Terry Fox

St. Gemma is once again going to participate in the Terry Fox run/walk. St. Gemma has raised an impressive total of $6,087.86 over 6 years. Last year the school raised $630.70. Our goal for this school year is going to be $800! This year we are offering online donation options. Please see the link below for the Terry Fox school fundraising page.

St. Gemma will also have 3 spirit days in the month of September to raise money for the Terry Fox Foundation. Students are invited to use cash online to make a donation. See Spirit Day link below. If we reach our goal of $800 Mr. Cinanni has happily agreed to get whip creamed with a cherry on top! There will also be fun classroom challenges.

Terry Fox School fundraising page:(click)

Spirit days link::(click)

Our spirit days will be on the following dates:

• Thursday September 13th : Crazy Hair Day

• Thursday September 20th:  Spiffy Hat Day
• Thursday September 27th: Wacky sock day (event day)

The Terry Fox event for this year is on Thursday September 27th.  The rain date will be on Friday September 28th. Our plan for the event day is to do the walk/run together as a whole school community. Parents are welcome to join us. The event will run from 2:30-3:30 pm.

Let’s keep Terry’s dream alive!

Who will you be running for?

Calme, alerte et prêt à apprendre

Now that we have gotten to know each other a bit we are going to work on getting to know ourselves. We will be talking about several deep questions such as;

How do I learn best?
What stresses me out and how do I deal with that stress?
How do I get my mind and body ready to learn best?


Essentially, we will be talking about self-regulation. According to Dr. Shanker (an expert in this field) Self-Regulation refers to how people manage energy expenditure, recovery, and restoration in order to enhance growth. Self-regulation skills have been shown to be one of the factors that best predict academic as well as overall success in life. Thus, this week we will really focus on defining self-regulation as a class but also trying to know ourselves and what strategies we need to work on to better be able to self-regulate and be calm, alert and ready to learn!

Want to know more check out The Mehrit center as well as Conscious Discipline.

La rentrée

I love the smell of freshly sharpened pencils in the morning! Whether you love or hate back to school it's here!

So happy to get to meet all my new grade 4 immersion students this week. Of course, we are working on routines and getting to know each other so we can get the year off to a smooth start.

Here is our September newsletter but it should also have gone home with your student.
Don't forget out meet the teacher night on

Wrapping up "les civilisations anciennes"

We've spent a lot of time making catapults and building castles so we've moved on to inventions! As a final task, students are responsible for explaining an important invention from the medieval ages or ancient Egypt.



They should be able to explain:
how it was invented
what was it's purpose
what materials was it made of
who used it
what was its link to daily life
how was it influenced by the environment
what is it's legacy (what is its link to present-day life or inventions)

We have been working on presenting our learning in creative ways so I'm looking forward to something other than Google slides!

Some groups have chosen to talk about:
- medieval weaponry and knights
- castles and siege weaponry
- pyramid construction
- egyptian agricultural practices/tools

Volunteers needed

On June 7th we will be doing some hands-on learning with Scientist in the School. We are always in need of parent volunteers to help run some of the centres during these workshops. If you would be willing to volunteer that morning (9:15-11:45) Please send me an email or write a note in your child's agenda.

civlisations anciennes et créativité

Students have received their final evaluation of their work during out Inuit study unit. They can find it in their Social Studies folder under the title "critères de succès - civilisations anciennes". This week I will be conferencing with the students to go over their strengths and next steps as we continue on in our ancient civilisations unit.

The class decided last Thursday that they wanted to look at the medieval period as well as ancient Egypt. Students will choose one or the other to study. Throughout our unit we will be working on creativity! We noticed that we were being very creative with how we were documenting and presenting our learning last time (nothing but Google slides as far as the eye can see) So this time we will try new tools and think of innovative ways to document our learning journey. Students will also have the opportunity to collaborate with new people as we will often be joining forces with the grade 4s in Mme Geadah's class.

les Inuits

We have begun to study the first civilization in our ancient civilizations Social Studies units...les inuits!

We began by talking about how societies interact with the environment in order to meet our most basic needs but also our societal needs as a collective. We will use this chart (which is also in the students Social Studies Google drive folder) to guide our learning throughout the whole unit. This is great vocabulary to review at home. Instead of a padlet during this unit we have been using Hapara Workspace. Workspace is software that helps teachers use Google apps more efficiently with a classroom. The students access the workspace by clicking on the icon in the student portal. It has our learning goals as well as links to valuable resources (which could also be explored at home).

Students have learned a great deal about the Inuit already. Some have looked at their art, some are looking at their hunting tools and practices others are looking at how they build their igloos. All in all, we are very interested and engaged! Students proudly showed me today that they had borrowed books from the library on the Inuit. One student told me he had a relative who is a throat singer who has sung with Susan Aglukark in the past. One student told me he was going to call one of his relatives who is indigenous to ask him some questions. I love that the students are reaching out and making learning partnerships outside of the classroom.