April Principal Message

Dear Parents/ Guardians,

"The world's favorite season is the spring. 
All things seem possible in May."
-  Edwin Way Teale

As closure comes to the winter season, Beacon Heights School will come alive in May with several celebrations of Learning. To begin, on May 4^th all students will demonstrate their level of comprehension as they write the Districts Highest Level of Achievement Test. On May 15th and May 16th grade three and six students will write their first Provincial Achievement Tests which are designed to assess their writing skills.

Beacon Heights School’s parents and community volunteers are a committed group that truly “Rock!” To show appreciation for the continued involvement of our parents, a volunteers rock celebration was hosted by school staff members on the afternoon of Thursday April 19. With the gymnasium set up in a disco theme, students performed dances to a variety of music from the 50’s to current day. Students also recited poems and sang a variety of songs. Our grade six students created and served all our volunteers root beer floats. Thank you once again to all of you that have volunteered and for allowing our students the opportunity to honor and celebrate your volunteer commitment. We would also like to thank all of our staff members and students who planned and participated in this special celebration.

Beacon Heights Academics

As previously mentioned, May marks the beginning of Provincial Achievement Testing for students in Grades three and six across the province. In Grade three, students will write exams in Math and Language Arts. In grade six, students will be assessed in Language Arts, Math, Science and Social Studies. This month, students will be writing the first part of their Language Arts exams which assess their writing skills.  These assessments are scheduled for May 16^th for grade three students and May 17^th for the grade six students. Parents wishing to support their children in performing their best can do so by ensuring that they are well rested and in attendance on the day of the assessment. Several resources including rationale for the assessments, parent guides and practice activities have been produced by Alberta Education and can be found at:  http://education.alberta.ca/parents/resources/exams.aspx .

Amazing Readers

The Amazing Canadian Readers Program was designed at the beginning of the year to motivate students to read at home on a nightly basis. Student reading days are tracked by Education Assistants in cooperation with parents. For every fifteen days of reading the students move to a new province or territory in Canada.

Currently, several of our students have surpassed 165 nights of reading at home and the majority of our students have read for more than 80 nights.

Spirit Assemblies

Thank you to staff members, students, and volunteers for your efforts in making our Positive Playgrounds Spirit assembly in April a great success. It was wonderful to see our students learn traditional playground games.  We hope that the event rekindled fond memories for our parents and community members.

Sincerely,

John Holmes, Principal