder that attendance is taken daily at 9:00 AM and 1:00 PM for all students. If your child will be late or absent, please be sure to call the Safe Arrival system at 1-855-278-4513 or visit http://go.schoolmessenger.ca. Please do not call the school, or contact your child’s teacher. All absences must be reported using one of these methods. Remember to report your child’s absence before 9:00 am to ensure you do not receive a call. Safe Arrival is available 24 hours a day, and can also be used to report future absences. SCHOOL PHOTOS We would like to announce that Clifton School will no longer be working with Lifetouch Photos. We have decided to have Stafford Studios do our school photos starting Spring 2021 Details to follow!

Our traditional Cash for Christmas raffle is underway. Our sales are going well given the pandemic. Please remember all tickets sold and unsold along with the money is due back at the school no later than December 3rd. We thank you for your continued support.

Just a reminder that the Cash for Christmas draw will be held live on our Facebook page December 9 at 6pm. Our Facebook page is:

Clifton School Parent Council

We held our monthly PAC meeting last night and asked Parents to join us virtually to hold a vote. We voted to have Stafford Photo to come do our Spring Photo session. They offer us the opportunity to have our photos taken outside the school beside our Peace tree. They have more affordable picture packages and will place each child’s photo on a back drop to have a safe class photo. We can still order online or payment sent to the school. The best part of having them do our photos is they will give us a $500 donation to the school.

If you have any fundraising ideas, questions or concerns we would love to hear from you. We can be reached at pac.cliftonschool@gmail.com .

Have a safe Holiday Season !

Clifton School PAC

SafeArrival is an absence management system that improves student safety and makes it easy for you to let the school know about your child’s absence.

You are asked to report your child’s absence in advance whenever possible using one of these convenient methods:

Parents/Guardians are reminded NOT to call the school or inform the teacher of the absence, it must be reported in Safe Arrival.

What is SafeArrival? SchoolMessenger app (free) 1. Provide your email address to the school. 2. Get the app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store (or from the links at https://go.schoolmessenger.ca). 3. Tap Sign Up to create your account. 4. Select Attendance from the menu, and then select Report an Absence. Web and Mobile Web: go.schoolmessenger.com 1. Provide your email address to the school. 2. Go to the website. 3. Click Sign Up to create your account. 4. Select Attendance from the menu, then select Report an Absence Interactive Toll-free Phone: 1-855-278-4513 1. Call the toll-free, interactive telephone system. 2. Follow the instructions to report an absence. Call complete when confirmation number given. Absences can be reported in advance: : 24 hours/day : 7 days a week : For any school day in the school term : Up to the cut-off time on the day of the absence. Whenever an absence is reported or updated, you will receive a confirmation notice by email and/or text message (assuming you have provided your contact information to the school). If you don’t report your child’s absence in advance, the automated notification system will try to contact you (using the communication preferences if you have set them up in the SchoolMessenger app). This may include push notifications to the app, email, SMS text message, phone calls. You will be asked to provide the reason for your child’s absence immediately. You may do so using the phone line, website or mobile app. If an absence is not explained within approximately 20 minutes of the time that the school starts the notification process, school staff will follow-up to make sure that your child is safe. If you try to explain an absence using SafeArrival, but are then told that it is past the cut-off time, please contact the school directly. If you don’t want to receive notifications when your child is absent, be sure to report your child’s absence in advance. If you do receive notifications of your child’s absence, be sure to provide the reason as quickly as possible, using one of the 3 methods listed above or during the phone call notification itself. If you have lost your PIN # or require assistance setting up your account, please stop by the office and see Mrs. Bartlett.

Clifton School Reminder

Remember to dress for the weather!

It’s important to know and remember that phys. ed classes will be outdoors.

Here is a checklist of what to bring or wear to school:

� Ski pants � Warm jacket � Hat/Toque � Gloves/Mittens � Winter boots

NURSERY/KINDERGARTEN

W hat a busy place Room 10 has been! The Nursery/Kindergarten students have been learning many things this past month. We began our Science unit on Colour and had so much fun learning about all the colours! The children enjoyed wearing their

clothes to match the colour of the day and creating many pieces of art and crafts relating to colour. While we were busy learning about and exploring with colour, the students had many opportu-nities through the play centres to learn math concepts such as counting, identifying and work-ing with 2D shapes and creating many fun and interesting patterns with a variety of materials. In December, we will be taking a “virtual” field trip with the Winnipeg Art Gallery. The stu-dents will be learning about Inuit Printmaking and will be making a Narwhal print. To tie into our virtual field trip, we will also be learning about Animals that live in the North. It was wonderful to talk with all the parents, virtually or by phone, for the Parent/Teacher Conferences and to share in your child’s successes in Nursery and Kindergarten.

Keep Warm!

Mrs. Lagadi & Mrs. Schultz

Nursery/Kindergarten A.M. & P.M.

GRADE 1/2 (RM 9)

I t is hard to believe that it is already December!! Our classroom has been working hard at learning about how to our technology in the classroom including logging into differ-

ent platforms and using our Dreambox and Raz-kids tools as well as Seesaw. In math, we continue to work on a variety of number tasks that focus on representing numbers, and addi-tion. We also continue to work on our individual math program through Dreambox. Students are encouraged to use the Dreambox and Raz-kids platform at home for additional practice. In Social Studies we have begun learning about urban, rural and suburban communities, and linked it with Art. Some of our Art has been inspired by author and illustrator Barbara Reid. Students have been producing some beautiful art pieces.

For those who celebrate, we would like to send warm wishes for a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

Mrs. Taylor

GRADE 1-2 (ROOM 7) GRADE 3/4 (RM 2)

GRADE 4/5

I t’s hard to believe that December is already here. I look forward to dis-

cussing your child’s growth and learning goals with you during our parent teacher conferences this month. Students have been working hard and have adapted well to the changes we have had at school. In Language Arts students have been working on their ‘How-to-writing’ where they get to teach someone how to do something they enjoy. Students worked hard on adding details to their steps so that the reader would successfully be able to complete their task. In Math, students have been practicing different ways to solve addition and subtraction problems. In Theme, we have been learning all about magnets. I encourage all students to use our Raz-Kids program each night to read for 20 minutes. This is a great way for students to practice their reading goals or for them to read aloud with you so you can hear their reading. I wish you all a peace-ful and relaxing winter break.

Ms. Kuzyk

I have to give a big congratulations to our class for doing a great job staying safe

and social distancing at school. Our students have been sanitizing and hand washing regular-ly, distancing from others, and keeping our hands in our own space.

This month we have been doing lots of writing. In late October we started writing in our jour-nals about a wide range of topics and this has continued into November. Some topics include: “What I like to do at home”, “The people in my family”, “What would dogs say if they could talk”, “My book review”, and many more!

In math, we have been working on our numbers through many different activities. The stu-dents have been practicing their skip counting with the help of various movement videos, rep-resenting a number in different ways with Number of the Day, creating counting collec-tions, and working through their Numbers Ga-lore book.

The students continue to have opportunities to work in Seesaw. Some days we work on one spe-cific lesson and, occasionally, the students re-ceive “Seesaw Exploration Time” where they can do many short math or writing activities.

If you have any questions I would love to hear from you! You can contact me through email at the following address: slangille@wsd1.org

Ms. Stacy Langille

I t is hard to believe we are in December already! The students have blown me away with their technology skills while using the Chromebooks and the Google Classroom.

They are becoming very independent and have even taught me a few things. In November, we spent a lot of time learning about weather and the different types of clouds that form. Each student researched different types of severe weather and showed their learning using Google Slides. In math, we started our unit on multiplication and have been learning many different strategies to solve math problems. In Language Arts we will be doing a lot of crea-tive writing and focus on adding descriptive details to our writing.

Please contact me if you have any questions or concerns.

Mrs. Reis

GRADE 5/6 (ROOM 38)

I t is hard to believe but we are now into December in Room 6 and Room 38. The stu-dents have done a wonderful job of adapting to the ever-changing learning environment this year. In Social Studies we continue to learn about the history of World War II and the events that shaped the world after. In Science the students will be using the

design process to create an electrical series circuit. Problem solving featuring fractions and decimals will continue to be a central focus in Math. In Language Arts the students will be focusing on how to read and write informational text.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me @ adigeronimo@wsd1.org.

Mr. Di Geronimo

ILC (Room 32)

W ow! What a month! Students in Room 32 have been so busy learning all of the online platforms that we use at school and that they have access to from home as well. Students have learned how to:

- log on to a chromebook at school using their username and password. - sign in to the Google Classroom and look for messages and assignments. - click on the Google Meeting link to meet with me each day. - sign in to Razkids for reading and Dreambox for math. - click on Google Docs to write a story. - use the tool bar on Read and Write for Google: this includes many features that help students with writing such as word prediction, talk-to-text (students talk and the words are written for them), and text-to-talk (students highlight written text and the program reads to them). We continue to use Seesaw in our classroom as a digital portfolio where we can share photos of student work or activities that occur in the classroom. We have not been using seesaw for new assignments. New assign-ments are posted only on Google Classroom. In addition to all of our online learning resources, students have also been reading and learning about writing How-to, Personal Narrative and Persuasive Writing. We continue to learn about Canadian Geography in Social Studies and Weather in Science. I am so proud of the hard work of all of our Room 32 students!! - Mrs. Hower

PHYS. ED

M ittens, scarf, boots, ski pants and toque. Those are the essential items that we need to stay warm when we’re outside in the winter.

As the weather gets colder, Physical Educa-tion classes will still take place outdoors. Please make sure your child is dressed warm-ly, so they can be active and have fun!

We will be exploring different winter play options like sledding, building with snow and other small games.

Mr. Sharp

A s I write this, the students and I are starting the preparations for our virtual Winter Concert. We have been reading and watching short presenta-tions on ballet and The Nutcracker in honour of

the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's annual tradition. While their performances have been cancelled this year, Clifton School is preparing for our whacky rendition of the classic story about a little girl who travels to a magical land of sweets and candies. We will release the video to parents on Thursday, December 17. We hoping that you can take some time as a family that evening to get cozy and watch our pre-recorded performances. We will be using boomwhackers, non-pitched percussion, handbells, and anything else that makes a joyful noise to illustrate the story.

Ms.Hanton

MUSIC

Mon Tue Wed Thu Fr i

1 Day 2

Report Cards

Go Home

2 Day 3

Deadline for raffle books and money

3 Day 4

Parent/Teacher Interviews

PM

4 Day 5

Parent/Teacher Interviews AM

No School

7 Day 6 Non-Instructional

Day

No School

8 Day 1

9 Day 2

10 Day 3

11 Day 4

14 Day 5

15 Day 6 16 Day 1

17 Day 2

18 Day 3

Last day before Winter Break

21

Winter Break

22

Winter Break

23

Winter Break

24

Winter Break

25

Winter Break

28

Winter Break

29

Winter Break

30

Winter Break

31

Winter Break

December 2020

Mon Tue Wed Thu Fr i

1

Winter Break Ends

4 Day 4

School reopens

5 Day 5

Caught you draw

starts

6 Day 6 7 Day 1 8 Day 2

11 Day 3 12 Day 4

13 Day 5 14 Day 6 15 Day 1

18 Day 2 19 Day 3

20 Day 4

21 Day 5

22 Day 6

25 Day 1 26 Day 2 27 Day 3

PAC Meeting

5:00 pm

28 Day 4

29 Day 5

January 2021

HEARING SCREENING