Applying ICARE to our Digital Citizenship Practices Gillispie students in Grades 1-5 have spent the past two weeks of school revisiting the Gillispie ICARE Values as they apply to our digital citizenship practices. During our digital citizenship lessons, students review each of the ICARE letters, and the value they represent: I = Integrity ...
This month marked the return of a much-loved Gillispie tradition—International Day! Students grabbed their “passports” and traveled to themed outdoor areas representing Egypt, Tahiti, Brazil, Italy, Australia, and Taiwan. Parent volunteers and faculty members decorated the campus, wore traditional dress, prepared ethnic foods, and shared interesting facts about different countries from around the world. Students were provided with an opportunity to learn about life outside of our borders. International Day began as a social studies project, and over the years it...
Gillispie aspires to nurture and encourage global citizenship. As global citizens, we are connected and share many similarities, as well as differences, and learning about the world around us makes us better informed and empathetic. Families and students have asked how, as a community, we can help the situation in Ukraine. So, this Monday, International Day, we are launching a drive to collect the following items, identified by the local House of Ukraine as desperately needed: 1. All...
Third through sixth graders really enjoyed the street hockey unit in January. Students worked on stick-handling, passing, and shooting. It is a very popular unit and it was great to see the improvement in skills and strategy throughout the upper elementary grades. Kindergarten through Grade 2 students had fun playing the more informal and safer version of "noodle hockey" on the field. This month, all elementary classes are working on various types of rope jumping. Early Childhood students...
WeCare San Diego is offering an upcoming virtual parent event on February 16 at 6:00 p.m. that is free to all Gillispie families! Join us for an evening with Dr. Wendy Mogel who will share tips from her previous books as well as her most recent book, Voice Lessons for Parents: What to Say, How to Say It, and When to Listen, offering guidance for communicating with children across the expanse of childhood and adolescence and explaining the most effective ways to...
Gillispie's annual Grade 3 Blood Drive is back Tuesday, February 8, 2022, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The event this year will be held in a mobile blood bank stationed in the Sandbox parking lot. Did you know that blood supplies at San Diego County’s busiest trauma centers are more critically low than they have been in over 30 years? Here is a recent article in the San Diego Union Tribune with more information on the current blood supply crisis. Now...
Veteran's Day activities last week included Grade 6 students sharing stories of friends and family members who are/were veterans during morning meeting, Grade 5 students writing heartfelt Veteran's Day Poems, and special opportunities like Mrs. Law bringing in her husband's REAL military jacket for Early Childhood students to see. Gillispie parent and VA Hospital Employee, AnneMarie Sachs, helped coordinate the production of student-made cards and reported back to us with this message: "Thanks to the great work of Gillispie students, more...
Willow Room students turned their classroom into a Makerspace of their own! Using the basics of the Design Thinking Model, students brainstormed ideas for gadgets they could make, discussed the materials they could use, sketched out their ideas, and then got to building! They created some amazing contraptions using recycled, everyday materials and loved the process from start to finish. We can't wait to see what these Early Childhood students create one day in our Elementary Makerspace—they are already displaying...
Season's Greetings, Gillipie Families! Our students are hard at work preparing for our Winter Program! We can't wait to present the culmination of their preparation and we are looking forward to seeing family members of students in Prek through Grade 6 on December 17. Pictured is Ms. Collin's and Ms. Young's class practicing, "Hot Cup of Cocoa". Ian Lewis, Music Teacher...
Grades 1-6 are currently in their Flag Football unit. Students have been practicing taking a handoff, holding the ball correctly while running, throwing, catching, punting, kicking off the tee, and running various small-sided games. Kindergarteners have been playing tag games while learning to wear and pull the flag belts. The Early Childhood students have been really enjoying the parachute activities we have been doing over the last couple of weeks. We have also started working on the essential...