Holy Cross Academie Internationale

Middle Years Programme (MYP)

Volume 1 Issue 5

January 2017 MYP EXPRESS

Simone Désilets and grade 9 students. Jennifer Wood presenting to

the students.

Simone Désilets in action

This month, Holy Cross has kicked off the IB Exhibition and Community Projects for the

Grade 5 and Grade 9 students, with guest speaker presentations. On Tuesday January 9th,

students in Grades 3 to 9 attended a presentation by Jesse Lipscombe, representing

#MAKEITAWKWARD. Jesse shared his inspiring story, explaining how one person can

make a difference. On Friday, Simone Desilets, recipient of the 2015 International Program

Volunteer Recognition Award from the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, shared her incre-

dible experiences volunteering in Africa and highlighted the importance of pairing your pas-

sion (in her case, teaching) with service. The third speaker was Joshua Jackson, a lawyer

from the Edmonton area who showed students the benefits of volunteering for your commu-

nity and for yourself. Lastly we had Jennifer Wood come to our school and share her wis-

dom with our students. She explained that if you are passionnate about something, no mat-

ter your age or circumstance, you can create change for a better world.

MYP students are put to the challenge in Physical Education

MYP EXPRESS January 2017

Thank you to grade 9 students

and their parents for coming

out to our 2nd annual Coffee

Tea and IB on January 19th.

We enjoyed sharing informa-

tion about the Middle Years

Program culminating project

and look forward to celebrating

the students’ success on the

evening of April 27th 2017 at

the grade 9

Community Project filmfest.

Thinkers

We are all very familiar with the sports programs and various

community activities played in our city, but how

do adolescents play sports around the world outside of the

realms of the familiar? In physical education this term, the

grade eight students of Holy Cross are doing an exploration of

the world through the lens of sport and physical activity. With

the global context of fairness and development in mind, they

have been challenged to discover how people from less deve-

loped communities are able to still have fun and maintain the social aspects of games and

sports with limited access to sporting equipment. With only two pieces of equipment, the

grade eights are researching incredible games from around the world that have several

layers of complexity to them. We look forward to seeing the implementation of this fun phy-

sical activity in our physical education classes!

We use critical and creative thinking skills to analyse and take responsible action on

complex problems. We exercise initiative in making reasoned, ethical decisions.

Learner Profile attribute of the month of January :

Coffee, Tea and IB

Reminder: Open House on February 9th at 7:00 pm for families interested in en-

rolling their children in our 100 Voices, Kindergarten, and Grade 7 programs

The start of the Community Project in grade 9

Student perspective

To the left we see Jesse Lipscombe

and grade 9 students after his pre-

sentation. Above is Joshua Jackson

and grade 9 students.

MYP EXPRESS January 2017

The recent progressions of the MYP community project done by the grade nines are begin-

ning to grow more focused. We are moving forward from the investigation of organizations

and establishment of goals and more in the direction of finalizing plans and converting our

better ideas into realities to attain our personal standards concerning our contributions to

these organizations. Global contexts and causes have been chosen, and we have lately

been moving on to officially planning and sorting out the details of our actions (fund-raising,

volunteering, etc). As opposed to previous work periods of research on organisations, time

availability between group members, and volunteer opportunities, we’re turning our focus to

managing ourselves (calendars of availability, applications for volunteer work) and working

out answers to essential questions revolving around “The Five W’s”. (Who are we aiming to

help? What is our specific goal? When will we be working to accomplish this goal? etc.)

This project exists to make us think about our surrounding community, and about the im-

pact we have on it. We have reached the point where we give relevance to these questions

and solve them with our actions. What we’re mainly doing at the moment is considering dif-

ferent approaches we can make to our proposal for action that will benefit our targets the

most, and cause us to reflect on the consequences (positive or negative) that the methods

we choose now will have on our end result. (Eleanor Wilson, Grade 9 )