The Elementary Student Success Department has much to celebrate this year including #ocsb5things!
1. Supporting and celebrating French It was so exciting to be able to provide students with La BiblioVirtuelle– a virtual library with French books created for students by students within the Ottawa Catholic School Board. We added many new books to the collection this year. It was also an honour to celebrate “Le mois de la francophonie” for the first time as a school board this March! It was a great opportunity for OCSB families to join the celebration of the francophone community in Canada! (Amelie Roy, French as a Second Language (FSL) Consultant & FSL Team)
2. Celebrating the Arts This year’s #ocsbArts month was a great way to celebrate creativity and innovation at the OCSB! Students, parents and staff participated in daily creative activities on Twitter like the Photo Challenge and Daily Doodle. It was so wonderful to see parents and children working on art projects together (Kristen Charles, Arts Consultant)
3. Students soaring to new heights in math It was so amazing to see students accessing math from home with educational online resources like Zorbit’s Math Adventure and Mathletics! (Kim Lacelle, Coordinator & Math Team)
4. Readers today, leaders tomorrow! Throughout the year our students in elementary schools continued to develop literacy skills, one of the most essential skills they will carry with them for their whole life! We were so impressed by the number of students keeping up on their reading by using RAZ kids! (Colleen MacDonald, Coordinator & Literacy Team)
5. Engaging early learners During the pandemic, our staff used a variety of online tools to engage our youngest learners and their families. Our EarlyON programs shared songs, fingerplays, recipes, open-ended art activities, and resources on social media to support families with little ones at home. Many of our Ottawa Catholic Child Care Corporation programs (reopening July 6) created YouTube channels with videos of staff reading bedtime stories, crafts, science experiments and well-wishes videos. Some programs dropped off rocks in front of our centres so families could come and pick them up to paint and spread around the community. Almost every program posted inspirational messages and activity ideas for families on Twitter. We also saw great photos that families shared with us on Twitter of their children enjoying the planned activities or little ones snuggled up in pj’s watching their educators read them a good night story.
Many thanks to our Elementary Student Success team for sharing their #ocsb5things highlights, now it’s your turn! Share your list on social media, or comment below!