The 5th grade Dutch Language and Culture students happily wrote their very first letter to Sinterklaas! With help of the 5th grade teachers, all letters were sent off to Spain last week. We are all really looking forward to December 6th, which is Sinterklaas’ birthday! For more information about Sinterklaas, please visit www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/belgium/ By Sabine Demyttenaere, Dutch teacher Continue reading Grade 5 students get ready for Sinterklaas

For the unit of inquiry, “How We Organize Ourselves – Communities depend on everyone co-operating to achieve the same goal”, the grade 1 students have been looking at the school-wide community and investigating how it is organized. The students have prepared questions in small groups and interviewed people from different roles across the whole school. They have discovered who are the members of our community, what their responsibilities are and researched into what they do to help us in our goal of learning together. This unit has allowed the students to get to know people from our larger school community … Continue reading Grade 1 investigates how communities are organized

What do Elementary School Peacemakers Do? The peacemakers are trained to be out on the playgrounds ready to help if there is a problem between students or if there is an argument.  Being a peacemaker is about helping the students or the friends to solve conflicts and arguments themselves by helping them to talk about what happened. We can explain how maybe what they did or said could hurting someone else’s feelings.  Samuel – Grade 5 We help them to say sorry and have a handshake so that whatever was the matter is finished and done so that they don’t … Continue reading Conflict resolution by Elementary School student peacemakers

We are raising money for the men’s health charity “The Movember Foundation”. We learned about it last November from our Grade 4 teacher who grew a moustache to support the charity. He was part of the campaign for men to grow moustaches in November to raise awareness for men’s cancer. We decided to support the charity again this year by making moustaches from clay or card and selling them at recess time. The students can support their teachers and the charity by buying a moustache from us all this week. Alice and Lisa – Grade 5 students Continue reading Grade 5 students say “November = Movember!”

As part of our community service, Middle School Students will be participating again in our annual local Food Drive.  We partner with the Banque Alimentaire Bruxelles-Brabant.  Last year was a great success. The St. John’s community was able to provide food parcels to 35 families in the Waterloo region. The students learned about food budgeting, local needs, hunger and food security in general. As part of our Pastoral Advisory and French curriculum, we intend to build on that understanding and extend this knowledge again for our students. Grade 6 and 8 children will be responsible to collect and organize the donations … Continue reading Middle School students participate in local Food Drive

Dr. Michel Thieren, World Health Organization (WHO) representative and a St. John’s parent, presented to the Middle School students today to discuss the refugee crisis. He addressed the refugee situation in terms of current events and related it to the work the WHO is doing, putting it into perspective at a level of understanding for Middle School students. Dr. Thieren graduated as Doctor of Medicine in 1988, obtained his Diploma in Tropical Medicine in 1989 and a Master’s in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University in 1997. He began a field career in humanitarian action with Medecins Sans Frontieres in … Continue reading WHO representative shares refugee crisis perspective with students

The fall ISST tournaments showed the high level of competition of the St. John’s fall sports teams. Both the cross country and boys soccer teams won last year’s ISST championship to promote to Division 1. Competition in division 1 is fierce and most schools are substantially bigger than St. John’s. The main goal for our boys and girls volleyball, boys soccer and cross country teams was to stay in the division 1. Our girls soccer team is in Division 2 and had higher aspirations, perhaps even a top 3 finish. In the end, the fall ISSTs were very successful for … Continue reading High level performance by the St. John’s fall ISST teams

As part of our Religious Education curriculum, the grade two students learned about one another while playing a game of pass the parcel! Each student had the chance to unwrap the parcel and tell about a way that their family celebrates during the Christmas season. Building a community relies on each one of us doing our part to accept each other through cooperation and engaged active listening. As children share their own stories of special traditions, we all have the chance to be included and feel appreciated in this diverse and caring community. The Grade 2 teacher Continue reading “Pass the parcel” helps students understand special traditions

The MHS library has created a remembrance wall display for Armistice day. This wall represents what happened to Ypres during the war and what it is now. Reminding us that it is more than just a tourist destination. There are areas on the wall display for comments about or remembrance of fallen family members during any conflict. We would like to encourage all students, parents and staff members to visit the wall and add your thoughts and prayers to the Lest we Forget posters. In addition a book display has been created under the theme of remembrance and contains young … Continue reading Remembering Armistice Day in the MHS Library

In the spring, a project was started, with extensive support from parents, to raise funds to install floodlights on the sports field. This would allow for after school activities for our Elementary students to take place on the field and for our sports teams to have their practices later in the afternoon. Generous donations by the Parent Teacher Program, Booster Program and individual parents, as well as several successful events raised the funds in just a few months. The plan was to install the lights over the summer but a delay in commune approval meant we could only install them … Continue reading Floodlights on the sports field allow more playing time for St. John’s students

St. John’s has a rich history with the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program. It was one of the first schools to offer the IB and the school achieves consistently high results. For the past three years, between 78% and 82% of our students have completed the full IB diploma with a pass rate between 94% and 98%. We asked our alumni who completed the IB what they see as the main benefits of the program. The top 3 benefits according to our alumni: Knowledge in the various subjects (69%) Critical thinking skills (65%) Academic writing skills (58%) Rounding out the top 5 answers were … Continue reading St. John’s alumni share views on benefits of the IB

The St. John’s cross country team competed in the DoDDS European Championships, held at Baumholder High School in Kaiserslautern (Germany) on Saturday. The results were outstanding as the girls won team gold and our boys took the team silver! Kayla took individual first place, breaking her 6th course record of the year. She was followed by Sofia in 2nd place. Both girls were named “1st team All Europe” and Kayla was also voted MVP runner of the meet. Other good performances from Sara and Miranda secured the gold for the Lions! On the boys side Isaiah led the way, followed by Hidde, Pierre-Louis … Continue reading St. John’s cross country athletes crowned European champions!