st. john's academy newsletter - oct 9€¦ · st. john's academy newsletter - oct 9...
TRANSCRIPT
St. John's Academy Newsletter - Oct 9
October 9, 2020
St. John's Academy Shawnigan Lake
In This Issue
• A message from our Head of School
• Ms. Ciara's Science classes
• The Moon Festival
• Photos this week
• Announcements
• Upcoming important dates
• Next week's menu
• Contact Us
A message from our Head of School
Dear Parents and Students
Prior to returning to Canada, a fellow Head of School named Patrick from Nord Anglia, the
company we used to work with, mentioned to me that I would love being part of a start-
up school because I would get to be part of building traditions on a daily basis. At St. John’s
Academy, we have taken this to the next level and this week was no exception, as we celebrated the
Moon Festival on Wednesday thanks to Ms Liliana and our Chinese and East Asian Club. On Thursday
afternoon, for the second consecutive year, our Duke of Edinburgh students have been able to
support our local Legion by putting poppies in envelopes. Later today we will have our inaugural
House Co-Leader elections where nominees will deliver speeches to students in their respective
cohorts and then be involved in an interview process. I would like to thank all of the nominees that
have demonstrated courage in putting themselves forward and subjecting themselves to this
process. Congratulations to all, whatever the outcome may be. I would also like to recognize the
fantastic effort of our House Captains, Peter, Eni, Kali and April who have worked closely with Mr. Nick and made all of this possible.
Throughout the week, students sat MAP tests in English and mathematics, which will help us
establish baselines for our students and eventually have an objective measure of the progress they
are making relative to other students from across the world. Teachers will also benefit from feedback on how we can improve the way we teach students with statistically significant data.
Behind the scenes, we have been in discussions with the Cowichan Valley Regional District
(CVRD) and the representatives from Canoe Kayak Canada, which is our Olympic Team who normally
spends the autumn and winter training in Florida. As COVID 19 has restricted travel, they have asked
us if they can stay in our dorms and use the school as their training headquarters through November
and possibly revisit in the new year. After liaising with the Federation of Independents Schools, the
Ministry of Education and the Vancouver Island Health Authority, I am delighted to announce that
we have been given approval to host our Canadian Olympians subject to implementing the
necessary protocols that will include essentially involve treating them as a third cohort, which will
generally be separate from our students and will always involve physical distancing from the. For
example, their lunchbreaks will be at a different time to our students. However, I anticipate we will
be able to observe them practicing and expect that they will be able to speak to our students about
the dedication required to become an Olympian. This represents a fantastic opportunity for our
students and I want to assure you that we will continue to be fanatically disciplined in the way we
ensure our community’s safety. Should you have any concerns or questions about our plan, please
do not hesitate to contact me directly. The final details are still being arranged and everything is subject to the health and safety guidelines remaining unchanged for schools.
I will put this as an agenda item for the Families and Community Enrichment Society (FACES)
meeting that is being held next Thursday October 15 at 6:30 PM. If you are interested in attending
this meeting, please e-mail Amy at [email protected] and she will send you a link to the meeting. As always, all family members in our community are welcome to attend.
I hope everybody enjoys a safe and relaxing Thanksgiving long weekend.
Mr. Dave Pontich
Head of School
The Junior Leadership Team's Power Walk
https://sway.office.com/is5lrWD1sohxD0wR#content=BGQCwaVsPtSE09
“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different
person then.”- Lewis Carroll
Ciara's Science Classes!
Another exciting week in our science classes complete! Notably, in our Grades 11 and 12 Chemistry
class, we were learning some important basics to carry us through the rest of our units as we
transition from our first unit on Quantum Theory to our second unit on bonding.
We learned about significant figures (affectionately known as sig figs), which tell us how many digits
and decimal places we should round our answers to in our calculations. Significant figures are
extremely important to the scientific community, because they give us important information about
how precise our equipment is in experiments, how accurate our results are, and allows us to conduct
statistical tests on the validity of our results and margins of error. We then learned unit analysis;
which lets us follow through the units in our calculations and convert between different units. (This
is a great tool to double-check we’ve used the right equation!) We made our own units and
conversion chart to practice converting between any units. Using our unit system, we converted
between babies, water bottles, Peters, Eriks, and onions. Unfortunately, in our randomized unit
system, although the conversion factor between Peters and Eriks was about the same (1.3 Eriks = 1
Peter), water bottles and onions were much more valuable than them both. But I think we can all
agree that we know Peter and Erik are extremely valuable to our school community and would be worth lots of onions and water bottles in this universe!
Our Grade 8 Science class is applying their new theoretical knowledge of physical and chemical
properties to making fire-starters! We are trying to conduct an investigation on which materials or
combination of materials are the most effective fire-starters.
This Wednesday, we collectively decided how we can measure their effectiveness and our method for collecting data.
We decided the two things we want to look at are:
1) How quickly/easily does the fire-starter ignite?
2) How long does it burn once ignited?
We decided we will collect quantitative (numerical) data by starting to time at the strike of the first
match, and then recording the time it ignites, and the time it stops burning. We will also record how
many matches it takes to light each fire-starter. We will also collect qualitative (words) date by writing down our observations of each fire-starter test.
On Wednesday, each student made their own fire-starter out of the given materials, and recorded a
model of their fire-starter, explanation of their choices, and predictions. As seen in the photos, Alder
named his fire starter “The Burrito of Fire” after it’s burrito like appearance. We are very excited to head to the waterfront last period Friday to conduct our tests and gather our data!
Ms. Ciara Corbett
Science Instructor
The Moon Festival at St. John's Academy
Moon Festival, also known as “Mid-Autumn Festival” is the 15th day of August each year on lunar
calendar. It is the second most important festival in East Asia after the Chinese New Ye ar. Widely
celebrated in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the Moon
festival worships the full moon and the harvest. The full moon as well as the mooncakes people eat
on the day symbolize “reunion” as their shapes are round. In China, families eat at round tables
hence the kanji word (“圆”) has become to signify reunion.
The Chinese & East Asian Cultural Club celebrated the Moon Festival this Wednesday, upon the
arrival of our order of mooncakes. The mooncakes are delicate ly made and come in three flavors:
red bean, the traditional Chinese flavor, Mocha and taro, Japanese flavor and pumpkin, a flavor
specially designed by Ms. Liliana’s pastry chef to suit local students’ taste. Both Cohort 4-6 and
Cohort 7-12 have put on a performance: Amelia’s (grade 5) poetry reading and Erick X (grade 12) ’s
duet singing with Ms. Liliana. The performed piece is 水调歌头*明月几时有 (Worship of the Moon),
a noted piece of poetry that’s traditionally read and/or sung for 3000 years in China on this festival. Ms. Liliana played the piano for both performances.
Erick has expressed that in Chinese culture, Moon Festival is a festival for family gathering. However,
being able to showcase his own culture during this celebration makes him feel both proud and at
home. Amelia has received compliments for her performances from her classmates who have also
shown their happiness to be exposed to a diversity of cultures, especially the distinct experiences of
listening to Chinese music and eating mooncakes.
St John’s Academy aims to build a caring and internationally-minded community. Chinese & East
Asian Cultural Club offers students a different vision of the world and takes them on fascinating cultural journeys. The number of cultural clubs like this will also grow as our community does.
Ms Liliana Qian,
Leader of Chinese & East Asian Cultural Club/Campus Youth Coordinator
A massive THANK YOU to our Housekeeping, Maintenance, Bus
Drivers and Kitchen Teams for keeping us clean, sanitized, safe and
well fed!
Our Housekeeping Team!
1 - Ms. Sylvie
2 - Ms. Cathy
Our Maintenance Team!
3 - Mr. Chris
4 - Mr. James
5 - Mr. Brendon
6 - Mr. David
Our Bus drivers!
7 - Mr. Ken
8 - Mr. Lindsay
9 - Mr. Sean
Our Kitchen Team!
10 - Ms. Mariah, Ms. Summer, Ms. Bridget / Missing: Ms. Dianne and Mr. Rick
St. John's Academy's Photos this week
#icanlearnanything
Grade 8 Individuals & Societies Class
Our Grade 8 Individuals and Societies class worked in groups to discuss the Phoenicians, Etruscans,
Assyrians and Greeks!
Boarding Life
Art Club with Ms. Martha
Wilderness Wednesdays with the Grades 4 & 5s
Marc and Logan in Grade 7 Math acting as the teachers in the class
to explain how to multiply with decimals!
11 - Marc and Logan in Grade 7 Math acting as the teachers in the class to explain how to multiply with decimals.
Ms. Julie's Grades 7 and 8 Math students teaching the class a lesson
on numeracy
Design 8
Around campus
12 - This week was MAPS assessments, Lily finished early so drew
13 - This is Lily's drawing :)
Announcements
Next FACES meeting Thursday, Oct. 15th
Our next online FACES (Families and Community Enrichment Society) meeting is Thursday, October
15th at 6:30 pm. If you would like to join the online TEAMS meeting please email Amy at
School Picture Day
School Photos will take place on Wednesday, October 28th in the morning. Please have your
child(ren) wear their formal uniform that day. More information will be coming.
Call out to all tutors and babysitters!
Please email Ms. Julie at [email protected] if you would like to be included on a school
list for tutoring (include subject at grade levels you can tutor) or for babysitting (please include phone
number). Ms. Julie will ask you a few questions before adding you to the list. Please remember any
tutoring on campus with students from different learning cohorts will require masks to be worn.
Upcoming Important Dates
Monday, October 12th - Thanksgiving - School Closed
October 14th and 20th - Flu shot clinic for students (who have consent from parents)
Thursday , October 15th - FACES online meeting at 6:30pm
Wednesday, October 28th - PHOTO day - please have your child wear their formal uniform
Next week's menu
Monday
Holiday No School
Tuesday
Vegetable soup/ Beef dip and Au juice/ Waffle fries/ Roast cauliflower/ Caeser and Green salads
Wednesday
Egg drop soup/ Chow mien/ Chicken balls/ Stir fry vegetables/ Fortune cookies/ Curried rice/ Green
salad
Thursday
Spaghetti noodles/ Meat sauce/ Veggie sauce/ Steamed broccoli/ Garlic breadsticks/ Green salad
Friday
Tomato soup/ Chicken skewers/ Rice pilaf/ Zucchini casserole/ Tzatziki Greek salad/ Green salad
Contact Us
St. John's Academy Shawnigan Lake
2371 Shawnigan Lake Road
Shawnigan Lake, BC, V0R 2W5
250-220-4888
Visit us on the web at shawniganlake.stjohnsacademy.ca
