April 2025 Newsletter

Principal Message

Thank you very much to our Parent Council for putting on the Dance-a-thon this past month, and thank you to our community for helping to sponsor our dancers and raise funds for our students as they get active through play throughout the day. We will be placing the orders for brand new playground equipment, painting lines on the blacktop and a few other surprises with play! While we continue to tabulate the final total, we wanted to thank you for all your support for our school fundraising goals!

We look forward to a great Spring of learning together. Please continue reading below to learn more about what is happening at our school.

Mr. G. Donaldson

Principal

John T. Tuck P.S.

EQAO Dates

Our Grade 3 & 6 students will be participating in the Provincial EQAO Assessments this spring. These assessments are a snapshot of your child’s learning in the primary and junior divisions. Please ensure that you do not book vacation or appointments during this time to ensure that your child can complete the assessment with the other children in the classroom. If you have any questions about the assessment, please contact your child's teacher or the administration at the school.

Grade 6 - June 5, 9, and 10

Grade 3 - June 2, 3 and 4

Family Movie Night - April 3

John T Tuck PS Parent Council invites you to a movie night for our Tuck Community on Thursday, April 3 in our school Gym. We will be showing the recent hit Kung Fu Panda 4. Please come at 6:00pm, with a blanket and a pillow to get comfy and watch the movie with us. You are welcome to wear your PJs if you wish too! We will start the movie right at 6:00pm. A small bag of popcorn will be available at no charge, courtesy of the school council, on a first come first serve basis. All students who attend the movie MUST come and watch with his/her own parent(s) for supervision. If a student comes without his/her parent(s), they will not be admitted to the school movie night. We respectfully ask that if families decide to come, that they make every effort to stay in the gym during the whole showing so that they do not disrupt those watching the movie. We also ask that parents ensure that their own children are not being disruptive or loud while watching so that everyone can hear the movie. The running time of Kung Fu Panda 4 is 94 minutes, so we expect the movie to be done around 7:30pm. We look forward to a great community event together.

April 2nd - World Autism Awareness Day

April is Autism Awareness Month. On April 2nd we show our support for Autism awareness by encouraging students to wear a spectrum of colours, symbolizing our celebration of neurodiversity and education about Autism awareness within our school community. Throughout the year, we continue to embrace and celebrate neurodiversity by amplifying the experiences of our students and families living with Autism and celebrate the spectrum of diversity and uniqueness that each person brings to our school and global community.

Switch Day & PA Day

Thursday, April 10th is a switch day for our schedule. This means that we will be following the "Friday Schedule" on this day to ensure students do not miss subjects that were scheduled on the PA Day. Please mark your calendars. The switch day calendar was created to ensure that there is an equal amount of each school day over the year within the student schedule. In addition, we wanted to remind you that April 4 is a PA Day, and the topics being discussed among staff is posted on our school website.

Reminder: Student Sign Out

When signing out your child, we ask that you first communicate with your child's homeroom teacher and have them ready to leave at the beginning or end of break time only, rather than interrupting class time. Times to pick up children that do not interrupt the learning of others to call into the classroom would be 11:00 am, 11:40 am, 1:20 pm and 2:00 pm. If you are not able to notify the teacher in advance, please do not call the school office before arriving at the school for us to get your child out of class. We will call the student down once you have arrived. It is mandatory that all parents come into the office to sign students out – due to safety concerns, we are not able to send your child out to you while you wait in the car.

Lunchroom Supervisors

As we plan for our student supervision needs we are currently hiring additional Lunchroom Supervisors, as we currently have some new openings. Our JTT Lunchroom Supervisors are responsible for supervising our students both inside and outside during our scheduled break times. This position requires an updated Police Check that includes a vulnerable sector screening. If you are interested in joining our Lunchroom Supervisor Team at Tuck please email Mrs. Moazzam at moazzamz@hdsb.ca.

Run Club

The Run Club will return for JTT students starting Wednesday, April 2, 2025. Anyone in Grades 2 through 8 who enjoys running or would like to learn to how to run is welcome to join this non-competitive run club. Meetings for Grades 2-5 will be held on Wednesdays on the JTT field during the second nutrition break. Meetings for grades 6-8 will be held on Fridays during second break on the streets in the Roseland neighbourhood. Students and their families are also invited to participate in our spring running events in support of local charities. This year we are offering two events to participate in. The first event is the Run4Lighthouse event on Saturday, May 31st, in Burlington at Spencer Smith Park. Each year, Lighthouse supports over 400 children, youth, and their families as they navigate their grief after the life-altering loss of a parent or sibling. This event's registration or donation will fund the grief support groups to ensure there is no cost to families who need them.

Our second event will be held on Saturday June 14th, in Hamilton at Confederation Park. The “She Can, We Can” 5k is in support of the Fit Active Beautiful (FAB) Foundation. All proceeds from this event will help the FAB Foundation continue to offer their program to approximately 150 youth girls in Hamilton annually at no cost to them. This program is free for participants and each FAB participant receives a new pair of running shoes, a training t-shirt, healthy snacks at each session, a goal setting journal and transportation and entry into local race and program events. Please see Mrs. Hill to get forms for senior run club or if you are interested in participating in one or both of these community events.

Personal Technology Use

We are asking all families to please review this Acceptable Use of Personal Technology at JTT guidelines for our students at school. We continue to encounter issues with our students in both the timing of use and appropriateness of use, both at school and at home. An excerpt from that page is;

Parents, you can help us by supporting and modelling appropriate use of technology in order to encourage your child to focus on academics in school. Parents are requested to:

Refrain from texting your children throughout the day, and call the office for emergency messages to be relayed. If your child texts you during class time, please respond with “please go to the office, talk to an adult there and use the office phones.” Trust us. When you text your child during class time and or accept texts from them, you are implicitly teaching them that they do not have to pay attention in class, or use the adults in the building to help them problem solve.
Buy a calculator for your child to use in Math class.
Make after school arrangements with your children in advance.
Remind your children of the appropriate uses of technology and social media, while reviewing and monitoring their online activity outside of school hours.
Encourage your child to keep his/her personal device locked/secure when at school and to not share their combinations or passwords with anyone else.
Counsel their children that devices brought to school are their responsibility. If items are lost, broken, or stolen, the school will do everything it can to help find it and/or solve the problem, but in the end, the replacement cost rests with the student who owns it.

Coyotes in the Neighborhood

As you may already be aware, we coexist with Coyotes in the John T Tuck area. The creek and forest areas are great places for coyotes to live among urban sprawl. Some years, they will come out more than others. We have had a couple of sightings by neighbours in our community at Tuck this year, therefore it is essential for you to have conversations with your children about how to handle themselves if they see a coyote, as well as tips to ensure coyotes do not become domesticated. Please see this link for more information on tips for kids - https://www.burlington.ca/en/services-for-you/Coyotes.asp#

There is a lot of information in the link, but in a nutshell, here is "What to Do If a Coyote Approaches": Coyote sightings are commonplace. If you see a coyote, keep your distance and the animal will most likely avoid you. If you encounter an aggressive coyote:

Shout loudly and wave your arms high in the air.
Use hazing techniques: Air horns, whistles, etc.
Back away slowly while remaining calm. Never run or turn your back on a coyote.
Never feed coyotes

Days of Significance this Month

Here are the days of significance listed in our HDSB calendar this month. We encourage families to share your traditions and celebrations with your child's classroom teacher, fostering a rich tapestry of learning, celebration and understanding.

1 - Beginning of Sikh Heritage Month

2 -World Autism Awareness Day (UN)

4 - PA Day

6 - Shri/Rama Navami

9 - International Day of Pink

12-20 - Pesach/Passover

12 - Hanuman Jayanti

13 - Theravada New Year

14 - Baisakhi/Vaisakhi

14 - Mesha Sankranti (Solar New Year)

14 - Sinhalese & Tamil New Year

18 - Good Friday