We will continue to provide a balance of exceptional academics, arts and athletics. CDS will lead in outdoor educational experiences and environmental citizenship across all grades and offer a balanced approach to technology.
The Junior School Library hosted a wonderful event for our Grade 1 readers on Friday, May 3. Each year, as part of the ‘Paws for Stories’ program, volunteers from the St. Johns Ambulance Service Dogs visit our school with their four-legged partners to enjoy some stories with our young readers.
For years, CDS has offered a Cooking Club to its Senior School students. While the location always varied, sometimes in the staff kitchen or the kitchen behind the Performing Arts Centre, students had fun baking cookies or cupcakes, sometimes even crepes.
One of the primary principles at the heart of technology integration in the classroom is that the technology must fulfill an authentic purpose. The question must always be asked, “How can using the technology actually improve teaching outcomes or student learning”?
On October 2nd, our Grade 5 and 6 students were fortunate to have Blake Fly, co-founder of My Life Online, join us for a special presentation. My Life Online is a worldwide education platform that includes in-school workshops, Media Literacy curriculum, and programs for parents in an effort to bring students, educators, and parents together on the topic of Social Media.
Our Grade 1 students have been learning about monarch butterflies and how human development has impacted their habitats. They learned how planting milkweed seeds can give the monarchs a safe environment and can help to boost the monarch population. The classes decided that they wanted to help out any way that they could.
While technology, in general, has the capacity to execute common practices and processes faster, and thereby make them more efficient, its real transformative and paradigm-shifting power comes in the form of allowing students to view the world, subject matter and even themselves, in completely novel ways.
In February, a proposal was unveiled to create a 500-acre park on land to the southeast of CDS. This proposal, while celebrated, still requires extensive support from the provincial government to become a reality.
The CDS High School Robotics team, consisting of 15 members from Grades 9-12, made its debut at the First Robotics Competition this past weekend (March 2 - March 4) hosted at Georgian College in Barrie. Each year, the team designs and constructs a 120 lb robot to work in an alliance to complete different challenges. This year’s game was called “Power Up”, an arcade theme where human operators are trapped in a virtual game. The teams work to defeat a boss in order to escape the arcade.
A few months ago, Mme Colucci approached some CDS students in the hopes of starting the Senior School Eco Council again, and of course I jumped at the chance!
Lara Gee, Junior School Technology and Integration Specialist and Annie Dearden, Associate Teacher
During the first week of December, 139,329 Hour of Code events are taking place around the world, and 290 Junior School students at CDS participated in one of them!
Sheldon Rose, Director of Technology and Creativity
“Practicing” can be one of the most frustrating aspects of mastering a musical instrument. It seems that for all the many hours of solitary rehearsal, progress is slow and onerous. Although the process of regularized repetition is a well-recognized denominator in any skill acquisition activity, it is also the Quality and Deliberateness of that practice that matters more than simply the number of hours invested.
What is Digital Citizenship? How is this addressed in school? What should I do as a parent? Digital Citizenship is the concept of developing foundational habits of mind to use technology safely, responsibly and ethically, while still leveraging the benefits of collaborating and communicating in a globally connected world.
The Breakout EDU immersive learning games platform was introduced to the CDS faculty this past June at our custom Google Apps for Education professional development summit. It consists of a combination of physical and digital puzzle elements that must be solved in a race against the clock. Players are challenged to open the locked Breakout EDU box using their powers of critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.
On Monday morning, we were very excited to introduce our first Senior School Breakout Week to the students in assembly. This will take place from October 2-5, 2017, and is an excellent opportunity to break out of the classroom doors and take our educational journey to all sorts of exciting places.
On Saturday, February 11th, three CDS Robotics teams travelled to St. Michael’s College School in Toronto to compete in our second and final VEX tournament of the year. Out of a substantial number of competitors from schools across the GTA, the CDS Cyclones are proud of our impressive standings!
Sheldon Rose, Director of Technology and Creativity
While laptops are certainly the star of the show in the modern classroom, there are a multitude of peripheral devices and software platforms that have become invaluable assistants to the individual learner at CDS. Technology with balance means considering and applying the most appropriate digital hardware or software for the tasks at hand - and there are many fantastic learning solutions to be selected from and benefited from.
On Tuesday this week, 27 Middle School girls took part in a six-hour coding marathon where they worked in teams of three to create a video game. They had to incorporate the theme of gravity into this programming task, which resulted in a lot of references to Bugs Bunny, outer space and falling objects.
This week, 151,339 Hour of Code events are taking place around the world, and thanks to our Technology Integration Specialist Lara Gee and new Associate Junior School teacher Annie Dearden, 280 Junior School students at CDS participated in one of them!
Founded in 1972, The Country Day School is a co-educational private school offering programs in JK-12 and located on 100 acres north of Toronto in King.