Good afternoon, Ian Bazalgette Community.
As we conclude Thanksgiving weekend, I want to take a moment to express our gratitude for the incredible school community we share. This season of thanks reminds us of the many things for which to be grateful, and to think about the well-being of others. We appreciate the hard work and resilience our students show every day.
We are thankful for your unwavering support, which plays a vital role in the success and well-being of our students. Your involvement and dedication make our school a nurturing environment where our children can thrive.
Demographic Forms are Now Overdue
If you have not already completed your annual demographic form, please log onto your MyCBE account and click on Online Forms which will bring you to the demographic and consent forms. It is important to recognize these forms are a legal requirement from Alberta Education and affects funding.
School Fees
School fees for Term 1/Semester 1 option/complementary course fees have been applied to the students accounts in MyCBE.
Please pay as soon as possible.
More information about school fees can be found here. For information about Fee Waivers and the requirements are located here.
Remembrance Day Assembly Request
As part of this year's Remembrance Day Assembly, we would like to honour our own school community's veterans who have served in Canada's Armed Forces in the past.
For this, we are kindly asking if you could share a digital picture with us of any of your family members that are serving or have served Canada (please specify their relationship to the Ian Bazalgette student). If you have a photo to share, please send it to Ms. Shurvell at ajshurvell@cbe.ab.ca.
We will put together a slide show to honour our Ian Baz family in our assembly!
Thank you in advance for your contributions.
Scent-Free Environment
Please help us to keep the air we share healthy and fragrance-free. Chemicals used in scented products can make some people sick, especially those with fragrance sensitivities, asthma, allergies, and other medical conditions.
Please ask your student to refrain from wearing perfume, cologne, aftershave, and other fragrances at school. Also, help them to understand that these products should never be sprayed in the classroom, the hallway, or anywhere in the school.
Thank you for supporting our teaching and learning at Ian Bazalgette School.
Dressing for the Fall Weather
With the incredible weather we have been having it is hard to believe it is Fall. However, we know that Fall weather is approaching, and students need to be prepared for changing weather. Please ensure your child is dressed in layers to support the outdoor learning and lunch opportunities we offer each day. This is a great time to remind all students to swing by the lost and found to find those items they left outdoors during a warm lunch break.
Steven Pike
Principal
Ian Bazalgette School
Ian Bazalgette Newsletter Oct. 14-18
See Related Information for more links.
Personal Mobile Device & Social Media Use in Schools
The implementation of personal mobile devices and social media use in schools is now one month old. We have spent the month educating students about the reasons why this has been implemented in Alberta, and increasingly around the world. It has been mostly good, with students and parents commenting on improved learning and better student behaviour and mental health. In the months going forward, we will now follow the follow guidelines [Continue Reading]
Honouring Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Being and Doing
Ian Bazalgette Staff acknowledges and supports the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Calls to Action. Read our Truth and Reconciliation Commitment.
Honouring Life Program
Permission letters have been sent home with self-identifying indigenous students for the Honouring Life Program. This is held in the Indigenous Learning Space in Room 205 every other Tuesday morning from 10-11 a.m. and is led by two great facilitators from the Calgary Aboriginal Friendship Centre. There is room for 25 students to join this amazing program. It will continue from September 24 and be bi-weekly until the end of the school year.
Letters must be returned with a parental/guardian signature to attend.
What's Happening In… ?
Research on best adolescent learning has shown importance must be given to creating curricular learning tasks that bring independent ideas and facts together under larger unified concepts - showing how what we learn applies to the world. This year, we will be trisecting the year under three conceptual lenses, using Niitsitapi values (Blackfoot Nation; Piikani, Kainai, Siksika) as guiding thoughts. These big ideas include being aware of the environment though observation, that our universe often contains balance, and that we should aim to transfer what we know to others.
1. Kakyosin | Be aware of your environment; be observant
2. Aoahkannaistokawa | Everything comes in pairs (balance)
3. Pommotsiiysinni | To transfer something to others
Grade 7
ELA
- READING - Students will continue working in book clubs with the novel, Front Desk and The Barren Grounds (in the case of two grade 7 classes). They will have opportunities to hold discussions, ask questions, build vocabulary, and make predictions within their group. This will develop their leadership and conversation skills while working together to build comprehension.
- WRITING - Students will continue to develop their expository writing skills. They will use graphic organizers to ensure their paragraph writing is structured appropriately, and then self-edit and peer-edit using checklists and rubrics.
SCIENCE
Students have been reviewing concepts from grade 6 involving food chains and food webs. This week students will wrap up food chains and food webs before starting nutrient cycles. Some classes will write a quiz this week while other classes wrote a quiz last week. Ask your child what the difference is between producers, consumers, and decomposers.
MATH
Students will continue their learning of integers. They will work on understanding and comparing integers using a number line. We may go for a community walk to the ridge this week depending on the weather so please ensure your child is dressed appropriately.
SOCIAL STUDIES
Grade 7 Students are completing their Indigenous peoples of Canada Research Poster which will be presented in class. They will begin examining maps of North America to identify Indigenous peoples' settlements before they made connections with the Europeans.
Grade 8
ELA
- READING - Students will continue building their comprehension skills with a class read-aloud. After listening to the novel, students will have opportunities to hold discussions, ask questions, build vocabulary, and make predictions within their group. The novels chosen for each class connect to the Social Studies curriculum and are intended to deepen their understanding of worldview.
- WRITING - Students will continue to develop their expository writing skills. They will use graphic organizers to ensure their paragraph or essay writing is structured appropriately. Each student will self- assess their writing with an outcome-based rubric and then have a one-on-one writing conference with their teacher.
SCIENCE
Students have been learning about the different ways to separate mixtures. This week, students will review and write an assessment focusing on concepts they have learned so far. This includes the particle model of matter, the classification of matter, solubility, and separation methods.
MATH
Students will finish their learning of percents and write a final assessment on Wednesday. Students will start reviewing integers later in the week.
SOCIAL STUDIES
This week in Social Studies, students will complete their personal examination of worldviews and begin to examine Medieval Europe, while working on their note taking skills. Students will be exploring the social structure of Feudalism and how the Black Death impacted European worldviews.
Grade 9
ELA
Grade 9 students will complete their circle talk activity this week. A Ted Talk from Cree Hoop Dancer world champion and motivational speaker, Dallas Arcand preceded this activity to help students understand the meaning and value of the concept of circle in everyday living. Students will also work on supporting paragraphs of an explanatory essay. They will also work on reading comprehension activities around the short story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. The Daily Five activities of writing, reading and word work are done in several ways throughout the week.
SCIENCE
Students will be solidifying their understanding on biotechnologies by reviewing evolution by natural selection and comparing the process of artificial selection. We will also be looking at other biotechnologies around genetics including genetically modified foods, genetic engineering, gene splicing, and cloning.
MATH
Students will have the opportunity to review their solutions from the rational numbers unit assessment. We will also continue practicing how to represent powers and apply the product and quotient rules to simplify them. By the end of the week, we will predict bacterial growth using exponents.
SOCIAL STUDIES
Students will complete presentations of their bills for their mock House of Commons. They are expected to demonstrate their knowledge of the federal government, and its three branches through a bill proposal on an issue facing Canadians. Grade 9 students are expected to persuade an audience concerning their perspective through the speech presentations.
Complimentary Courses
What’s happening in Computer Science?
Q: Why was there a bug in the computer? Answer: Because it was looking for a byte to eat?
In the second week of October, Computer Science students continued to participate in the Minecraft design theme “Nightmare before Christmas” image build. Moving forward, with the theme build “Nightmare before Christmas”, students will transition into Adobe Animate and create
Looking into October, students in Computer Science will continually complete independent work in the following four areas: 3D printing, Coding, Designing and Robotics. Students will be learning how to 3D print, and create their own gadgets. Students will experience guided design projects based off of the processes that real-world professionals go through every day.
What’s happening in Foods?
This week in Foods, we continued our Baking Unit. We looked at Bannock - a bread that symbolizes resilience within Indigenous communities. Bannock has become a staple at gatherings, ceremonies and community events, serving as a tangible connection to ancestral knowledge.
Theory:
Students were asked to listen to a CBC video that talked about the history of Bannock. Students were then shown a cooking video on how to make Bannock. We also talked about ingredients from the land that were used to make Bannock and breads, such as camas bulbs, lichen, moss, cattails, roasted acorns and other plants and roots that were Indigenous to traditional territories.
This week in the kitchen:
Students made Bannock and they had a choice to eat their delicious warm Bannock with butter, jam or cinnamon sugar.
Friday Career Chats:
We looked at the careers of a Dietitian and a Baker.
I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving weekend! Rested up, relaxed, and enjoyed the time with your friends and family.
What’s happening in Drama and Leadership?
Drama
This week in Drama we will begin our voice acting unit. Students will work in groups to choose a script and create puppets to act it out. Students will be tasked with relying on the vocal techniques and character development strategies taught in class to create their own group voice-acting performance.
Leadership
This week in Leadership, students will continue their work on public speaking by researching, writing, and rehearsing their own informative speeches. Each speech should be around one minute and will help demonstrate speaking skills and techniques that were taught in class.
What’s happening in Construction?
In construction students in grade 7 are finishing their first project and beginning their second set project of the semester. Students in grades 8 and 9 are wrapping up their first projects and starting to design their own projects. Students can choose to design their own project or pick from the list of set projects. Some of the project’s students have done in the past is things like pens, cutting boards, bowls, chess boards and pieces, and more!
In addition to projects, students in construction also could join The Clean Up Club Thursdays at lunch. This is a time for them to come and help me with cleaning and other tasks around the shop.
What’s happening in Art?
Grade 7
Students will finish transferring the contour lines of their portrait photographs and identifying 4 values that are present on their black and white portraits.
They will then copy their values onto their transferred faces and begin to shade and modify their drawings.
Grade 8 and 9
Art students will finish learning about oil pastels by adding their final values and blended colors into their eyes to produce their final oil pastel artworks.
Physical Education and Intramurals
Physical Education
We are continuing to have PE classes outdoors. Ensure your students are dressed appropriately as we will be outside, rain or shine.
Classes will begin working through Lacrosse, Cricket, Field Hockey and Golf units.
School Intramurals
Dodgeball Intramurals: this is the week for dodgeball intramurals. All dodgeball players will be playing on both Tuesday and Thursday.