mrbondi

April 4th 6:30 – 8:30 pm Parent of kids in grades 4-7? Don’t miss this presentation. The presenter will blow you away

mrbondi — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:12:36 +0000

Hopefully the title will have gotten your attention and the invitation is sincere both as a school principal but also and more importantly as a parent of 2 children ages 10 and 13. Yesterday morning Mr. Jesse Miller, an expert in social media, came and spoke to our grade 6 and 7 students and their teachers, providing us with the good, the bad and the ugly about social media (Facebook, twitter, etc…). Even before the presentation began, he provided me the names of several children whose facebook accounts were of concern to him as a media savy professional and parent. Of course my first reaction was ” How did you get this information without a password?” Jesse just smiled and proceeded to show me content that as a parent made me shudder. The content brought a lump to my throat.

Jesse’s presentation, albeit directed towards the children had many implications for parents and our lack of understanding of the world of social media. He was able to demonstrate in real time, almost every facebook page that our children had posted on line. This informaton included content (which he blocked out), photos of the students and additional personal information. This was all in the public domain and there was no magic or anything illegal in obtaining this content.

One question Jesse asked the students was how old they were and proceeded to add one more one word question ” Facebook?” The children immediately knew that this meant Jesse was asking their ‘fake’ facebook age which they knew by the terms of use agreement had to be 13 or older. Very few of our students are 13 yet well over 70% of students have a facebook account. The children were shown every facebook site that was connected to Yennadon. They were shown every photo he was able to obtain in a short period of time. Needless to say, there was some nervous faces in the crowd. There were some nervous looks and the occasional embarrasing smile.

Jesse Millar’s message to the children was simple yet complicated for a young pre-teen or early-teen child to comprehend. His message was that everything you do on any social media is owned by the company that produces the media. The information is public even if you have deleted a post or site and it is on the web forever, even after death.

Jesse Millar’s presentation blew me away. This is information that we as parents and for myself as an educator need to be more aware of. I know we are busy in the evenings…..we all are. This is my invitation to you. Please come.

Parents of Grade 4 – 7: bring your child along and learn together (no siblings please)

When: Wednesday April 4th, 2012 What time: 6:30 – 8:30pm Where: School gym

RSVP to Yennadon school by Friday March 30th with numbers attending (so we know how many chairs to set)

Yennadon’s Library – The Hub of Our School

mrbondi — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:48:02 +0000

I have written a lot about the various happenings that make Yennadon a great place to be. Yet I have neglected to write about one of the hubs of the school. The school library. We are fortunate that the designers of our school, likely with the unput from our librarian, placed our library at the forefront and at the centre of our building.

Having a great location may be great for real estate, but as far as a school library is concerned, its what you do with it that really counts. In this regard, our library, its facilities and our teacher -librarian, Mrs. MacQuarrie offer fabulous services to almost 600 students. Did you notice I used the term teacher-librarian? By no accident our librarian is first and foremost a teacher. Curriculum is what she does best and uses the library as a service to support teachers in our school with the resouces they need to bring the classroom’s curriculum to life. She fosters a love for reading by endlessly trolling for the latest and most up-to-date literature in the hopes that children will be inspired to become life-long readers and by sponsoring our school’s Bookfest Book Club, Mrs. MacQuarrie brings together children from all intermediate classes to discuss some fabulous authors. Our library is open daily for students to return and sign out another book and when she is not available, Mrs. MacQuarrie (Yes it is Mr. MacQuarrie’s wife but we wont hold that against her) has an army of parent and student volunteers trained to help students find what they need. With limited funds, Mrs. MacQuarrie, raises thousands of dollars through a series of Scholastic Book Fairs whose funds are used to supplement levelled guided reading books and keeping library collections up to date.

Gone are the days of our youth where the library was manned (or womaned) by some old fossil whom heaven forbid, would permit even the faintest of whisper. The library was a place to be avoided. Books were never to be moved or removed from shelves. Yennadon’s library, thanks to Mrs. MacQuarrie’s competence and dedication have made our library a very dynamic hub of our school. Enjoy the photos!

ps. I forgot to mention that she manages to do all this in just three days each week!

Keng Hei Fat Choi – Grade 1′s Celebrate!

mrbondi — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:08:41 +0000

Happy Chinese New Year (Monday Jan 23rd). ”Chinese New Year is a festival marked in Vancouver and other asian rich cultures with much fanfare and celebration; T&T market in Coquitlam Center was buzzing with excitement and anticipation! In our school, aside from a few international students, Chinese New Year passes with little notice. This year was an exception. Mrs. Dilley’s grade 1 classroom embarked on a number of ‘celebrations’ to bring in the Chinese New Year.It began with a Dragon dance in our halls on Tuesday. Children, designed and decorated a Dragon (in honour of the year of the Dragon) and proceeded to march through the halls of our school warding off all the evil spirits. This was followed by Mrs. MacDonald, our grade 3 teacher, kindly volunteered her time and energy by setting up a number of cultural stations in the classroom. Students were engaged in creating a hanging lantern, working with chinese characters, building a 3D cherry blossom tree and trying their skill at using chop sticks. While I’ve only described a few of the activities I am certian, as you can see by the photos, the children were learning much about the asian culture and traditions. Keng Hei Fat Choi!

PS. Just had a visit from Mrs. Meedin (Mrs. Fitkall’s SFU student teacher) and her grade 1′s. Imagine…..a dragon! This Chinese new year celebration is catching on!

Welcome Pole Back on Track

mrbondi — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:17:23 +0000

Almost two years ago, our school began a journey that we hope will one day culminate in a welcome pole being erected at the front of our school. Commonly called a ‘ Totem ‘ pole we have since learned that a carved pole can communicate any number of messages ranging from family lineage, the spirit world, a story etc. In Yennadon’s case our’s is classified as a ‘welcome’ pole. Our ‘Welcome’ pole has carved images that represent the artists vision of what Yennadon means to our school community.

Two years ago aboriginal carver Quentin Harris polled (parden the pun) students as to what Yennadon represented to them. As a result, our welcome pole will feature images such as the Alouette River, spawning salmon, the sun, the black bear and of course our mascot the eagle. As with any project, there was an initial flurry of activity and we made tremendous progress. As time passed and with Quentin leaving for other adventures, our pole was not progressing to the extent we had hoped for. In reality, we had almost reached a standstill and were it not for Mrs. Sandi, our aboriginal support worker, our dream of erecting a Yennadon welcome pole may have not been realized. Fortunately, Mr. Alan Miller our Principal responsible for Aboriginal Education, found a terrific carver (Xuya) and assistant (Cooks) willing to work with our children to rekindle our goal of having a Yennadon welcome pole. We are once again making progress!

Happy new year and check out our new mural!

mrbondi — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:01:22 +0000

Welcome back everyone! 2012. It wasn’t too long ago that we were talking about Y2K and the millenium. Now many of our upper intermediate students were born in this new century!

I often talk about all the wonderful learning experiences that the children are immersed in and for this post, I’ve decided to take a walk down the halls and admire all the terrific artwork that adorns our halls. The range is varied with some featuring professional artists brought into the school to provide instruction, while others are the typical ‘child-rendition’ of some classic Christmas themes.

But really I wanted to brag a bit about our new school mural that adorns the west wall of our gym. Thanks to professional artist Jason Craft and some unexpected funds from our local secondary schools as well as a significant contribution from our PAC we were able to secure a wonderful piece of school spirit. Happy New Year!

Pocket Sized Technology Can Make A Huge Difference

mrbondi — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:42:55 +0000

In recent weeks, two of our grade 3 classes (Mrs. Baydo and Mrs. MacDonald) have embarked on a journey of technological discovery that they hope will bring a new dimension to their learning experience. The iPod Touch has been introduced to the both classrooms in hopes that it will increase student engagement, offer another tool to help with the teaching of reading and reading fluency and most importantly, help improve student attitudes towards reading. Introduced last year as a district based program, a number of teachers have commented that using the ipod Touch has improved reading fluency (small scale sample and not scientific) and increased student engagement by a significant margin. Some comments from last year’s participants include:

” It has made it more fun for math. I like math bingo and time games.”

“Doing reading APPS and choosing what I want to read was great.”

“It helped my fluency in reading and timed eading. I could see my words per minute to see if I improved. IT made it way more fun and I actually wanted to do it.:

A few weeks ago our district facilitator for Literacy, Mrs. Lisa Jakeway, hosted a parent information session. In that session parents were introduced to the technology and its benefits. Our classrooms were also part of a featured article in one of our local newspapers. It is hoped that the enthusiasm generated last year at other schools will continue here at Yennadon. If Mrs. Baydo, Mrs. MacDonald and Mrs. Jakeway have anything to do with it, there is no doubt in my mind success will be acheived!

Busy or what!

mrbondi — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:02:00 +0000

A school year is always very busy, but there are times when busy takes on a whole new meaning. Aside from the important work of teaching and learning, our school has hosted a number of school wide events. Below is a sampling of some recent happenings at Yennadon:

Primary Cross- Country

While our District Cross-Country meet was cancelled this fall, this did not stop a couple of staff members from organizing our own ‘in-house’ event. Thanks to the hard work of Mrs. Sinow, Mrs. Jakeway and Ms. Wilson, every primary child ran Yennadon’s cross country circuit. All children did their best and received ribbons for top 25 finishers in each grade as well as a ribbon for participation. A terrific event!

Primary Teacher’s Learning Round

On November 8th, Mrs. Fitkall and Mrs. Dilley hosted 21 teachers from across our district. The purpose of hosting these teachers was to give visiting teachers the opportunity to watch a couple of master teachers use a variety of teaching strategies using SMART Learning processes that highly engage students and promote brain-based research strategies into our classrooms. The visiting teachers spent the morning engaged in the classroom, observing, participating and debriefing what they saw. These same teachers will be given the opportunity at a later date to co-plan and hopefully co-teach a lesson sequence with a colleague in their own classrooms. A job well done by our host teachers.

photos coming

Remembrance Day

On November 10th, Yennadon hosted it’s annual Remembrance Day Assembly. This year rendition featured presentations from Mrs. MacDonald’s and Mrs. Baldassi’s classes. The assembly also featured a short video developed by Mr. Geoff Westby, a local teacher, who brought to life some scenes and stories from local armed service personnel . His video, now posted on Youtube, brought more than a few tears to people’s eyes.

ps. The fine gentlemen in uniform is Mr. Doyle.

Dancers of Dahmelamid

This past tuesday featured our annual ArtStarts Program. This year’s presentation saw the Dancers of Dahmelamid, an aboriginal dance and theatre group from the Skeena River area. This wonderful group used dance, singing, theatre and some wonderful costumes, to present a number of aborginal stories and legends. Student were also given the opportunity to become guest dancers and ask some excellent questions of our presenters.

Pumpkins, Science, Math and Social Responsibility

mrbondi — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 22:34:57 +0000

Pumpkins, science and social responsibility. What do they have in common? Actually quite a bit! As you can well imagine the days leading up to and just following Halloween can be a exciting, exhausting and believe it or not educational. Take for example Mrs. Holland’s class. Having arranged the Great Pumpkin Challange, she organized a lesson sequence that used the excitement of pumpkin carving while managing to include some scientific observations, mathematical calculations and parent participation. Mrs. Bodman’s class took their halloween experience to Connex; a district based alternate program. The focus here was social responsibility which was achieved by blending our grade 2 students with students from the Connex program. The result was some wonderful pumpkin carving, a developing sense of community and real sense of accomplishment. Our Me to We Team sponsored by Mrs. Butterworth and Mrs. White took Halloween photos for all students. For one dollar or a donation to the food bank our We Team certainly focussed on having fun while supporting a worthwhile cause. So you see, Halloween can be a sugar filled fun festival and have some educational and social value! Enjoy the photos.

Visitors from Down Under – Checking out Cyberschool

mrbondi — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 18:16:20 +0000

On October 18th our school hosted about 15-20 teachers and administrators from Australia. Why Yennadon you might ask? Well, Yennadon is the home and birthplace of Cyberschool; a hybrid on-line and face-to-face learning model that uses technology as a tool to enhance the child’s learning experience. In Yennadon cyberschool students learn to work independly through on-line lessons. They work up to twice weekly at home (with adult supervision) and connect to the teacher and other students on-line using a comprehensive software program called Eluminate. On other days, students are in a ‘typical’ classroom the difference being the increased emphasis on using technology to enhance the learning experience.

Mr. MacQuarrie and Ms. Wilson took the visiting teachers through this on-line experience, interacting with students who were working from home. Our Aussie visitors were impressed by the level of discussion, how the software allowed for seamless student/teacher interaction and the amount of preparation required to create valuable on-line learning experiences for the students. Critics may look at this and say ‘no kids for two days? How nice!” What they don’t see is the hours of preparation that goes into creating this learning experience as most of this planning happens on evenings and weekends. It’s only through Mr. MacQuarrie’s and Ms. Wilson’s hard work, knowledge, expertice and dedication to the program is such a rich experience for the students possible. I know our Australian colleagues liked what they saw.

Twonies for Terry Yennadon’s Terry Fox Run

mrbondi — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 23:36:10 +0000

Following a visit from Terry Fox’s brother Fred Fox on Monday September 27th, students at Yennadon were inspired to participate and donate to the Terry Fox Foundation. On Friday September 30th, 569 students along with staff and parent volunteers took to the street just outside the school in our annual run/walk for cancer research.

Twonies for Terry was this year’s theme and students were encouraged to bring a twonie to school. Our goal was to raise close to a thousand dollars and we came vey close to our target and were able to raise $950 for cancer research on behalf of the Terry Fox Foundation. Although the weather did not fully cooperate, it was not enough to dampen the school’s spirit and by all accounts a great time was had by all and a very worth cause received our support. Well done Yennadon!

PHOTOS COMING AS SOON AS I CAN FIND THEM ON THE HARD-DRIVE….THIS MAY TAKE A WHILE!