Message from Administration Another month has come and gone at Monsignor Doyle. We celebrated the last day before Lent on Shrove Tuesday and humbly starting our faith journey during Lent. Thank you to all our volunteers who helped dish out the pancakes and a special thank you to our Knights of Columbus from St. Peter’s church who brought grills and chefs who flipped pancakes from 7:00am until all were fed. Our Ash Wednesday liturgy was on February 14th at 1:30pm, led by Mrs. Braaten’s grade 3 class and Miss Poole’s Grade 3/2 class. Ms. Pham’s grade 2 class will lead our Holy Thursday liturgy at 9:30am on Thursday March 29th. Our Easter holiday will be from Good Friday March 30th to Friday April 6th. Classes resume on Monday April 9th.

We are looking forward to seeing many of you at our Parent Teacher Conferences on Wednesday March 21st from 4:00 to 7:00pm or Thursday March 22nd from 9:00-12:00 and 1:00 to 3:00. Appointments will be made online and instructions will be included in your child’s Progress Report along with their ID.

Linda Foo, Principal and Lisa Altrogge, Assistant Principal

We have been connecting with the students in our school and will continue to connect daily. Students connect not only to their classroom teacher but our support staff and other staff members as well. We explained “What is a Champion?” Someone who is there to talk to, someone to share good news with, and is there to help you and support you. They appreciate who you are as a unique creation of God’s. Jesus is our ultimate teacher of life and his stories teach us how to live the right way. He is the best hero and champion God has given us. We have various activities throughout the year to facilitate our champions connecting with each other.

MONSIGNOR DOYLE SCHOOL NEWSLETTER 8887 Scurfield Drive, NW Calgary, Alberta T3L 1H6 Phone: 403-500-2098 / fax: 403-500-2298 http://www.cssd.ab.ca/msgrdoyle/

MARCH 2018

CHAMPIONS

Progress Report go home on Friday March 16th, 2018, so please check your child’s backpack!

Parent Teacher Interviews will be on Wednesday, March 21st from 4:00–7:00pm, and all day on Thursday, March 22nd from 9:00am – 12:00pm, and 1:00 to 3:00 pm.

There are NO CLASSES on Thursday March 22nd, and Friday March 23rd, 2018 is a Professional Development day.

Our grade 2 to grade 5 classes went to a special Be Brave Hitmen game on Tuesday February 27th at the Saddledome. We filled two sections and the students participated in a flash mob dance and listened to Mackenzie Murphy who was cyber bullied as a teen and worked to get legislation to stop cyber bullying. She had to embrace her own power and used her support system at school to become a survivor. We also heard Constable Tad Milmine speak about being brave and giving yourself a chance. It helps to be a hero to others and to reach out to those around you when you need it. We all need help sometimes. The kids help phone had a booth reminding students that they can call 1-800-668-6868 or go to KidsHelpPhone.ca for assistance.

We will be brave for each other and stand up to bullying.

The next School Council meeting will be on Thursday, March 1st at 6:30pm. Please consider coming to the meeting to be engaged in your children’s school and become aware of all that goes on.

The February Healthy Children and Health Teens newsletters (French and English) are now available online at http://www.albertahealthservices.ca/info/Page9539.aspx.

SCHOOL COUNCIL

PROGRESS REPORT

BE BRAVE HITMEN ANTI-BULLYING EVENT

HEALTHY CHILDREN NEWSLETTER

Online registration is available at: www.st-peters.ca

At time of registration you are asked to provide a copy of your child’s baptismal certificate and the requested $25.00 registration fee. Cash or cheque please! For questions or more information contact sacraments@st-peters.ca

School-Age Baptisms at St. Peter’s – Spring Session – Grades 2-5

At the end of this process, your child will receive the Sacrament of Baptism with a full understanding of what they are undertaking, and they will be well prepared to live as a young Catholic Christians. Journals and all required materials will be supplied.

Baptism is required before receiving any other Sacraments.

The process is intended for those students seeking Baptism who are attending Catholic schools in grades 2-5, their parents, and godparents. It will take place Thursdays, April 19th to May 3rd, 2018, 6 pm -7:30 pm at St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church. Check-in will begin at 5:45 pm.

Required Paperwork

To be registered for Baptism for School Age Children, we will need:

A copy of at least one parent’s Baptism Record

The full name of your child’s Sponsor (also called the God parent)

The sponsor’s Catholic Confirmation Record

The completed Registration Form (will be e-mailed to you upon request)

Please ensure that all of this information is in Judith’s Office by no later than April 12th, 2018

Please contact Judith McRae at St. Peter’s today to get your Registration form, class schedule, and answers to all your questions.

We reserve the right to close registrations early if the classes fill up prior to the registration deadline.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Judith McRae, Coordinator – 403-286-5110, ext. 109 – FFC@st-peters.ca

ST. PETER’S SACRAMENTS

Friday is pick up day if you have any cartons, bottles or cans you would like to contribute to the school for the Learning Commons. Please leave your bags by the green bins near the parking lot. We thank the team of parents who come and recycle the bottles weekly. So far this year we have collected over $500!

We hosted the annual Knights of Columbus Basketball Free Throw Competition and many of our students participated. Congratulations to these students who participated: Anne Cyriac, Bryce Delay, Bennett Andersen, Miles Thompson, Nana Kwegyir Aggrey, Douglas Gibson, Noah Kisser, Vanessa Cruz, Lorelie Rennie and Fiona Rennie.

We would also like to congratulate our age group winners: Bryce Delay, Miles Thompson, Vanessa Cruz, Noah Kisser and Anne Cyriac.

SOME IMPORTANT DATES

NO SCHOOL March 22 Parent Teacher Conferences (K-6)

March 23 Professional Development Day

March 30 – April 8 Easter Break

May 18 Professional Development Day

May 21 Victoria Day

June 28 Last Day of Classes – FULL DAY

RECYCLING

KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS FREE THROW

How Are We Doing? We would appreciate any feedback you can

offer on what is happening in our school. (Name and phone optional)

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School Speech Language Services

February 2018

Morphological Awareness

Morphological awareness is the recognition, understanding and use of meaningful word parts

(morphemes). To be aware, you need to explicitly think about the smallest units of awareness in

language.

Morphemes include:

base words—a base word is a complete word that can stand on its own ( bird, cat , house)

roots—a root is the very basic part of a word and does not stand alone (cycl, phon)

prefixes—a word part (affix) added to the beginning of the word that changes the meaning of the

word (re-, un-, dis-, mis-...)

suffixes - a word part (affix) added to the end of the word that changes the meaning of the word

(-s, -ed, -ing, -tion, -al)

Morphemes can be added, or deleted from a word to change its meaning.

Examples of morphemes: look-ed poke-s runn-ing runn-er re-act de-duct-ion micro-bio-logy auto-graph-ed

Morphology is an important building block for reading fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling.

In addition to reading and spelling, it is an important component of vocabulary building.

Morphological awareness instruction helps all students (aged 5-11), but especially those struggling with reading/spelling, language delayed students, and English Language Learners.

Start Early! Morphological teaching used to be reserved for middle grades and junior high. There is strong research

suggesting the importance of morphological teaching as early as first and second grade. (Apel and

Laurence 2011).

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How does morphological awareness help in reading and spelling?

Evidence shows that students learn phonics, phonology and morphology in concert

rather than in stages. Strong morphological skills allow students to approach a

multisyllabic word and break it into parts in order to predict the meaning.

Even for young students with good phonological representation in their spelling—

morphological awareness helps. Let’s look at the following sentences: she was biteeng

the bigist cookie. I preedikt that the pianist will have stopt the song. The kenductir is in

the oditoriem. With understanding of morphemes, the sentences would look much

different!

Morphological awareness in division II

Morphological awareness can help students identify and understand difficult academic

vocabulary. In academic text, a larger portion of the vocabulary words tend to be

unfamiliar words composed of multiple morphemes (root word +one or more suffixes

and prefixes). If a student has strong morphological awareness skills, he can problem

solve what these words might mean by thinking about each of the individual

morphemes, then “blending” those meanings together to determine the word’s

meaning.

By grade 5, students come across at least 27 difficult and less common words every day

that require knowledge beyond phonics (Anglin 1993).

Phonemic awareness

Letter sounds

Syllable division rules

Morphological awareness

When teaching reading touch ALL the bases!

Home Run!

Meaning

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Morphological Awareness in the Classroom

You can work on morphological awareness indirectly in your classroom– taking apart words as they come up

in subjects (e.g. Take the word ‘predict’. Tell the student –let’s break it apart. If ‘dict’ means ‘say’, what

do you think it means if we add ‘pre’ on the front…)

All students benefit from having morphemes brought to their attention. Students with language delays and

disabilities, struggling readers, ELL students all benefit from direct instruction in this area. Try any of the

activities below in your class!

PREFIX STAND-UP!: When looking for a volunteer, and several students raise their hands…Give each

volunteer a word, only one of which has a prefix in it. Then, the student with the prefix word is the

volunteer!

WORD CHALLENGE OF THE DAY: Have students guess the meaning of the Word of the Day based on

morphemes. For example, “If auto means self, and graph means write, what do you think autograph

would mean?”. You can find words lists at: http://www.neilramsden.co.uk/spelling/searcher/index.html

ALL-DAY-LONG: Throughout the day, re-gard-less of the class-room lesson/subject, under-line or box out

word part-s.

WORD WEBS: Create word webs from new words encountered during classroom instruction. (For

example, the root: MAN (meaning “hand”)--- manual/manually, manipulate/manipulated/manipulative,

manufacture, manuscript.) Then ask the students to use these words during classroom activities. You

can do the same. Hopefully you will be manufacturing new words all day long!

WORD-BUILDER GAME: Give half the class a card with an affix, and the other half a card with a root word.

Ask students to find a partner to make a correct word. Ask them to write down the words they build and

try to make as many as possible. (There are bonus points for having more than one affix.) Alternatively,

provide students with a definition and have them build the word that matches. For example, “Can you

build a word that means under water?” (Answer: sub-marine). Let kids have silly time with this. Have

them build alien words and decide what they might mean. Untall, presleep...

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The Florida Centre for Reading Research ( fcrr.org ) has great ready to go activities to

help teach morphology in your classroom. They are found under phonics and under

vocabulary when searching classroom centers. There are activities for every grade

level.

How SLPs support students struggling with morphological delays/disorders

Students presenting with language delays and disorders often struggle with morphology.

Talk to your SLP about whether a referral is indicated. When SLPs run non referred groups to build vocabulary or to build general language

skills, morphological awareness is often a component.

SLPs support teachers and families with ideas and activities for incorporating morphological awareness into everyday activities.

Please feel free to copy the next page to send home to families.

MorphologicalAwareness

reading spelling vocabulary

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Helping your Child Read– it’s not just about sounding out letters!

When you help your child think and learn about morphemes, you will be helping them to improve their

reading skills.

Let’s look at spelling the word hopped. To a beginner speller it might come out as hopt. Once your child

learns that past tense is created by adding the morpheme ed to a word, he will have another spelling tool

to use…

When practicing spelling and reading at home, teach morpheme rules to help you out!

Morphemes are word parts that carry meaning. Prefixes and Suffixes are added to the beginning or ends

of words to change meaning.

Help your child understand by working prefixes and suffixes into your everyday routine:

Tommy, your shoes are undone. Un means not so I’m saying your shoes are not done up!

Sally, if you want more than one cookie, you have to add an s—may I have cookies?

Tommy, you will have to rewrite that homework. Re means do again so I’m saying you need to write that

again.

Sally, if someone who teaches is a teacher, what do we call someone who bakes? A baker!

You can find some fun videos on YouTube to help explain prefixes and

suffixes by searching those words.

Make up a flip book with prefixes and suffixes and have fun making real and

silly words. Untall? What do you think that would mean?

Examples of Common prefixes: Example of Common Suffixes

Un (not, opposite of) e.g. undone S, es,(plural) e.g. books

Re (again) e.g. rewrite Ed (past-tense verbs) e.g. walked

En (cause to) e.g. enrage Ing (verb form) e.g. walking

Over (too much) e.g. overeat Er (person connected to) e.g. teacher

1000 Fifth Avenue SW, Calgary, Alberta T2P 4T9 403-500-2000 www.cssd.ab.ca

CALGARY CATHOLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT MONTHLY NEWS

ConnectionsMARCH 2018

Canada’s Outstanding Principals

We are pleased to announce that three of our principals were recognized as Canada’s Outstanding Principals of 2018! Frank Durante from Notre Dame High School, Patricia Makowski from Christ the King School and Norman Martin from Bishop Grandin High School were the three exceptional principals recognized from Alberta and from the 40 educators chosen nationwide. Visit our website under News to learn more.

March Parent & Trustee Forum

Spend an evening with Dr. Jody Carrington, a psychologist and human relationship specialist. In this repeat session, learn how connection and conversation with our children can be the most pow-erful tool to help children become better students.

When: Tuesday, March 13, 2018Where: Coast Plaza Hotel (1316 – 33 Street NE)Time: 7–9 p.m.

RSVP to your school principal by March 8, 2018

Diploma Preparation Courses

The Calgary Catholic School District is now offering diploma preparation courses for April diploma exams. The purpose of the diploma preparation program is to provide students with critical insights into the diploma test-taking process and to review specific curriculum that may appear on a diploma exam. Diploma preparation course teachers have extensive experience with both teaching and pre-paring students for diploma exams. There is a maximum of 30 students per instructor. Please note that classes may be cancelled or combined with another location if minimum registration num-bers are not met. The cost is $60 for nine hours of instruction. There are no refunds except in cases where a class is cancelled. Visit our website under Students/Academic Support/Diploma Preparation Courses for more information.

Registered Apprenticeship Program (RAP) & Skilled Trades Fair

The Calgary Catholic School District, in collaboration with the Calgary Board of Education and Careers: The Next Generation, invites all parents and students to attend the Registered Apprentice-ship Program (RAP) and Skilled Trades Fair. This event provides students with the opportunity to explore career possibilities in the skilled trades industries.There are two opportunities for students and parents to attend:

• North: Wednesday, March 7, 2018 at James Fowler High School from 6:30–8 p.m.• East: Tuesday, March 20, 2018 at Father Lacombe High school from 6:30–8 p.m.

Visit our website under News for more information.

Spring Break 2018

All Calgary Catholic schools and administrative offices will be closed for Spring Break beginning on Friday, March 30 and will re-open on Monday, April 9. Enjoy your time off!

Did you know?

Our CCSD schools that offer special programs like Fine Arts, French Immersion and Span-ish Bilingual hold open houses to allow the community to learn more. Visit our website under News to view dates and times.

From left: Frank Durante,

Patricia Makowski,

Norman Martin