SPRING IS HERE AT ROCS
- Royal Oak School Niagara-on-the-Lake
- May 2
- 13 min read
April 30, 2025
Dear Royal Oak Families
May is here, and so is our last full month of the 2024/2025 school year.
It feels almost impossible that only six weeks of school remain, but luckily, we are jamming each of those weeks with an incredible amount… of learning, of field trips and community excursions and celebrations as well. Before the last day of school on June 13, we will:
Hold our annual Camp and WWW Bake sale fundraiser at the school on May 10
Meet on the evening of May 15 and day of May 16 for Parent Teacher Interviews
Compete at Wheatley in the second Cross Country meet of the school year
Experience a “Week without Walls” for JK-Grade 2 students, with visits to the Niagara Pumphouse, Brock University, Happy Rolph’s (Cows, ice cream, of course) and much more!
Spend 4 days and 3 nights in beautiful Muskoka at Camp Wenonah with our Grade 3-8 students enjoying nature, outdoor Ed and one another
Graduate 3 amazing Grade 8 students, and 9 SK’s to their next chapters!!
Come together as a community for an amazing cocktail party to fundraise for the bursaries that help support diversity in our school and keep Royal Oak accessible for all families - More details to follow!
We have so much still to enjoy of the year, and yet, we are very focused as well on the year ahead. I want to thank each of our parents, as we now have our full picture of re-enrollment, and are happily welcoming many new families to our fold.
We have also completed our staffing, and below are the class splits and teachers who will lead the way in our children’s learning and wonderful new chapters in the year ahead!
Early Years (JK/SK) - Krista McMackin, Aasma Humaira (ECE) and Jackie Crytes (EA)
Primary 1 (Gr.½) - Robin Forlin
Primary 2 (Gr. ⅔) - Leah Tobin
Junior Middle (⅘) and Upper Middle (6/7/8) - Brittany Nyenhuis and Melissa Smith
French - Morgane Chaudoreille
Physical Education- Paris Forlin
Administrative Assistant- Andrea New
Assistant Head of School- Laureen Dennis
Head of School- Julia Murray
You will notice one goodbye, and one new addition to our staffing team, and it is with sadness we share that Mara Castelli, our Upper Middle teacher for the past two years, will be moving on. Mara has been a wonderful, hardworking and dedicated member of our team, and she will be missed by her students and colleagues alike.
Melissa Smith will be joining our staff as our new Upper School teacher, and we are lucky to have her! Melissa comes to us with a 18 year career in education behind her, most recently teaching at Ridley College School for the past 7 years. Melissa is passionate about Mathematics, Science and kids, and is a local to Niagara on the Lake, attending elementary and high school here in her youth.
More communication will be shared with our Junior Middle and Upper school families via email regarding some exciting changes to our upper school programming.
In other news, our Fundraising Committee has been hard at work planning an end of the year social gathering for our families and supporters. Please SAVE THE DATE for Thursday, July 3 for a cocktail party to celebrate our TENTH anniversary! This evening will take place in the Speigel tent at the Shaw Festival, and free babysitting with one of our amazing teachers will be provided across the street at the school. This celebration will be an opportunity to gather, celebrate an incredible journey to year ten at ROCS, and to fundraise for our bursary program that makes Royal Oak accessible to all families, regardless of financial situation.
The Fundraising Committee, chaired by Jen Reimer, is still looking for volunteers to help support their efforts. Please email jenreimer72@gmail.com if you can contribute in any way- auction items, wine, ideas or your time!
We look forward to this event, and many more before the end of the school year to come together.
Have a wonderful weekend and start to the month!
Warm regards,
Julia
Julia Murray, Head of School
Coffee Cafe and Community Bake Sale Fundraiser |
This year, our annual ROCS BIG Community Bake Sale will be Saturday, May 10th from 9 am to 3:30pm. We are asking for donations of baked goods, drinks and crafts to sell to raise money for our trip to Camp Wenonah and our Week Without Walls events. This fundraiser is the primary way our students raise money to lower the cost of this wonderfully educational and fun event. Last year we raised over $2500 and this year we are hoping for more. If you would like to volunteer, please fill out the google form HERE . If you have any questions, please contact Ms. Dennis.
Parent/ Teacher Conferences and Term 3 Report Cards
This year, our final parent/ teacher conferences will be held on Thursday, May 15th from 3:45pm to 6 pm and Friday, May 16th from 12pm to 3:30pm. Teachers have already sent out sign up lists with conference times. Please contact your child’s teacher if you have any questions. Term 3 Progress Reports will be live on Toddle as of 3:30pm on Friday, June 20th.
April Character Award Winners
Our April character trait was Cooperation and the Primary Class presented a lovely assembly all about what it means to be cooperative within our community and the environment as a whole. May’s character trait is perseverance and will have the Primary Junior’s presenting what it means to persevere.
Our April character award winners were:
Early Years: Zelda E. & Robert L.
Primary: Cain M. & Layne D.
Primary Junior: Isabelle D.
Junior Middle: Liam G.
Upper Middle: Zara H.
SPRING CLUBS |
Our Nature Explorers observing our beautiful natural environment, and helping to protect it!
Passport Club, tasting the flavours and cultures as they learn and eat their way around the globe!
CAT5 ASSESSMENTS
Beginning in May, students from Grades 3 to 8 will again participate in the Canadian Achievement Test or the CAT5. This assessment is a Canada wide normed test, and will gauge the students progress from the last test in 2024. Test results will not be shared with students, but are simply a way for teachers and administration to have feedback on our teaching practices and how well students are grasping the Ontario Curriculum. The results help us plan our curriculum for the following year to ensure our students keep growing and progressing fully in their academics.
If you have any questions about the CAT5 you can contact Ms. Julia or if you would like more information, please look at their website: https://canadiantestcentre.com/achievement/cat5/overview/
CLASSROOM UPDATES |
EARLY YEARS
Happy April, everyone! I truly hope you’re enjoying spring as much as we are in Early Years! As I’m sure you’ve heard, we are taking in all of the beauty of the season, including hatching our own chicks. There has been a lot happening in our class since the last monthly update. In Literacy, we are focusing a lot on neat printing, copying, and sentence formation. We’ve also continued our daily Heggerty and UFLI lessons. These have started including words with 4 sounds and encoding words (where the students are given letter sounds and they need to identify which
letter makes each sound to spell and sound out words on the board). In Math, we started the month learning about comparing numbers, where the students had to determine larger and smaller numbers. Currently, we are learning about 3D shapes and their attributes! Next up, we'll be diving into measurement. In Inquiry, we’ve been learning about hygiene and healthy habits. The end of the month brought lessons about Earth Day and how we can take care of the planet. Coming up next: Simple Machines! I’m so proud of all of the students and their hard work this past month. I can’t wait to see what fun we get up to over the last 7 weeks of the school year.
PRIMARY
Spring has sprung in Primary!!! Even though there are only 30 days in April, the students in Primary have been very busy! The month began with students outdoors looking for signs of spring. While at Simcoe Park the students were fortunate to witness a baby bird learning to fly. Truly a sign that spring was upon us. One of the most exciting signs of spring is the arrival of our chick eggs. We welcomed 12 chicken eggs, and cannot wait to meet the newest additions to the chicken population. Thank you to alum Preston for bringing the eggs and setting up the incubator in the library. We also enjoyed time outdoors while we walked to the Niagara-On-The-Lake Library at the Community Centre. Students enjoyed listening to two books, read to us by librarian Sharon, a Minecraft scavenger hunt, time in the Hive and quiet reading. The students have become very comfortable in this community partner and we are looking forward to more visits next year. Primary students had the privilege this month of visiting the Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory. Students had the opportunity to ride a WeGo bus, hear about and contribute ideas to the planned Children’s Garden, listen to our own Ms. Julia speak about this incredible construction, make seed balls and explore the Butterfly Conservatory. The Primary class were wonderful representatives of Royal Oak. It is hard to believe that we are also covering lots of curriculum expectations in Primary as well. In Literacy, the focus this month has been on descriptive writing and learning how to use vivid adjectives to make our writing more interesting for readers. To show off their understanding of adjectives and descriptive writing, students created acrostic poems about signs of spring they observed while visiting the Butterfly Conservatory,. Addition and subtraction strategies and mental math have been the math focus during this month. With the beautiful spring weather upon us, outdoor math will allow Primary students to use nature to learn about measuring using standard and non-standard units of measurement. Finally, air and water have been the themes in Primary inquiry, with students reflecting on how to protect and save our planet on Earth Day. The Primary Classroom taught the students of Royal Oak how we, as humans, need to cooperate with one another to “save Earth’. What a wonderful way to lead us into May, a month that sees flowers blooming, gardens growing and leaves budding.
PRIMARY BUTTERFLY CONSERVATORY TRIP |
The Primary Class accompanied Ms. Julia to Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory for the announcement of their new Children’s Garden, and to celebrate Earth Day. The Grade ½ students were the perfect audience through speeches celebrating Niagara Parks’ third anniversary, as well as Earth Day. The full room of audience shared they were the “best behaved group of children they’d ever hosted”, and our students were rewarded with an activity to make seed balls for native plants that would be thrown over the Niagara Escarpment to help prevent erosion, before a beautiful visit to the Butterfly Conservatory. Each child was given a maple or cedar tree to plant in celebration of the special day!
To read more about this event and see Royal Oak in the news, visit the NOTL Local article here:
PRIMARY JUNIOR
Wow, April flew by in a flash! It was an action-packed month full of learning, laughter, and adventure.
We kicked things off with some April Fools' Day fun, followed by a special library visit on the 11th. We’re also looking forward to heading back for our second visit on April 30th to explore the Ocean Sea Dome exhibit!
This month, we also participated in an Earth Day clean-up, showing care for our planet and community.
One of the highlights of the month was our field trip to Niagara Parks, where we applied our learning about forces and motion in an exciting real-world setting. We explored the Power Station, journeyed behind the falls, and even rode the Whirlpool Aero Car!
We also attended the Niagara Children’s Water Festival at Brock University. This amazing experience offered hands-on, curriculum-connected activities focused on water education. The festival’s goal is to empower students to protect our natural resources and inspire change within their homes, schools, and communities.
In class, we've been just as busy! In Art, we wrapped up our unit on clay and sculpture, creating some fantastic 3D masterpieces. In Math, we finished our measurement unit (including telling time!) and have now moved on to fractions. In Health, we’ve covered all our major topics; from human development and personal safety to mental health, substance use and abuse, and healthy eating. In Science, we’re wrapping up our unit on forces and motion, and soon we’ll be digging into our next topic: soils!
April has been a month to remember. We’re so proud of how hard everyone is working and can’t wait to see what May brings!
JUNIOR MIDDLE
April showers bring May flowers and fun new experiences in Junior Middle! This month has been a blast as the class took on new challenges. This month, our class had the opportunity to go on three wonderful field trips! We went to the Greg Ferwin theatre to see Beauty and the Beast, Niagara Falls for a few attractions, and finally Brock University for the Water Festival! All these field trips brought our learning to life as we made real-world connections to what were are learning in the classroom.
In Mathematics, we have explored the Locations and Movements of shapes across the Cartesian plane. This unit had the class exploring reflections, rotations, and translations using coordinate grids. This connected to our Coding tech unit, where we are beginning to explore simple commands to execute flow codes.
In Language, the class has become super sleuths, as we explored the wonderful world of mystery! For this unit, the class read, watched, and wrote mysteries. The class did a deep dive into the novel "The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin, where each student had to follow a character's actions through the book to try to prove their innocence in the Westing Murder. Through reading mystery stories and watching "Scooby-doo" episodes, we explored the elements of mystery that make the subgenre unique from other narratives. The students are now beginning to write their own mystery stories that we will place in a book together for the second edition of "Stories from Royal Oak". The final project of this unit is a murder mystery party where the students will act and solve clues to find the solution to a mystery!
Our Inquiry unit in Light and Sound has had the class completing multiple hands-on experiments. Through these experiments, the class explored how light moves, how it impacts how we see colour, and how it emits heat. The class worked collaboratively to create a hypothesis to prove during these experiments. Next, the students will move on to exploring Sound.
Our big project this month was our Science Fair project! This was a cross-curricular assignment that connected our Inquiry Unit on Light with report writing skills and graph making. The students were tasked with developing a hypothesis based on one of the topics we have covered in our unit so far. They then had to complete an experiment that tested their hypothesis, resulting in a conclusion. They had to create a presentation to share their findings with their peers and parents at a science fair. This project was a wonderful assignment to highlight the students' curiosity and wonder!
It has been a fantastic month in Junior Middle! We have had exciting adventures, completed complicated projects, and worked together. I cannot wait to see what our final full month brings us as we head towards the end of the school year.
UPPER MIDDLE
We are already at the end of April! How time flies when you're having fun. April has been full of fun hands-on activities and out of the classroom learning opportunities! Upper Middle has spent the month of April exploring Fraction and Decimal operations and we will end the month off by jumping into algebraic expressions. As we wrapped up essay writing in the beginning of the month, our main focus in Language Arts this month has been exploring poetry writing and analysis. Students are showing their thoughtfulness, creativity and critical thinking skills through the development of independent poetry portfolios. Inquiry has led us to various hands-on opportunities to explore systems in action! Students had the opportunity to put their learning into action and utilize potential and kinetic energy by designing roller coasters! Our class was able to showcase their learning through testing and presenting their roller coasters to the Primary class.
Outside of the classroom, we saw a trip to the library where students had the opportunity to explore print resources to help guide their Genius Hour projects. We also visited Niagara Falls. Students had the chance to truly view systems in action as we visited the Power Station, Journey Behind the Falls and the Whirlpool Aerocar! Our class has also been taking advantage of the beautiful weather we are starting to have by bringing our learning outside! Coffee Cafe is in full swing as our trip to Camp Wenonah is fast approaching so come visit us every Friday morning at the front entrance during pick up for coffee and baked goods! Stay tuned for all the educational fun May has in store as our last full month of the school year!
ADVENTURES IN NIAGARA FALLS |
Local Spotlight- Earth Day Boutique!
The Little Green Shop on Queen St. is a new spot to shop and support local, and the environment - check out the website or stop by!
TICK ALERT!!
It’s that time of year, and already, we have had a student come in from recess with a tick looking for a place to land. Many of our students play in the long grass and courtyard area, which can be a home for ticks this time of year. Please ensure you are checking your children at night before bed time. Where possible, tall boots and long socks are recommended for prevention.
A Wonderful Community Opportunity
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe will be playing on Sunday, May 25th at 1pm, with a pre-show workshop at 12pm in the NOTL Court House. Our school has been offered tickets on a first come first serve basis. We have 21 tickets to share with our community, so please reach out to admin@royaloakschool.ca if you would like to reserve some of them. A limit of 5 per family until they are gone.
UPCOMING FUN FOR THE LAST WEEKS OF SCHOOL! |
May is here and here at ROCS we are busy, busy, busy. We can barely keep track but some of the upcoming events and activities are:
CAT5 Assessments- May 2- 12
Parent Teacher Interviews- Thursday afternoon, May 15 from 3:45 pm to 6 pm, Friday, May 16 from 12 pm to 3:30 pm.
Cross Country Meet at Wheatley School - May 20, 4-5 pm
Our community bake sale fundraiser- May 10, 9-3:30 pm
Victoria Day long weekend - May 19-22, school resumes on May 23.
Camp Wenonah and Week Without Walls -June 3 to 7th
Graduation and Closing Ceremonies- June 12th, 2:30- 4:00 pm, with reception
Royal Oak Summer Camps & Tutoring
ROCS will host its third season of Royal Oak Summer Academy for children 4 to 8 years old. This academic/ creative day camp will give your little ones a chance to boost their confidence in literacy and math all while having a fun day camp experience. Tutoring is also available for students, Grade JK to 8 during camp hours (9am to 3:30pm). Please contact camps@royaloakschool.ca for more information and register here:
MAY 2025
JUNE 2025
COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITIES |
Are you interested in Occupational Therapy for your Child?
Many children benefit from Occupational Therapy, and across Niagara, waiting lists continue to be years long for this important intervention for children! We are very fortunate at Royal Oak to have an OT, Michelle, who has current availability and incredible experience working within the field. At ROCS, we are happy to make space and time within the school day for your child’s OT needs if you are interested in in-school sessions. Please read Michelle’s bio, and reach out directly with her to learn more at meashell97@hotmail.com
ADVANTAGE SUMMER CAMP
ARTISIT SPOTLIGHT
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