Physical Education and Wellness Beyond the Gym
Each day, our Hawkwood School gym is a very busy, fun place. Throughout the school year you will see lots of traditional gym activities like basketball, badminton and low organized games. In addition to these, you will also see a variety of other things like gymnastics, skipping and on Fridays, a program that incorporates movement, music, patterns and fitness called Drum Fit. that is delivered by both Ms. McNeilly and Ms. MacDonald.
An important part of our Physical Education and Wellness program includes stretching ourselves outside the gym to “think outside the ball”. This time of year, we are very busy exploring the learning outcomes associated with our PE & W curriculum, and how they can be achieved in different ways, in different places, by doing different things.
Grade 4-6 Skiing and Snowboarding
Two days this past week, and one more next week, our grades 4-6 students are hitting the slopes of Winsport to ski and snowboard. For those students who have never tried it before, it is an opportunity to challenge themselves with a new skill set that they would not normally get in school. In some cases, tapping into some resiliency that even the students did not know they had. For others who are not new to the sport, they can expand their existing skills. This all happens under the direct coaching of the Winsport ski instructors.
Grade K-3 Inline Skating
Our friends at Alien In-Line have joined us again for another couple of weeks to work with our K-3 classes. Balance, coordination and gross motor skills are highlighted as our students acquire and improve the skating skills over the three sessions they will participate in.
Outdoor Education
While the little ones are flying around the gym on the inline skates, Ms. McNeilly is exploring different types of learning that can happen outside, even in the winter. These include shelter building, snow sculpture and snow shoeing. The recent drop in temperatures and addition of sunny days have helped greatly. Remember that old saying, however, there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.
Each of these different components of our Phys. Ed and Wellness Program explore skills and activities that are not necessarily associated with school. The intent is to convey the idea that things like fitness, movement, physical wellness have many different pathways, and most of them, along with trying and learning something new, can be a lot of fun. They can also contribute greatly to our overall mental health and wellness.
Engagements on Looping
Thank you to the 107 families that participated in our parent engagement on looping. Most of you shared that, overall, your experiences with looping were positive. They referred specifically to communication with school, knowledge of learner profiles and familiar classroom routines and structures. This was also true for the teaching and support staff engagements. While sharing some common positive experiences, the staff also indicated that there were significant challenges. Over the past few years, increased class sizes, class complexities and the introduction of multiple new provincial curriculums has made looping more challenging than it has been in the past. For these reasons, we will not be continuing our past practice of looping as we plan for the 2024-2025 school year.
This decision will change how we organize for the upcoming school year. We are confident that we will maintain the positive aspects of looping including positive, consistent communication with families, detailed knowledge of learner profiles and well established classroom routines and structures. Over the upcoming weeks, we will be developing plans as to how we will build our new homerooms for next year, and how we will transition our students, and the knowledge of how they learn, to their new teachers. Once these plans are developed, they will be shared with you later in the Spring.
Like most changes, transitions to new ways of organizing will have some hiccups. We are confident that the changes that lie ahead will benefit both our students and our staff.
Immunizations for Grade 1’s
Hawkwood School’s public health nurse will be here on Wednesday, March 6th to give our grade 1’s their upcoming immunizations. It is important to remember that parental consent is required prior to any immunizations being given to children.
Have a great week!