school stuff!

We've just attended 2 excellent events at the childrens' elementary school here in Okotoks, and it prompted me to write a little about their new school life.
Both Jake and Jasmine have just had 'student-led conference' evenings at school. The events are a little like 'open evening' in the UK, which is a chance to see their work and visit their classrooms, but with a bit of a difference. Here, the children have helped to set an agenda for the evening, which covers a wide variety of different subjects. There are different activities on the agenda, which include a chance to celebrate a small selection of their work, alongside practical activities involving parents too. It is a chance for the children to lead the parents through their learning process, and show them how they understand what they have covered so far. It was a lot of fun and really interesting.
Jake enjoyed sharing his excellent audio compositions on the Macbooks that he uses at school, and also showed us some amazing science skills, talking us through and showing us how to make 'gloop' slime! He shared some brilliant PE warm up games in the gym, which showed Neil and I just how unfit we are, as well as sharing some of his math achievements and written work.
Jas tested our listening skills in a fun game, where we had to guess a place she was describing from a variety of photos. Her descriptive language work in her writing was superb! Her teacher says she is a really talented writer and we have to agree! She also showed us a cool science trick and some of her wonderful art work.
It was wonderful to see them both so proud of their achievements, and they really enjoyed being able to lead the evening, and demonstrate their skills.
We continue to be really impressed with their new school. We always loved Brook Field so it was important to us to find them a school here that matched what we had in the UK. We truly feel that we've done that with DMG, right from the moment we looked around the school back in April last year, we felt the same sort of ethos and atmosphere in this school too.
DMG is a big school in terms of numbers of students (around 700 in all!) but doesn't feel that big when you visit. They have a policy of multi-aging, where most classes are mixed year groups, and classes are arranged in 'pods' or groups of around 4 together. Each pod has a mixture of year groups within it, from Kindergarten up to grade 6, and the children regularly mix together across the ages for special activities, with the older children mentoring the younger students. Classes are small compared with the UK - around 22 children, this is a deliberate thing to keep relationships between students and teachers more intimate and allow more time for personal bonds to develop.
The school has a 'diversity' programme of special needs inclusion, as well as very strong arts and music programmes (music being particularly strong) as well as sports activities.
The curriculum is balanced differently here, with more time devoted to arts and sporting activities. The children have PE every day (they have a HUGE gymnasium which can accommodate 3 classes at a time) and music 3 times a week with a specialist teacher, again in a special room with a large variety of musical instruments, enough for each child to have the same instrument at once.
The terms are arranged slightly differently, with no half term breaks and just a weeks break for Easter, and a really long summer holiday which is 8 weeks long! The children always finish an hour earlier on Fridays though, and only have half days on the last days of term.
The children carry a contact diary between home and school, and they use this to keep parents informed of events on a weekly basis. The children write in their diaries each morning when they start school, and parents can also write in notes for their teacher such as upcoming medical appointments etc. This cuts down on letters home each day, and makes the children responsible for informing parents about what is going on at school. It seems to work really well.
So far, our impression of Canadian schooling is a good one. The teachers are very caring and positive with the children. They seem to know them very well and Jake has even made a buddy of the school principal - Mr Hampshire! Apparently they share a love of motor racing and Jake is enjoying reading Mr Hampshires published children's stories about cars.