A Balanced School Day Dawns at Riverbend
It’s Not the Time You Have, It’s How You Use It
It’s the beginning of a new school year throughout the Seven Oaks School Division. But for the staff and students at École Riverbend Community School, it’s also the start of a whole new kind of school day: a Balanced School Day.
A Balanced School Day consists of three 100 minute blocks of instructional time broken up by two nutrition/ activity breaks – a 40 minute one in the morning and a 50 minute one in the afternoon. Other than the schedule, however, the school day itself is still fundamentally the same: the same number of hours, curriculum, teachers, students and commitment to learning.
View the September 2008 Newsletter (PDF)
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A Report to the Community 2007/2008
Our Goal: Building Community: A better education starts with strong relationships
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Continued development of teacher advisory, looping, teacher teaming and multi-age programs to ensure that every child is known personally, connected to caring adults and successful in school.
- Maintained our high school graduation rate of 81% with 57% of graduates heading directly to post secondary institutions, 79% of students graduating with more than the required credits and more than 9% graduating with university credit.
- Initiated a very successful summer enrichment program at Elwick Community School to provide positive educational opportunities for students through the summer.
Our Goal: Engaging Learners: Active, healthy lifestyles begin in school
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Expanded physical education and fitness opportunities for high school students with football programs at West Kildonan and Garden City Collegiates.
- EDGE our after school academic enrichment programs is now in place in all of our middle years schools.
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Established a thriving adult education program with a child care component at Maples Collegiate.
- School programs and the Division’s Safe and Caring Schools Policy are reducing and resolving incidents of bullying in Seven Oaks schools.
- Smoking bans, quit smoking programs and student advocacy groups like Students Working Against Tobacco have significantly reduced tobacco use among Seven Oaks students.
- Began evening parenting groups to provide support and education to parents.
Our Goal: Staff Who Make a Difference: Inspired teachers lead to inspired students and the result is enthusiasm for learning
- Negotiated long-term financially prudent collective agreements with all staff groups.
- Expanded our innovative partnerships with the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba bringing greater professional development opportunities to current and future Seven Oaks teachers.
- Continued an expansion of educational opportunities for all our employees.
Our Goal: Best Possible Learning Conditions: Creating the best possible learning conditions means focusing resources where they make the biggest difference: in the classrooms
- Increased per student grants to schools by $40 per pupil in order to eliminate or reduce costs to parents for participation in a range of school activities.
- Opened the new West Kildonan Collegiate, a modern, well designed 99,600 sq. ft. high school hailed as the finest public school in Manitoba.
- Completed design and tendered a 25,000 square foot addition to Garden City Collegiate that will link the east and west buildings.
- Continued progress towards the goal of making all of our schools accessible to all students with new grooming rooms at Maples, A. E. Wright and O. V. Jewitt.
- Increased maintenance budgets to support painting, flooring, window and door replacement and other projects to improve school facilities.
- Continued lobbying for greater equity in education funding to benefit Seven Oaks students and taxpayers.
View A Report to the Community 2007/2008 (PDF)
