SAM Explorer

Welcome back! We hope you all enjoyed a wonderful summer doing all the things that bring you joy and that everyone is excited to start a fresh school year full of new adventures. As our first days of school are just around the corner, Cam and I are sending our this special version of our SAM Explorer to remind our families of some key important dates and information for the next couple of weeks. We will be continuing to use the SAM Explorer as a biweekly communication of important activities, events, and information to complement the information that individual teachers will be regularly providing families. As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to call our office at 780-459-4467, and we are happy to help you out.

Also, we are pleased to invite all our families to our Welcome Back BBQ on Thursday, September 7th from 5:30-6:30pm. This will provide us all the opportunity to meet and visit with each other, have some home cooked hotdogs, as well as give your children the opportunity to tour you around their new classroom.

Enjoy these last few days of summer and we will see you all next week!

Dawn & Cam

SAM School is very excited to announce that our SAM Fundraising Society has secured swim lessons for all our students from K - 6 at Fountain Park Pool for the 2023/24 school year. We are still confirming the schedule with Fountain Park Pool! More information to come ...

When creating our classroom composition each year, our primary goal is to determine class placements that best support each student's learning strengths and needs as members of a class learning community. Several (sometimes competing) factors are weighed to determining these placements, including:

• Literacy learning strengths and needs;
• Numeracy learning strengths and needs;
• Social-emotional learning strengths and needs;
• Peer connections;
• Other learning supports.

We try as best we can to balance these strengths and needs within each class so our teachers are well positioned to support the learning strengths and needs of all students. Therefore, these factors are considered for each student, as well as between students as we evaluate class compositions.

In order to inform our class placement decisions, we invited our families to share their input about the above factors for their children. Our teacher and administrative teams used this information alongside teacher generated information in regards to each of these factors to create this year's classroom placements. Due to the complexity of these factors and the ways they interact with each other, we cannot grant requests for specific classes or teachers, nor can we guarantee any particular placement. We thank all the parents who provided their very thoughtful feedback to us last year regarding their child success at school as it did help us inform our decisions. Class placements for 2023/24 will be shared on PowerSchool on Monday, August 28th at 4pm.

Please review the below map to identify the school door your class will use throughout the school year to enter and exit the school each day, as well as the location of your classroom.

We are excited to welcome all our new Explorers to SAM! We mailed out a kindergarten welcome package to all our families over the summer that contains the majority of information you will need. Just a reminder that there is a staggered start entry for all our kindergarten students according to assigned groups. If you need a reminder of what group your child is in, please contact our office.

• Group 1 - Thursday, August 31st
• Group 2 - Friday, September 1st
• Group 3 - Tuesday, September 5th
• All Kindergarten students attend - Wednesday, September 6th

Our grades 1 - 6 students will also have a staggered entry on the first few days of school according to their surname.

• Students with surnames beginning with A - K will attend school on Thursday, August 31st (but not Friday, September 1st)
• Students with surnames beginning with L - Z will attend school on Friday, September 1st (but not Thursday, August 31st)
• All students grades 1 - 6 will attend school for their first day of regular classes on Tuesday, September 5th.

SAM School will have a slightly revised daily schedule for our students this year. To accommodate busing schedules, please note that our school day is both starting and ending slightly earlier than this year. As there will not any be scheduled staff supervision before 8:45am or after 3:25pm (outside of supervision at the busses), it will be very important for families to time their morning drop-offs and afternoon pick-ups accordingly. Also, please be assured that students will also have an additional morning recess and snack time (between periods 1 and 6) scheduled by their teacher where students will have the opportunity to get some fresh air and a nutrition break.

We understand that drop-off and pick-up can be challenging with many vehicles moving through limited spaces in a brief window of time. For the safety of our children, please only use the designated areas for vehicle traffic.

In the past, our neighbours at St. Albert Montessori Preschool (located at the nearby Braeside Presbyterian Church) have experienced challenging situations in their parking lot during our drop-off and pick-up times. This is a reminder that the parking lot at the church is only available for the staff and families who attend St. Albert Montessori Preschool.

In collaboration with our staff and our families on School Council, we are happy to provide you with our School Calendar for next year.

• Click HERE for a link to the SAM School Calendar 2023/24. Any revisions will be updated throughout the school year.
• Click HERE for a link to the Division School Calendar for grades 1-6.
• Click HERE for a link to the Division Kindergarten School Calendar.

School Council is an important group of parents, community members, and school staff members who work together to support and enhance student learning. It is important that schools promote meaningful and positive engagement of parents and families in our education system and School Council is a wonderful way to bring various family perspectives to the school.

The responsibility of a School Council is to:

• foster, develop, maintain, and reflect the culture of the school;
• provide the opportunity to participate in an advisory role;
• create a forum for discussion; and,
• seek and represent various school community views.

School Councils provide a means for members of the school community to consult with and provide advice to the principal and the school board.

Our SAM Fundraising Society provides a means for parents and community members to provide additional financial resources and support to the school. This wonderful group of parents and community members have been responsible for creating and supporting a number of amazing activities throughout the year that both contribute to the vibrancy of our school culture while also fundraising money to support various school initiatives and purchases.

In the past our SAM Fundraising Society has raised money to:

• purchase and build our playground equipment;
• purchase Chromebooks for student use; and,
• purchase equipment to start our STEAM Lab (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Mathematics)

This year, we are very excited to announce that the fundraising money raised from last year's events will go towards paying for swimming lessons for all of our students from K - 6!

Parents and school community members are welcome to participate in one or both of the School Council or SAM Fundraising Society. Our first School Council and SAM Fundraising Society meetings of this year will be held on Tuesday, September 19th. All families are welcome to attend and we are hopeful to see many new faces this year!