Grade 9 Info Moment

SNAP and KEY book update.

We have extended the deadline for SNAP and KEY orders until Friday November 2, 2013.  Please refer to our website and blog http://schools.cbe.ab.ca/b691/ for more information and D2L if you need to print an order form.

Just a reminder that the permission forms for Take Your Child to Work Day (Wednesday November 6, 2013), need to be signed and returned to the school by Friday as well.  Parents please take this opportunity to provide your children with a hands on experience in a field they are interested in.  It does not have to be you, your child goes to work with.  Allow them to explore their possibilities.

Cell Phone Etiquette

Three weeks ago, our school council hosted Paul Davis, an expert on keeping our kids safe in the cyber world.  Mr. Davis worked with our students and spoke with our parents about ways we can support our kids and parent them while they are on line.  All too often, our children are able to access the internet in unsupervised places.  

Parents pay for their child's devices and have the ability to monitor and supervise their children's on line visits and their cell phone use.  Texting family and friends should not be occurring during class time without the permission of the teacher.  We would ask that parents be diligent in the monitoring of these devices and help their children learn appropriate cell phone use and etiquette.  

Yesterday, an article appeared in the National Post that gives us more food for thought on the subject: http://life.nationalpost.com/2013/10/28/ban-cellphones-internet-use-in-childrens-and-teenagers-bedrooms-u-s-doctors-urge-parents/

Thank you for working with us on this important issue.

Take Our Kids to Work Day

Take Our Kids to Work Day (TOKW) is an annual event sponsored by The Learning Partnership that encourages grade 9 students to spend a day with their parent/guardian at their worksite.  It is an opportunity for students to develop an appreciation for the importance of staying in school, gaining exposure to skills required in today's workplace, developing an appreciation for parents' roles in making a living, and exploring career options in a practical way.  This year the event will be held on Wednesday November 6, 2013.
Information about the event will be coming home with grade 9 students today.  We hope that all of our grade 9 students will be able to participate.  Online information about the event is available at: http://www.thelearningpartnership.ca/TOKW

Midsun earns spot in Guinness Book of World Record

Students from Midsun school participated in a massive pumpkin carving project hosted by Save-On-Foods here in Calgary.

 It was a world record breaking attempt for the longest line of carved pumpkins.  Each pumpkin had be carved in a traditional manner with 2 eyes, a nose and a mouth.

  

The final count had over 297 metres of pumpkins and over 1300 pumpkins.  The previous record was 1000.

WE DID IT!!!

Look for the achievement in the 2015 copy of the Guinness Book or World Records.

THE KEY study guides and SNAP workbooks

October 2013, (School Year 2013-2014),

Dear Parent(s)/Guardian(s):

With June and this year’s Provincial Achievement Tests (Grade 9) happening at the end of the year, MidSun School is offering to order THE KEY study guides and SNAP workbooks at a huge discount from local bookstores.

These resources compliment classroom instruction, provide students with additional learning opportunities and practice at home. These materials are 100% aligned to the Alberta curriculum.

THE KEY study guide provides the student with a complete overview of the course, a table of correlations at the beginning of each unit to relate to curriculum expectations of each question, and detailed solutions for every question in the study guide. “The Key” is available in all four of the core subjects, English, Social, Math and Science for $20.00 a guide including GST and delivery.

The Student Notes And Problems (SNAP) workbooks are available for Math and Science at a cost of $20.00 a workbook including GST and delivery. These workbooks provide students with key definitions, formulas, reminders, steps and procedures to aid the student’s understanding of key concepts. Detailed solutions illustrate the problem-solving method used to arrive at the correct answer. 

Castle Rock Research, the creators of THE KEY study guides and SNAP workbooks has an informative website that parents and students can preview prior to making their decision to purchase. Please visit them at: www.castlerockresearch.com.

If you would like to purchase these items please complete the order form on the back of this letter. Payment can be made by cheque, credit card, or EXACT cash amount.

ORDERS DUE: WED, OCTOBER 30th, 2013!!!

Bus Schedule Changes

There have been new maps and timetable information uploaded onto our website http://schools.cbe.ab.ca/b691/  under quick links on the left side of the screen.  Please check to see if your child's bus schedule has been affected.  Busses A, B, E, F & G have all had changes made.

Bus passes are still being distributed.  Please remind your child that if they have not received their bus pass, they need to check with Ms. Peters at the office.  If you are unsure if you have a bus pass coming, please contact Southland to see if your contract is being processed.  403-817-7433

Overdue Fee Information

Overdue Fees

Overdue Fees notices are being sent home this week with your child.  

Fees can be sent with your child, paid at the school or online by one of the following methods:

·         Cash

·         Cheque

·         Debit

·         VISA/Mastercard

Please let us know if you are experiencing financial difficulties as there are a number of options available to you:

·         Fee Waivers (apply using the form on the website)  http://www.cbe.ab.ca/Parents/forms.asp#feew

·         Setting up a payment plan with the Bookkeeper Edwina Ewart – 403 777 6430 ext 2377

Book Fair Oct 21-24

Reminder to parents that our annual book fair will start Monday during Parent/Teacher Interviews, and will continue throughout the week, concluding after interviews on Oct 24th.

Only 67 shopping days till 

Author talk with Alan Siberberg

            On Thursday, October 17^th, Ms. Hayden-Isaak’s homeroom 8H was very fortunate to have a special guest speaker.  Mr. Alan Silberberg was in town for Wordfest and came to speak to the class about writing and about his books.  Sophie C in 8H entered a contest and in winning, the whole class was treated to this awesome author-talk, sponsored by Wordfest 2013! 

            Mr. Silberberg holds a degree in Cartoon-Writing-Education from the University of Massachusettes, and a Master’s degree in education from Harvard.  He has written 3 children’s books, and done quite a bit of writing for TV with Disney, Y TV, Nickelodeon, etc.  He wrote:  The Awesome, Almost 100% True Adventures of Matt & Craz, Pond Scum, and Milo:  Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze.  He even wrote the screenplay for the movie, Dadnapped.

            The students really enjoyed hearing about Mr. Siberberg’s writing career and learning about the essential elements to become a writer: sleep, ice coffee, dog, comfy chair, internet, naps, and chocolate!  I think we’re all interested in becoming writers now!  We also learned that if some students are drawing cartoons in the margins of their homework. . . . maybe that’s a good thing!!

Home Logic & Parent/Student/Teacher Conferences

Home Logic

Home Logic access will be open to parents today, October 15, 2013.  Using this program, you will be able to view current marks and attendance.  

Please go to  https://sirswebapps.cbe.ab.ca/homelogic/  and register if you have not done so already.  

For more information about Home Logic, please go to http://schools.cbe.ab.ca/b691/parents.htm and click on HomeLogic introduction for parents

There may be a delay in viewing information from Mr. Rae, Mr. Slaughter and Miss. Hill.  We are working to correct these issues.  Thank you for your patience.

Parent/Student/Teacher Conferences

This is a reminder to go online and book for our upcoming parent student teacher conferences using Conference Manager.  These are scheduled for Monday October 21, 2013 from 2:00-4:30 PM & 5:30-8:30 PM and Thursday October 24 from 5:30-8:00 PM. 

Teachers have been contacting parents of students that they believe need some extra support and booking appointments this week.

The site opens for booking by parents at 2:00 PM on Wednesday October 16, 2013. Each time slot is 5 minutes.  Core teachers recommend booking two consecutive sessions.  You may add any comments to let the teacher know if you have a particular concern you would like to talk about. Be sure to put travel time between interviews.

We hope that this will allow our teachers to be prepared for your interviews and make the time more productive for everyone.  Please call our office at 403-777-6430 if you have any concerns.

MidSun School

Parent-Teacher Conferences- October 21 & 24, 2013

The link for the Conference Manager is:

https://midsun.schoolsoft.ca

A Parent Account is required to use the Conference Manager. However, you only need to go through the registration process the first time you use the system. If you have never registered in the Conference Manager use the link above and click the “Register Now” button.

Can’t remember your password?

If you already have a Parent Account, click on the link above, select “Forgot your password” and enter the email address you used to register in the system. You will then receive an email containing instructions for resetting your password. If you do not receive an email, you might have entered an email address the system does not recognize. Please also add appointments@schoolsoft.ca to your address book in your computer mail.  This will override any spam filters that might be blocking the email. If the problem persists, please contact the office and ask them to access your Parent Account, confirm your email address and reset your password.

Step 1 - Conference Manager Opens to Parents – 2:00 PM; October 16, 2013

If you used the Conference Manager in the past, your email and password are still in the system. You can simply access the Conference Manager using the link above.

Step 2 – Book your Parent-Teacher interviews

Select the teachers with whom you want to book interviews. You will see each teacher’s schedule. Select one session for a 5 minute interview or two consecutive sessions for a ten minute interview.  Be sure to leave travel time in between your interviews. After booking your appointments you can print off your schedule. You will also receive an email confirming your bookings. You can log into the system at any time to view your bookings, print, cancel or re-schedule appointments.

If you do not have Internet access, you are welcome to contact the office and we will schedule your conferences on your behalf.

We recommend adding

appointments@schoolsoft.ca

to your address book

Important Dates: 

October 16 – Start scheduling your interviews at 2:00 PM

October 21 – 2:00 - 4:30 & 5:30 - 8:30 Parent Teacher Interviews

October 24 - 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM Parent Teacher Interviews

If you have any questions or need assistance, please feel free to contact the school at 403-777-6430. Please let us know if you like this system! Special thanks to the School Council for purchasing the conference manager!

Happy Thanksgiving

We want to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and a great long weekend. That's right, NO SCHOOL on MONDAY.    

 

Volleyball action continues for our teams with weekly league games.  They all started the season off with a tournament hosted by Rally Point.   We are looking forward to a great season from all our teams.

A great time was had by all grade 8 students who spent a day on the river learning about the Alberta watershed. 

Grade 9's invited to Centennial High's Open House

Thank you to School Council!

Our School Council generously supported our school last night by approving the purchase of the following items to enhance education of MidSun Students.  Our learning community thanks you for making a difference for our students! We heard last night that our grocery gift card program generated over $1000 this month that will go into funding future wish list items!  Look for our Purdy's Chocolate Christmas fundraiser coming out in November.

From Casino:

$6000 for Film studies cameras, tripods, memory chips, dollies, mics

$3500 for yearbook cameras

$2000 for 4 laptops for library sign out

$6000 for 10 pack of ipad 4 for LRC and sign out

From MSEES:

$500 for new PE ping pong table

$200 For Leadership ink

$550 For Laker Life movie presentation “Finding Kind”

$300 for Foods Pans and cookie sheets

$500 for ACCESS/ALP Tumble books  subscription (could be used by others)

$1000 for ENVO Maps, tarps, ropes and videos

$500 for Photographer/Astronomer Science presentation for grade 9

From private donations of individuals on Parent Council

$205 Large Christmas tree for atrium

$200 for a two year subscription for ACCESS A-Z Reading

$355 Fountas & Pinnel Literacy Assessment A-N for ALP

We are still looking for energetic individuals to volunteer to spearhead the completion of outdoor classroom and head up our Fence Art project.  We are also looking for someone to work with our community to secure an outdoor fitness playground for our school.  Call Veronica at 403-777-6430 if you are interested in either of these positions.  Thank you parents!

Book club news

The Mid-Sun Book Club is back in action. At our first meeting students picked up permission slips and the award winning book for this month, The Boy is the Striped Pajamas (2006) by Irish writer John Boyne. To learn more about the author and his many books, visit his website at: http://www.johnboyne.com. Here you can also link to follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

 Next meeting is Wednesday, November 6 in the library at lunch. If you are interested in joining us please see Mrs. Bergh for a permission slip and a copy of the book.  This is a short book so there is plenty of time to read it before our next meeting.

 

Used Book Sales

Leadership students are organizing a used book sale on October 24, 2013 during parent/teacher/student interviews.  They would welcome the donation of any used books that are in fairly good condition. You can drop off your books to the school office. Any money raised will go to support the Children's Hospital.
Thank you for your support!

Credit card payment available for Grocery Gift Card Fundraiser

Anyone wanting to purchase grocery gift cards with a credit card can do so on Monday October 7, 2013 from 3:30-4:30 PM in the Main Office. Thank you for supporting MidSun!

Online Safety - Key Points

Here is a recap/additional key points related to yesterday’s session about online safety:

-Phishing through email- Never click suspicious links, even if they come from a friend or a company you know. This includes links sent through emails. If one of your friends clicks on spam they could accidentally send you that spam or tag you in a spam post. You also shouldn't download things (ex: a .exe file) if you aren’t sure what they are or who they are from.  Last year, some teachers in the CBE clicked on an email that they thought was from the CBE requesting their Username and Password. The credentials ended up with some hackers in China, and they used the CBE mail system to send out spam. Consequently, CBE Emails were black listed by many service providers for a short period.

-Phishing websites- Sometimes scammers will set up a fake page to look like a Social Network/Bank login/Company page, hoping to trick you into entering your user name and password. Make sure you check the page's URL (web address) before you enter your login info. When in doubt, you can always type the original website (i.e rbc.ca) into your browser to get to the real site

-Passwords-  Use combinations of at least eight letters (ideally 11), numbers and punctuation marks and don't use this password for any of your other accounts.  A password is great for smartphones tablets as well, but if you decide to go with a numeric code it is a good idea to use multiple digits and to periodically clean your screen (so fingerprints on your ‘code’ are not visible).

-Privacy Policies – It is a good idea to read and understand who ‘owns’ the information you post online. Last year there was a public uproar because a popular social media site was planning to sell pictures of it’s users because it ‘owned’ them:

                http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2249952/Facebook-sell-photos-Social-media-giant-claims-owns-rights-ALL-Instagram-pictures.html

-Never give out your login info (ex: email address and password). Sometimes people or pages will promise you something (ex: free poker chips) if you share your login info with them. These types of deals are carried out by cybercriminals and violate the social media terms. If you're ever asked to re-enter your password on any site (ex: you're making changes to your account settings) check to make sure the address of the page is still in the URL

-Be careful what you post online, and understand who has access to the information.  There are a variety of sites like https://pipl.com/ where you can type someone’s name and location, and have the site  check a variety of online databases (like Social Media Sites). It is used by employers to do background checks on people.

-Newer Technologies (Cellphones/Cameras/Tablets) have a GPS chip inside them. The GPS chip is used to add additional information to a picture (i.e Author/Location/Camera Type etc).  Photos that have this geotag information and that are shared with other people can be tracked back to you. The process is called GeoTagging.  Here is a site that shows how to disable geotag on Apple/Android Devices:

http://icanstalku.com/how.php

-Deleting yourself from Social Media –http://justdelete.me/ is a site that provides instructions and links to removing yourself from Social Media. If you decide to do this, it is a good idea to purge the contents of your online service.

-New Types of Computer  Viruses -  Hackers have the ability gain control of  your computer webcam without you even knowing. If you like, you can stick a piece of electrical tape (or a sticky) on your computer webcam.

There was a story on CNN about this last week:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/26/justice/miss-teen-usa-sextortion/index.html

-Have anti-virus software to protect yourself from viruses and malware you can go to a site like download.com to download  other free programs such as -  AVG Antivirus software

Interim Report Cards, Book Fair and Parent -Student-Teacher Interviews

Thank you to School council for funding a very informative parent information evening on Social Network Safety Wednesday night with Paul Davis.  We all went home and changed our passwords! Paul shared valuable advise on how to open the conversations with our children about their on line presence and the long term implications for our lives based on our digital footprints. Some safety tips will soon be posted on the parent page of our website.

It is hard to believe that the first mark update will be ready for parents to view on Home Logic on October 15-18, 2013. Our first parent-student-teacher interview and Book Fair will be held on October 21 and 24. Thanks to our School Council, we will be using the Conference Manager Software to book interviews with your teachers. Conference Manager booking time opens at 2:00 PM on October 16, 2013. It is recommended that you book 10 minutes (two consecutive 5 minute sessions) with core teachers and 5 minutes with complementary teachers. Parents should leave 5 minutes of travel time between interviews. A handout will be coming home with information on how to log onto Home Logic and Conference Manager. Instructions also appear on our blog.

Parent-Teacher Conferences

We are pleased to be using the Conference Manager to schedule Parent-Teacher Interviews using the Internet.

The link for the Conference Manager is:

https://midsun.schoolsoft.ca   (DO NOT include “www”)

A Parent Account is required to use the Conference Manager. However, you only need to go through the registration process the first time you use the system. If you have never registered in the Conference Manager use the link above and click the “Register Now” button.

Welcome to

Conference Manager

Even though the system is closed, you can still register and/or login to manage your profile and cancel or print your bookings

To book a conference, you must be a registered user.

Please enter your email address and password, or register now!

SUPPORT

For assistance contact: Midsun School 403 777-6430

To ensure that you receive emails from the Conference Manager, we recommend adding "appointments@schoolsoft.ca" to your Address Book.

Top of Form

LOGIN

EMAIL ADDRESS

PASSWORD

LOGIN

Forgot your password?

Bottom of Form

NOT REGISTERED?

Create a user profile by

registering now

REGISTER NOW

Can’t remember your password?

If you already have a Parent Account, click on the link above, select “Forgot your password” and enter the email address you used to register in the system. You will then receive an email containing instructions for resetting your password. If you do not receive an email, you might have entered an email address the system does not recognize. Please also add appointments@schoolsoft.ca to your address book in your computer mail.  This will over ride any spam filters that might be blocking the email. If the problem persists, please contact the office and ask them to access your Parent Account, confirm your email address and reset your password.

Step 1 - Conference Manager Opens to Parents – October 16, 2013

If you used the Conference Manager in the past, your email and password are still in the system. You can simply access the Conference Manager using the link above.

Step 2 – Book your Parent-Teacher interviews

Select the teachers with whom you want to book interviews. You will see each teacher’s schedule. After booking your appointments you can print off your schedule. You will also receive an email confirming your bookings. You can log into the system at any time to view your bookings, print, cancel or re-schedule appointments.

If you do not have Internet access, you are welcome to contact the office and we will schedule your conferences on your behalf.

Important Dates:

Oct 16 – Start scheduling your interviews at 2:00 pm

Oct 23 – Conference Manager closes at 3:00 pm

Oct 21 – Parent Teacher Interviews 2:00 pm – 4:30 pm, 5:30 pm – 8:30 pm

Oct 24 – Parent Teacher Interviews 5:30 pm – 8:00 pm

If you have any questions or need assistance, please feel free to contact the school.