Millarville’s Cool News

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By this time most families have returned to home base and are readying their children for another school year. This has been another extraordinary few months of summer. The cold and wet left few days of warmth and as I write this we have had a couple of days back to back when the sun was shining and there was hope of getting the hay crop in under drying conditions. The rich green of the hills and meadows is spectacular as have been the crop of wild flowers and now the berries.
This seems in many ways analogous to our students who will be coming through the doors in another few days. I have had the pleasure of registering a few of the new Kindergarten students over the past few days and I am always left in high spirits over their enthusiasm and, in some cases, tentativeness related to all that school has to offer.
As we move into our year, we will continue to work on our Student Profile reporting and aligning it with our IB expectations. Along with this, we will begin the first phases of implementing the Student Achieve aspect of the reporting. This aspect is an on-line method of continuous reporting on the student's progress and will not be accessible by parents until possibly February. I remain of the opinion that the most effective communication is for parents to come into the school and sit down with their child to discuss what they are doing, how and with what results.
As part of our school's on-going professional development, we are continuing to pursue our craft of teaching through inquiry and the IB/PYP. In an article of our study, the author (Kathy Short, University of Arizona) states: “.... the goal is no longer to cover a particular set of information, but instead to build the knowledge necessary for providing the base from which to explore conceptual understandings that underlie the knowledge. Knowledge becomes a tool to explore conceptual understandings rather than an end in and of itself. Conceptually-based curriculum puts the major emphasis on the big ideas that lie beyond topics, leading to deep essential understandings that transfer across contexts.”
If one understands these statements, the meaning of the learning experience here at MCS becomes much clearer. This approach may be very different from what parents had experienced in their days in school but is in keeping with the demands of 21st century living. Be creative and persistent . . .

Ted Thorne