Hi Kindergarten families!

Just a quick note below about our upcoming Celebration of Learning!

Winter Celebration of Learning

Hello Cappy Smart Families,

As many of you know, each of our grades host an event (such as Remembrance Day) or a “celebration of learning” assembly at some time throughout the year. December will be a sharing event around some of the work being done in our music classes. While this is NOT a formal concert, parents are welcome to join us to hear what the students have been working on.

To make sure that we are able to include all of our Kindergarten students, we are having two assemblies, the music will be the same at both.

Wednesday Dec 18 - 8:30-9:20 (morning kindergarten) 

Thursday Dec 19 - 1:00-1:50 (afternoon kindergarten)

If you will be joining us, please let your child’s teacher know so that we can have enough chairs available.

Hope to see you there!!!

Seana Blake

Hi Kindergarten Families!

I hope you have all had a great week! We have been very busy in kindergarten this week. We started wondering and learning about animals in the winter and how they prepare for the colder months. This week we learned about migration and the animals in Calgary that migrate to a warmer climate. Students enjoyed going outside and watching Canadian Geese flying in a V and talking about how they were flying south to warmer weather and more food. Students created a mural with the theme of migration and learned how to draw geese in their visual journals. Our class poem this week is about geese and how they know it is time to move to a warmer climate. Don't forget to ask you student to share it with you!

We continued to work on the alphabet and the sounds the different letters make. We also started talking about how words have syllables (parts of a word) and breaking the different parts down through clapping. Ask you student to count the syllables in the words bird, feather and migration. See what they can do!

In math, students are working on counting and making groups of given numbers. We built numbers with ten frames and practiced counting forward and backward from 10 during group movement breaks.

We were very lucky this week and got to go and visit another class in our school and share our learning around gathering in a circle. Students were so pleased to share their knowledge and to make some new friends in Ms. M's class. We plan to get together again soon and continue to grow our knowledge of circle and community together.

Next week we will continue to learn about how animals get ready for the winter. Hopefully the weather will warm up a bit so we can go outside and look for our next animal in the school yard.

Have a wonderful weekend and see you next week!
Seana Blake

Hi Kindergarten Families,

We have had a great week of learning in kindergarten!

We started a new unit where we are discussing living and non-living things. Students have been very interested in discussing and getting more information about things they believe to be living as well as clearing up any misunderstandings they may have about non-living things. Our poem this week talks about how to know if something is living or non-living so make sure you ask your students to read their poem to you. The green poem books will be coming home on Friday with the new poem. Students also worked hard to create their own drawings in their visual journal of something they knew was a living things based on the three criteria we have been learning about.

In math, we have finished up patterns and are moving back to working with the numbers 1-10. Students have been representing the numbers in many different ways and sharing their knowledge of the numbers during centers time. We practice counting forward and backwards during our daily movement breaks and move our bodies while we are counting.

We recently had a new center open up during our discovery centers time. Our dramatic play center turned into a hospital and students are really enjoying visiting the hospital and taking on the doctor role as well. We decided to open a hospital because students decided that sometimes living things need to go to the doctor when they are sick and need help to get better.

Next week, we will continue our learning around living and non-living things to help build our knowledge and prepare for our upcoming learning around animals in winter.

Hello kindergarten families,

I can't believe that it is already November 1! This past week was exciting for the students as we were learning about pumpkins and got to see a giant pumpkin in our Learning Commons. Students had many questions and wonders about this pumpkin including, "How did it grow so big?" and "How much does it weigh?" Students got carve a pumpkin as a class and discover what the inside looks like. They then created a drawing in their visual journals showing the inside of a pumpkin.

We have finished going through all the alphabet letters and their sounds. We will review for the next week and then move onto printing the letters as well as continuing to work with the letters and the sound they make. From here we will be moving onto beginning letter sounds in words. Students are contiuning to enjoy reading the daily poem and working with the words and letters we find in the poem. Thank you for sending the green poem books back every week so your student can get their new poem put in.

In math we are continuing or work around patterns and counting to 10. Students have created leaf patterns as well as colour patterns using different blocks. We do many different body breaks while we are counting to get our bodies moving as well as work on our counting skills forward to 10 and backward to 1.

We have begun coming together in circle every afternoon after discovery centers to emotions and how our emotions may cause us to act. This is a short time during our day that we dedicate to building emotional intelligence /regulation. Students are enjoying welcoming each other into our circle and asking each other "How are you feeling today?" If you are wondering about circle, ask your child why we sit in circle and what it means.

Information about parent/teacher EYE-TA meeting will be sent out in the next week so please on the look out for any information that might be sent. Reminder that we will need to book a 15 minute time to talk about your child's EYE-TA assessment data.

Coming up next week...

Remembrance Day assembly Thursday November 8 10:30-11:10 everyone is welcome to join us for the assembly.

Have a great weekend!

Ms. Blake

Hello kindergarten families,

As our parent/teacher conferences are coming up, just a reminder that these conferences are optional for your kindergarten students. Have a read through the letter below and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me. If you still wish to schedule a conference, here is the link to do so.

https://portal.cbe.ab.ca/staffinsite/system_tools/student_supports/SIRS/Documents/PowerSchool_Parent_Account_Creation_and_Navigation.pdf- To create an account 

https://sis.cbe.ab.ca/ - Parent Login Page

School Conferences Parent Guide – Parent Guide (How to book a conference)

Dear Parents/Guardians,

As you may know, our school will be having parent/teacher conferences next Thursday evening and Friday during the day. In Kindergarten, we use At this time of year, we are assessing our students with a tool called the Early Years Evaluation (EYE). We will have information ready to share with parents until after November 6 when the evaluation is complete.

Since we will be meeting with each parent to go over their child’s results in November, the parent/teacher conferences next week are optional for you. If you would like to speak with your child’s teacher please feel free to book a time but also know there will be additional information to share when we meet in November to discuss your child’s EYE results. If you have any questions please feel free to talk to your child’s teacher.

Thank you,

Seana Blake and Rachel Woodward

Information for the next week:

Orange Shirt Day

We will be recognizing Orange Shirt Day on Thursday October 3, 2019. This will be an opportunity for students and staff to learn about the legacy of the residential schools, as well as indigenous ways of knowing. Staff will lead students through a variety of learning activities that will engage students in conversations about belonging, community, and inclusion. A powerful way to do this is through the indigenous pedagogy of circle. Circle defines inclusion, In the circle we are all equal. No one is above, no one is below. No one is in front, no one is behind. The Sacred Circle is designed to create unity. As a way to recognize this very important day, staff and students are encouraged to wear orange. This represents our continued commitment to the Truth and Reconciliation Act as well as honoring the survivors of residential schools. If you have any questions please let us know.

Terry Fox Run

Our Terry Fox run will take place on Wednesday October 2 from 2:00pm-2:45pm. Students will gather for a short assembly, followed by a 20min Terry Fox run on the path close to the Marlborough Park Community Center. On the day of the run, students are encouraged to bring a Toonie for Terry to show their support and help raise money for cancer research. If you have any questions please let us know.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!!!

4th Annual Cappy Smart School Multi-Cultural Potluck Dinner!!

4th Annual Cappy Smart School
Multi-Cultural Potluck Dinner!!


Thursday, October 3, 2019

6:00 pm – 7:30 pm in the Gym


Please bring one or two of your favorite dishes to share with everyone. Make enough to feed 10-12 people. Please list the ingredients on a piece of paper to be placed by your food. Food must be nut free due to allergies in our school.

We will have the book fair, a slide show, student singing and delicious foods to share with one another. The school will provide plates and cutlery.

We hope you can join us.


Thank you.
Cappy Smart Staff

Hello Cappy Smart families,

It’s been a great first few weeks and we have all been very pleased to reconnect with our returning families as well as the many new families who have joined us over the past few weeks. I want to share some important information with you regarding our current class sizes as well as how we are going to ensure that we are providing the best opportunities for all of our students to be successful.

In June, we shared our projections for the 2019-2020 School Year. Our numbers have changed as we have had a few families move in and out of the community/city. The net result of these changes has created some unbalanced class sizes. Please see the chart below regarding our anticipated and current class sizes.

Class Anticipated Class Size – June 2019 

Grade 1/2 18 

Grade 1/2 18 

Grade 1/2 18 

Grade 3/4 25 

Grade 3/4 25 

Grade 4/5 26 

Kindergarten AM/PM 13/13

Current Class Size – September 2019

Grade 1/2 14

Grade 1/2 14

Grade 1/2 17

Grade 3/4 29

Grade 3/4 29

Grade 4/5 28

Kindergarten AM/PM 15/14

In an effort to ensure that all students are receiving the best possible opportunity to have a successful year, we will be redeploying some of our staff. This will create class sizes that are more typical for the grade levels and will allow us to provide new learning opportunities to all students. I have itemized the changes below:

Kindergarten: Ms. Blake will continue to teach the afternoon class. Ms. Woodward will be taking over the morning class after a one-week transition with Ms. Blake.

Grade 1/2: Ms. Woodward will be moving to half time kindergarten and half-time music (all grades). Her students will be divided between Ms. Christensen and Ms. Cheveldeoff’s classes with the same priorities that we used to create the original classes (learning needs come first). We will do our best to ensure that students are placed in the class where they will most likely learn best with their teacher and their classmates. Our Division 1 Education Assistant Ms. Mutual will now spend her time working with 2 grade 1/2 classes instead of 3 which will increase the amount of time that she can support students in the classrooms. Class sizes will be approximately 22 students per class.

Grade 3/4 and 4/5: Classes will now receive support from Ms. Blake in the morning Monday-Thursday. This will allow her to work collaboratively with these grades and provide greater opportunities for students to understand and revisit curriculum. Children will be regrouped based on current needs and the work that the students are engaged in so this number will go up and down. We are not creating a new class. Students will remain assigned to their current homeroom teacher and will regroup as needed.

SKILL 1 and SKILL 2: These classes are maintained by the system and will receive the same staffing and support as they did before.

Reorganizing our school is something that we take very seriously and I would like to assure you that we have considered many options before arriving at the conclusion that we needed to rebalance classes. Based on the number of students in each grade, it makes the most sense to retain the current grade format so that we can welcome any new students we may receive after September without overloading one class or grade.

Mr. Nyrerod and I will be available for questions after school on Tuesday and Wednesday this week and would be happy to discuss this with you in greater detail if you are interested. Please call Ms. Amanda in the office to let us know that you are coming so that we can schedule our time accordingly.

We anticipate putting these changes into effect on Monday, September 16, 2019. Thank you in advance for your support and understanding as we work to support the needs of all of our students from Kindergarten to Grade 5 and in our SKILL classes.

Sincerely,

Erin Bennett

Principal, Cappy Smart School

t | 403-777-8110

ecbennett@cbe.ab.ca