principal’s message from mrs....

Brrr… It’s

getting colder

and colder out

there! Make

sure that your

child is appro-

priately

dressed for the

weather condi-

tions. It is essential for all students to come

to school with a hat and mittens/gloves.

Please be reminded that a portion of the lunch

hour break is spent outdoors.

The November monthly calendar is also

posted on our school website for your refer-

ence and a quick glance of upcoming events.

Please refer to this calendar for important

dates to remember, such as, Parent Council

meetings, fundraising events, class excursions

and special guests visiting our school. We

encourage you to keep our monthly calendar

in a visible place so the entire family is well

informed about what is happening at SAM.

1st Term Report Cards will be going home

soon. Watch for your child’s 1st Term Re-

port Card on November 30th. Parent/Teacher

interviews are scheduled for the evening of

December 3rd and the morning of December

4th. More information about scheduling an

appointment with your child’s teachers will

be sent home soon.

Our next Parent Council Meeting is sched-

uled for November 26th at 6:00 p.m. in the

library. We hope you can join us. If you

have any questions about the Council or its

activities, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Our first school wide fundraising event is off

to a great start. To promote our “SAM Goes

Green” initiative, this fundraiser consists of

environmentally friendly products. Your

child received the order form and collection

envelope for Planet Earth products last week.

These items are not only reusable, but the

fabric items are made of organic cotton! Our

fall fundraising campaign runs from October

27th – November 27th. Get your Christmas

shopping done early and place your order

today!!!

We hope that parents/guardians will continue

to check the student agenda daily for impor-

tant notices from the school or notes from the

teachers. By checking the agenda regularly,

it also keeps you informed of upcoming

homework assignments and classroom project

due dates. Ongoing communication between

the school and home creates study environ-

ments that are conducive to learning and nur-

tures positive growth toward a successful

school career.

Principal’s Message from Mrs. Gassi

Issue No. 2

Volume 1 Sir Alexander

Mackenzie SR PS

COMING UP @ SAM

Nov. 18th: Gr. 8 Parent

info Evening at 7:00

p.m.

Nov. 20th: Deposit Due

for Trip to Washington

Nov. 24th: ACI Arts Day

for Gr. 8’s

Nov. 26th: Parent coun-

cil Meeting at 6:00 p.m.

Dec. 1st: 1st Term Re-

port Cards Go Home

Dec. 3rd/Dec.4th: Par-

ent/Teacher Interviews

Sir Alexander Mackenzie SR PS

33 Heather Road Scarborough, Ontario M1S 2E2 M1S 2E2 Phone: 416-396-6570 Fax: 416-396-3354

Principal: Mrs. A. Gassi Vice-Principal: Mr. S. Gardner Parent Council Chair: Manoj Dave Superintendent: Ms. S. Spyropoulos Trustee:Mr. S. Chen

Green Team 2

Jackson’s Point 2

Library Update 2

Student Awards 3

From the TDSB 3

Student Views 4

Sports Highlights 5

In This Issue

The Tartan Times

This year the Green Team is en-couraging students at SAM to bring a waste-free lunch to school. We would like to reduce the amount of waste that the school sends to land-fills, which are rapidly being filled

up.

How to pack a waste-free lunch...

- use thermoses or reusable water bottles instead of plastic water bot-

tles or juice cartons

-use a reusable lunch container to bring sandwiches and other main dishes, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables,

and treats

- use cloth napkins

- use stainless-steel forks and

spoons

- use reusable lunchboxes

What is Waste–Free Wednesday?

- a Wednesday where all students

bring a waste-free lunch to school

- there will only be ONE small gar-bage can and ONE small recycling

bin in the cafeteria

- students will take home any pack-

aging or garbage that they bring

This has been a busy month in the Li-

brary. All students who visited the

Library with their class, were given a

Learnmark. This handy resource lists

all the Log On IDs and passwords that

are necessary for a student to gain ac-

cess to all the websites listed on the

SAM Library Webpage. Please ask

your child about this Learnmark. It

will be a handy resource for home-

work and other projects throughout the

year. Ideally this Learnmark should

be kept near your home computer for

easy reference.

The SAM Library page can be linked

to form SAM's Website. This page is

a great portal for homework, projects

as well as linking to sites of interest

for the whole family. This page

should definitely be saved as a favour-

ite. You can see the page at: http://

www.tdsb.on.ca/libraries/links.asp?

schoolNo=4315.

We have also been busy cataloguing

new books that were purchased with

the grant money from the Ministry of

Education. Students should look for

those new books being released into

circulation in the next month or so.

Thanks to all the students who have

signed up to be Library Helpers. Your

work helps to make the Library run

more smoothly.

From the library… by Mr. Gould

Waste-free lunches from the Green Team

We went to Jackson's Point on Monday, November 2nd, 2009, we came to school at 8:15 to pack up everything and be prepared. While we waited until the buses came we were talking and playing. Our ex-citement grew throughout the day. The buses came at about 9:30

a.m. We arrived around 10:30.

The Wind Ensemble practiced with Mr. Gassi when we got there, and the choir practiced with Mr. Pin-horn after lunch. We had dinner after games. Afterwards we waited for the buses. By the time we got back it was 7:50 and people (including the teachers) were tired.

Special thanks to the staff members that came with us to supervise,

Mrs.Howells, Mr.Pattison, the ACI students, and most importantly

MR.LUM!

THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS TRIP AWESOME AND

AVAILIBLE TO US!

SAM goes to Jackson’s Point by Winnie Trung. 7F


Issue No. 2

Grade 7 Winners

Core

Varnan Sarangian 7A

Haley Chau 7B

Hardeep Bhatoa 7C

Kosalan Kathiramalanathan 7D

Jonah Mecsei 7E

Sauliha Alli 7F

Sarranya Surendran 7G

Amanda Leung 7H

Rotary

Hardeep Bhatoa Art

Haley Chau ICT/Drama

Heidi Tieu French

Nora Liu Math

Orlando Gayle Phys. Ed

Ron Tieu Science

Princess Richard HSP

Block 2 Student Award Winners Theme: Teamwork & Co-Operation

The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) was created on January 1, 1998 following the amalgamation of seven individual Boards of Education. Serving almost 1.6 million electors of the City of Toronto, we are the largest school board in Canada and among the largest in North America. Dr. Chris Spence is the TDSB Director of Education and is re-sponsible for its administration and

management.

The Numbers: Elementary - 184,000 students; 451 schools Secondary - 86,000 students; 102 schools Adult - 14,000 students; 5 schools Number of Teachers: Elementary: 10,000

Secondary: 5,800

From the TDSB...

Grade 8 Winners

Core

Alexia Filippeos 8A

Teresa Wang 8B

Vivian Yu 8C

Chris Boampong 8D

Javal Sheth 8E

Xuan Ting Liu 8F

Praveena Jegatheeswararajah 8G

Corinna Lin 8H

Rotary

Dhananjay Kulkarni Art

Thea Adamopoulos ICT/Drama

Florentina Lukeba Jose French

Jack Wei Math

Victor Nguyen Music

Kokull Jeyarajan Phys. Ed.

Hannah Yu Phys. Ed

Mina Davoodi Science

Ayesha Akbar HSP

Congrats

to all the

winners

for this

block.


The Tartan Times

It was the beginning of my grade 7 year at Sir Alexander Mackenzie. I was excited and nervous as well. I thought I would get lost thinking that the school was huge, and big, and scary! Of course I didn't know what it was to be like at SAM yet, and I soon figured out it was a really cool place to be, and silly me it wasn't as big as I thought. The teachers are fun and seem to be able to make school an exciting experience. I hope all our

times at SAM will keep on getting better!


FIRST DAY AS A 7th GRADER by Ivy Chen, 7F

Cafeteria Lunch? Yum! by Peter Georgopoulos, 7A

Being in the Wind Ensemble is a great thing for me. I get to play music with other people and learn new things. There are many different songs we get to play and many more to learn. Being with the grade 8 students is cool too. I can learn things from them that I didn’t know before. We get to play in concerts and go on trips as well, but the best thing is that we can play music together. It is always enjoyable to be in it. Thanks for

reading this article and hope you join the Wind Ensemble.

What it is like being a Grade 7 in The Wind Ensemble by Paul Jiang, 7E

Have you never had time to prepare your lunch? Well if you have spare change, and like good food you will never have to rush, because from the cafeteria of S.A.M. you can get fast food or eat gourmet. Most people think that cafeteria food is expensive and has no flavour. Well the cafeteria will prove them wrong you can get homemade, great tasting food for even better prices. Why not have some spaghetti with meatballs for un-der $5 or some barbecue chicken for under $5. If you don`t feel like gourmet try a hamburger or a slice of

fresh, homemade pizza. So don`t rush to make your lunch, grab some change and eat in style. Bon appétit!

Bonjour mes amis! The French department here at S.A.M focuses on expanding our students’ knowledge, and helps educate students in the 2nd official language of Canada. With the help of our teachers, S.A.M students will be "French" in no time! As a reward for our late extended, early extended, and immersion "frenchies", they will be going on a trip to Quebec this year! May 3rd-7th , 4 nights and 5 days. They will be exploring museums, viewing historical sites, and attending presentations about a famous fortress. At the end of their stay, our S.A.M students will be going shopping and going to a movie! As Gandhi would say "Live as if you

were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever"

Vive le francais! by Cindy Le, 7A


On Thursday October 29th we had our 18th Annual Grade 8 Girls Invitational Basketball Tournament. This year due to such a high demand from other teams, we ran the tournament at Agincourt Collegiate Institute so we could accommodate 12 teams! As a result we entered 3 SAM teams, one Grade 8 and two Grade 7. All three teams played hard and each team

came out with a win.

The awards were awarded to the following girls:

SAM Team 1 – All-Star: Alyssa Saulo

Sportsmanship: Carmen Wong

SAM Team 2 – All-Star: Tyler Simon

Sportsmanship: Cindy Le

SAM Team 3 – All-Star: Akshaya Lingaratnam

Sportsmanship: Emily Leung

SAM Co-Ed Football Team

This year’s edition of the SAM flag football team

played an excellent tournament at Meadowvale PS.

With great defense and an explosive offence, the

team was able to go 3-1 in its round-robin play.

After a hard fought victory over our new rivals,

Charles Gordon Sr. PS, we went up against the

toughest team in the tourney, Robert Service Sr. P.S.

A tough, back and forth game ultimately ended in

defeat, but SAM played well and earned a finalist

banner for the school.

Strong play all around from every member of the

team ensured that SAM’s legacy of great teams with

even better sportsmanship lives on.

Sports Central by the Phys. Ed. Dept.


Visit SAM online at:

schools.tdsb.on.ca/sam

Photos of the Month


Let’s Beat the Flu from Healthy Schools Toronto The flu virus spreads quickly and easily among children at school and at play. The flu, also

known as influenza, is spread by coughing and sneezing and from touching contaminated

surfaces like toys, doorknobs and computer keyboards after someone with the flu has touched

them. Children should be reminded to wash their hands frequently during the day and to cover

their nose and mouth with a tissue when coughing or sneezing. If no tissue is available they

should cough or sneeze into their upper arm.

To reduce your children’s risk of getting the flu, have them vaccinated this season. It will

protect them and you from getting the flu. Children six months of age or older can be vaccinated and it is free. Children

under nine and getting vaccinated for the first time, need two shots - the second shot at least one month after the

first.

You can get your flu shot at your family doctor or at a Toronto Public Health vaccination

clinic.

For more information or to find the nearest location call Toronto Health Connection at

416-338-7600 or visit www.toronto.ca/health. You can also call the Ministry of Health’s

Flu Information Line at 1-866-FLU ‘N YOU (1-866-358-6968).

principal’s message from mrs....

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