Sara Allen, a Junior Kindergarten student in the French Immersion program at St. James, enjoys having mom and dad at school. Together the JK class and their family members participated in a sing-a-long and created crafts together. This event reflects the importance of the home-school relationships that are nurtured at St. James.
Springtime in Kindergarten at St. James
The Senior Kindergarten class at St. James Catholic School invited their family members to help assemble crafts that represent the wonderful season of spring. Photographed is Kindergarten student Hannah Swearengen with her grandmother designing butterflies in celebration of the season of rebirth, renewal and regrowth.
St. James SK-FI Students Celebrate Their Love of Music
Students in the SK French Immersion program at St. James Catholic School celebrated their love of music with a Spring Sing-Along. As part of the school’s Catholic Education week, the children performed a number of French songs for their parents and grandparents. Afterwards, they had the chance to share in some refreshments with their families.
St. James School Fun Family Faith Night
St. James Catholic School and St. Pius X Parish of Lively partnered to create an event that brought the school and the faith community together. The School Council led by Chairperson Jane Saal planned a “Fun Family Faith Night”.
The evening offered an opportunity to share in many faith-based activities and games geared to both students and their families and provided a forum to celebrate the virtues and values of our Catholic School. The school community was welcomed at the door by parish priest Father Terry Fournier and Deacon Pat Raymond. School Council chairperson Jane Saal stated that, “One priority for the St. James School Council is to augment the school’s spiritual atmosphere by facilitating family faith development and a family faith evening was a perfect occasion to implement our goal. This event provided an excellent opportunity to strengthen the home, school and parish connections at St. James School. The evening was extremely well received and well attended and judging from the feedback we will continue the tradition of a faith night again next year”.
Anti-Bullying Bingo at St. James
The student safe schools council at St. James Catholic School came up with a creative way to promote a positive, safe school culture and take a stand againstt bullying. The students brainstormed a variety of ways to raise awareness and promote their school anti-bullying policy and decided on a bingo game as a school-wide strategy. Instead of numbers the cards were filled with words that reflect the safe, caring and inclusive school environment at St. James. The student safe schools council selected the anti-bullying words.
St. James Parents Creating Hopes and Dreams
Parents at St. James Catholic School have the opportunity to write good luck wishes and messages to their child(ren) on the “Wall of Fame”. Located in the front foyer of the school the “Wall of Fame” reflects the Sudbury Catholic Board’s vision “Sudbury Catholic Schools…Creating hopes and dreams through excellence.” Parents can express in writing their personal hopes and dreams for their own children for this school year.
New Life at St. James School
Students at St. James Catholic Elementary school had the unique opportunity this past month to witness the hatching of baby ducks. Grade 5 student, Danielle Battistelli has a love for ducks so her family offered the school a whole kit including eggs, an incubator and all supplies and equipment needed in order to hatch some duck eggs. The school jumped at this chance to show students the miracle of new life and within a few weeks time the first batch of eggs hatched. Everyday at lunch, Battistelli and her friends set up a demonstration and are available to answer questions regarding the new hatchlings. As well, these students contribute to the morning announcements calling themselves “The Hatchers” and give daily updates on the ducklings. There have been eight ducks born so far and some students were lucky enough to witness the eggs cracking and seeing the ducks emerge. All of the new ducklings have been named and some of these names include Bubbles, Twitter and Chezabell. The Battistelli’s have contributed a few more eggs and when the first set of ducklings are ready to bring back to their house to be raised as pets, there will be a whole new set of ducklings for the students to observe. Grade One teacher Sarah Pappin found her students to be positively amazed by the whole process. “My students were absolutely awestruck when they saw the eggs hatch,” Pappin said. “They were speechless at first, and then couldn’t stop talking about how excited they were to see real baby ducks hatch.” Pappin explained that this was a fantastic opportunity for all the students at St. James to work with community partners, and families and have a hands on experience with new life.
St. James Catholic School Receives Dr. Bette M. Stephenson Award
The Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) is pleased to announce that St. James Catholic School has been presented with the Dr. Bette M. Stephenson Award in recognition of the school community’s dedication to student achievement and use of provincial assessment results to improve student learning. EQAO would also like to acknowledge and congratulate St. James Catholic School’s principal, staff and parents for their leadership, positive attitude and sincere efforts in helping every child to succeed. The award was presented to a contingent of St. James parents and staff in Toronto in early November.
St. James Catholic School Hosts Aboriginal Mishoomis and Nikoomis Day
As part of its School Improvement Plan, the St. James Catholic School Parent Council initiated an Aboriginal Cultural Awareness Committee to promote Native cultural understanding and appreciation to both native and non-native students.
Mishoomis (grandfathers) and Nikoomis, (grandmothers) of the St. James Catholic School’s Native students were invited to visit the school to make a variety of presentations such as; eagle feather teaching, native craft making, aboriginal storytelling, how to clean a fish, how to do bead work, how to make moccasins, etc. One child in each class had been linked up with their own grandparent for the morning event.
View video of the event on the Sudbury Star’s website.