Colts Connection For Parents

Thank you to all the amazing volunteers at our school. We know lives are busy and not everyone is able to volunteer during a school day, but we greatly appreciate those who can. We have parents, grandparents, grandparents of former students, and former students who volunteer in our school.

We have had a group of parents dive into cleaning up and refreshing the front our Bright Futures Play Academy entrance, a group who picks up and divides up food for our snack program, many different community members who volunteer to be in-school mentors, a parent who came and reorganized and cleaned out a classroom library, as well as parents who join us on field trips. We are so fortunate to have such great community support of our school.

- Mr. McEntee

Under the Public Health Act, schools are required to report to Alberta Health Services when absences due to illness are more than 10% of the total student population. Last week we met that threshold and since then our absences due to illness have been at 20% of our student population. We made adjustments based on recommendations from Alberta Health Services and the Center for Disease Control to help mitigate the spread of the illness, like increased cleaning of high touch areas, increased hand hygiene, asking parents/guardians to keep their children at home if they are sick or have symptoms, and avoiding large gatherings like our Halloween Costume Parade. We are still in communication with Alberta Health Services and following their recommendations, assuming the number of absences due to illness drop, the date where we are no longer in "Outbreak Status" is November 14th.

We thank everyone for your understanding as we do our best to keep everyone healthy and able to learn at school.

PES is using a new company for student pictures, Edge Imaging. Proofs as well as ordering information was sent home in October. Retakes for all students are on November 8th. If your child is in Kindergarten or Bright Futures and they are not scheduled to be at school that day, you can bring your child in to have retakes done.

Ponoka Elementary School's Remembrance Day Ceremony will be held on November 9th at 10:45 am.

A reminder that you can access your child(ren)'s progress in your Parent Portal (see direction below). This progress will be updated regularly throughout the year.

Alberta Education has changed how teachers assess the needs of students whose English is an Additional Language (this was formerly known as English as a Second Language, however, many of our students who are new English speak more than 1 language before learning English).

Any student whose primary language is not English is required to have a English Proficiency Benchmark completed and a Program Plan indicating the accommodations and teaching strategies used to support their level of English proficiency. If you are a parent of a child whose first language is not English, you will be contacted by your child's teacher to go through the program plan and sign off on the plan.

Currently at Ponoka Elementary there 12 different languages spoken in our school.

Ponoka Elementary School Council Society has partnered with the Edmonton Oil Kings to help raise money to offset the costs of the maintenance of our playground. Tickets to the Sunday, December 3rd, Edmonton Oil Kings vs. Moose Jay Warriors game can be purchased through your Parent Portal for $23/ticket. $3 from each ticket goes to Ponoka Elementary School to help us offset the cost of repairing the platter swings on our playground.

We know parking and/or finding a spot to let your child out to get to school is a premium in the morning and we appreciate everyone finding different areas to drop their child off to reduce congestion at the front of the school. That being said, the staff at the Brick Learning Center (Brick Building on the northeast corner of the block) are unable to find a parking spot as parents who are dropping their children off are parked in the staff parking area directly in front of the building. We ask that you please make sure those spots are available for staff at the Brick Learning Centre. Thank you for attending to this.

Just on time for Christmas and who doesn't love some really great chocolate? I do... my favorite are the dark chocolate Sweet Georgia Browns, YUMMY!

Scan the code to shop online and enter the campaign #51271. Orders must be placed and paid for by November 15.

Thank you for supporting the Ponoka Elementary School Society!

November 8 - Picture Retakes

November 8 - School Council Meeting 6:00 pm

November 9 - Remembrance Day Ceremony

November 10 - No School - Parent Teacher Interview In Lieu Day

November 11 - Remembrance Day

November 13 - No School - Remembrance Day in Lieu Day

November 13 - Edmonton Oil Kings Ticket Purchase Deadline

November 15 - Purdy's Chocolates Order Deadline

November 15 - Subway Hot Lunch Orders Due

November 25 - No School - Professional Development Day

November 29 - Subway Hot Lunch

November 30 - November Awesome Awards Assembly