Your Child and his School

He is five years old and entering kindergarten at one of the following schools: Lewis King in Terrebonne Heights, Twin Oaks in Fabreville, Elmwood, or McCaig in Rosemere.

What awaits him as he walks, a bit apprehensively perhaps, along the broad tiled corridor?

The teacher who welcomes him is probably a recent graduate of the course for kindergarten specialists at Macdonald College. The room he enters, and in which he will spend either the morning or the afternoon, is bright and spacious. His "desk" is a geometrically shaped table covered with gaily coloured arborite.

In one corner stands a piano piled with music sheets and books. In another the child will find his own little library: shelves of books of the picture and easy-to-read variety. There is the usual chalk board, bulletin board and sink; games and toys.

As the year progresses he will come to know and enjoy this room with its many features, all designed especially for him. He will sing and play as a member of a group; but he will also learn to work independently at his workbook and to take care of his own physical needs.

He will draw and colour, follow a reading readiness programme, and learn to count.

One day the teacher will hand him new blocks with which to play. Fitting the different wooden lengths into various multi-coloured patterns he is taking the first step in a mathematical programme leading to the new math. curriculum of the upper elementary and high school grades. The end of grade one will find him solving his first equations. These blocks are, of course, the Cuisenaire Rods which continue to be used during the first three grades.

Entering grade one, your child will be streamed into one of several classes determined by his maturity and his teacher's assessment of his previous year's work. Children are streamed in order to provide for their varying educational needs. Thus, the child who has reading or other difficulties is given the special assistance he requires. At the same time the fast learner is able to progress at his own pace with the benefit of an enriched curriculum which involves extra projects, reading and research.

In the later grades streaming is done by subject so that the child may be in A stream in one, but in a B or C in another, according to his capabilities.

Provision is also made for the slow learner. A junior special class (covering grades 1–3) is in operation at Elmwood; a senior one (grades 4-6), at McCaig. Another is available to the students at Twin Oaks.

Your six-year-old is ready to tackle a full day of school and the expanded curriculum of the first grade. Oral French is introduced. With the help of the Cuisenaire rods he learns fractions and masters (informally) the concept of the square root. Music is a regular part of his programme. Wearing a gym uniform he takes a physical education class twice a week either outdoors or in the gymnasium. Regularly, too, he takes classes in the art room. Here he creates his masterpieces: a self-portrait perhaps, painted on a huge sheet of paper, and proudly carried home. In later grades it might be a papier-maché mask or a mural created as part of a group.

Within a few weeks your first grader will thrust a book at you proclaiming, "I can read it myself." He has paid his first visit to the school library where a full-time librarian has helped him to locate just what he wanted, from among the 5,000-odd volumes on the shelves.

Twelve months later, a seasoned veteran, he is ready to face the challenges of the second grade.

He learns the rudiments of a research project. A typical homework . assignment might be to write a short composition on beavers. His outside reading improves and increases.

The Reading Programme is supervised by a specialist in this field. She is in constant touch with the classroom teachers. The child is tested regularly and progresses at his own rate through colour-coded textbooks geared to his own reading ability.

In addition to the reading specialists your child also has the benefit of specialist teaching in French, art, and music beginning in the lower grades and increasing in the upper grades.

As his mind and interests grow, so too does his curriculum. History, geography and science are added. For the latter the child has the privilege of a well equipped laboratory in which to perform his experiments.

Education does not however, take place entirely within the confines of the classroom. The school sponsors and organises field trips and other extracurricular activities. The former begin in kindergarten with a springtime visit to the Experimental Farm at Macdonald College. Later it might be the Dow Planetarium, the Museum of Fine Arts, or an afternoon of ballet at the Place des Arts. For 1967, Expo is on the agenda.

Extracurricular activities include the science lab, the gym, the school newspaper, the drama club, the glee club and the library club, all organized and supervised by staff members outside of classroom hours. For the athletically inclined the physical education department organises inter school and inter-murals sports competitions.

The music, drama and art departments regularly pool their resources to produce excellent musicals, plays and concerts.