Category: Junior School

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Heart Heroes

One rainy afternoon in May, the girls in the junior school jumped their hearts out for Jump Rope for Heart. The event raises money for the Heart & Stroke Foundation and encourages kids to grow up healthy.

The girls collected pledges leading up to the event. The top fundraising class, 6H, was awarded a pizza lunch, for raising approximately $2600. There were rewards (“sparklers”) as each fundraising target was met, such as: civvies days (including one day where teachers dress as students!), school wide NO HOMEWORK DAY! and a movie afternoon.

During the event, there was lots of screaming and cheering as the girls encouraged their peers to hang on for a few more seconds. Those who showed a lot of spirit were able to pull a number out of a bin to win a special reward, such as participating in a one-sided water ballon fight with teachers, a silly string fight on the grass field, getting the chance to paint teachers faces, or give teacher Mr. Oates a makeover.

Donations are still trickling in, but well over $18,500 was raised for the Heart & Stroke Foundation (“hard to believe that we can raise this much in a day of skipping!” says Teacher Ms. Grills). Way to go girls! It was a fun and active afternoon, as the girls were inspired to be “Heart Heroes.”

WATCH:

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GearBots Robotics Challenge

On April 20, Yorkies in Gr. 6 and 7 participated in the GearBots Challenge held at the Skills Canada Provincial Competition in the TradeX Centre in Abbotsford.

The event was a pilot robotics challenge that consisted of 5 missions (and 2 bonus missions) that the students had to accomplish. The overall general theme was “In the Restaurant,” and sample missions included: putting dirty dishes (indicated by Duplo/Lego blocks) in the dishwasher (a designated corner of the playing field). While doing this, students had to decide what attachments to build, and how to program the robot to accomplish these tasks.

The interesting thing about this competition was that it was not based on how many points you achieved. Instead, the purpose of the challenge was to provide an opportunity for students to work together in engineering teams to creatively solve problems. In other words, it was more about the process rather than the outcome.

The girls should be commended for their efforts, as many were new to this type of challenge, and they did not receive any prior formalized instructions. Congrats to Nicole, Ann, Ariana (Grade 7) and Louise, Michelle N., Jan, Jessica, Rachael and Michelle C. (Grade 6). Watch the video slideshow of the day’s events below.

Sven Braune
Technology Coordinator