Dear Parents / Guardians:
I hope you are enjoying the beginning of the summer with your child. As a follow up to previous communications, I wanted to send this message to make you aware of resources that are now available to help you support your child in maintaining and building competency over the summer.
Accessing these is of course optional. Toward the end of the school year, several parents had asked for advice on what could be done at home during the summer to help reduce gaps in learning brought on by the many interruptions over the past 16 months. In response to this need, Mrs. Ogle, our special education teacher at Lord Aylmer, has designed five webinars for parents. Three focus on reading comprehension for readers at different levels of development and two others focus on building math skills and concepts at home. While they were designed for use this summer, they are a handy set of tools at any time of the year. The three webinars for reading prepared by Mrs. Ogle, will help parents with effective strategies to use with children at different levels of development in reading. The two others help make math learning fun through hands-on activities around the house. They can be accessed on our school website through the following links:
Making the Most of Reading Time – With Your Pre Readers
Making the Most of Reading Time – With Your Emergent Readers
Making the Most of Reading Time – With Your Independent Readers
Making Math Fun Around the House
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We also thought it might be nice to create contests to encourage reading and math learning over the summer. Please see below, the descriptions of the two challenges.
LA Reads – 2021 Summer Sweepstakes
“LA Reads – 2021 Summer Sweepstakes” requires participants or their parents/guardians to fill in reading logs (sent home before the end of the school year) to help with the tracking of reading time. The logs can also be found on our website (LA Reads 2021: Summer Sweepstakes – Lord Aylmer Elementary School (westernquebec.ca)). The challenge is designed for all children regardless of their level of reading. Whether your child is reading to you, reading alone, or being read to, the time is recorded the same on the reading logs. There is also no restriction on the level of book or type of print that can be included (storybook, non-fiction text, comic, magazine, etc.). More information can be found on the website.
Principal’s Math Challenge
We also wanted to create a math challenge to help build mastery of computation skills for basic facts. It is an area of focus at our school for the upcoming year and one that is very important for all students. Knowing the basic operations by heart will help ensure success in math in the upper grades and will help make everyday tasks generally much easier as well.
The Math Challenge will be held in the Fall and will challenge students’ abilities in math computation for addition and subtraction in the younger grades and addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in the upper grades according to the provincial grade standards. The math webinars created by Mrs. Ogle, are treasure chests of strategies to tackle these important cornerstones of mathematics.
Categories for the Math Challenge
Cycle 1
Mastery of Addition, Subtraction (up to 10+10 and corresponding subtraction),
Cycle 2 and 3
Mastery of Addition, Subtraction (up to 10+10 and corresponding subtraction facts)
Mastery of Multiplication and Division (up to 10 x 10 and corresponding division facts).
The math challenge will be inclusive. Students with an IEP will be able to access adaptations or modifications that are present when they are writing a test or exam for math computation in class. Students who can achieve a specific level of competency in the math challenge will be entered into a draw for prizes.
Participation in either of the contests is optional and will not be considered for school marks. Our amazing home and school has partnered with us for this project and has put forward funds for the purchase of prizes. For more information, please access the webinars on the school’s website. Have a great summer!
Respectfully,
Eldon Keon, Principal