HO HO HO From the Children in our SKILL Class

Happy Holidays DDS Families!

'Tis the Season for Creating and Sharing!

It may be the second last day before the break but the students at Douglasdale have busy hands and busy hearts! Our gym was full of proud moms, dads, grandparents and other relatives for our evening and daytime concerts and the students sang their hearts out. Thank you for joining us. It means a lot to the students! Our teachers were spoiled by some crafty and generous elves to start the day and classrooms were full of buddy crafts, buddy reading, and buddy gingerbread making! Our Toy Angel and Humane Society trees are spilling over in the foyer and the art on the walls beckons the spirit of the season. 

We will wrap up an exciting week with PJ day tomorrow and then students will be off until January 5th. We wish you all a very restful break. 

'Tis The Season For Singing!

Music and laughter is permeating the halls of Douglasdale this week as students and teachers prepare for the upcoming Christmas concerts. Whether playing percussion instruments or tuning the natural instrument of their voices, the students are all engaged and excited to perform their songs for what is sure to be a full gymnasium!   

       

Hour of Code at DDS

This week was Computer Science Education week. To mark the occasion code.org  challenged students all over the world to spend an hour creating computer code. This would be an intimidating challenge for many adults but our students have taken this on with enthusiasm.  Code.org has created a student friendly “code studio” in which students interact with Angry birds and “Frozen” princesses to solve problems and learn the basics of coding. As of today over 60 million students have taken part and some of those students are from right here at Douglasdale School.

This week we have had students in Grade 1, 3 and 4 all try out their own Hour of Code and the results have been fantastic. In each group all of the students were excited and engaged in the process of creating, problem solving and sharing.  Grade 1’s were able to show that they are capable of logging on to the school network, finding a folder on the server and linking to a specially designed web access form. All the grades have shown that that they can very quickly learn the “language” of coding and begin to independently move objects, create sequences and debug errors.  Perhaps most importantly students have shown that, when they are engaged in the process, they are capable of demonstrating great perseverance when faced with a difficult task.

We will continue to expand this experience for all our students so that all can experience the fun and challenge of this most important 21^st century skill.

Welcome to the DDS blog

Hello DDS families,

No matter where you visit in Douglasdale school there is an undeniable and palpable energy that permeates the space. In this blog we will try to capture some of that energy in words and images so that our learning can be shared and celebrated with our wider DDS family and community. Please check back often!

Mr. Wilson and Mrs. George 

* Individual classes will continue to use their D2L pages.