The Pause That Refreshes!

A good friend of mine once said that "it doesn't seem to matter when Spring Break is, it comes at just the right time".  That was certainly true this year.  Prior to the break, our staff had been putting in many extra hours meeting with parents and preparing report cards.  Spring Break is also an important transition point in our school year, it signifies the start of the final term of the year and all of the excitement that brings for year-end activities and grade six transition to middle school.  Hopefully the weather will start to cooperate with us and make it feel a little more like spring, but in the interim staff have already begun working hard with students to complete this school year and prepare for the next.  At David Cameron, we are excited about the many great opportunities both fun and academic that are coming up over the next few months.  We look forward to working with parents and students to make this a great ending to a great year.

Report Cards

Our second term report card will be coming home on Thursday, March 12.  By then, our teaching staff will have been in contact with most families to discuss student progress over this term, through parent-teacher interviews.  As always at this time I like to remind families that report cards represent only a snapshot of student performance.  Each report card "is a picture" of how students have done to this point in the school year (strengths, areas for development, and ways to support their learning).  Letter grades for intermediate students are a symbolic representation of the work students have done in relation to the criteria and prescribed learning outcomes for the term.  Letter grades do not include student behaviour or attitude/effort as a component of the mark.  These areas are reported separately by the teacher.  Primary students are generally given a statement of achievement in relation to the expectations for a child at this point in the year (eg fully meeting expectations).

Please make sure to discuss your child's report card with them so that they are able to see what they are doing well and what they could work on.  Our students are the ones that need to be able to use this information in order to improve on their work.  More focus should be placed on the descriptive information than on the letter grades as you talk with your child(ren).