- Churchill Heights Public School
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Churchill Heights Public School Address 749 Brimorton Drive
Toronto, Ontario, M1G 2S4, CanadaCoordinates 43°46′24″N 79°13′27″W / 43.77333°N 79.22417°WCoordinates: 43°46′24″N 79°13′27″W / 43.77333°N 79.22417°W Information School board Toronto District School Board Religious affiliation None Superintendent Don McLean Area trustee Scott Harrison Principal Theresa Dillenger Vice principal Kim Stark Administrator Don McLean School type Elementary School Grades K-6 plus gifted from 1-8 Language English Area Scarborough Mascot Cougar Team name Churchill Heights Cougars Colours Blue, and Light Yellow Founded 1959 Enrolment 529 (Spring 2009) Churchill Heights Public School is an elementary school on Brimorton Drive in the Scarborough district of Toronto, Canada.
Contents
Overview
As of spring 2007, 507 students are in attendance at Churchill Heights. Of these, 213 (43%) are female and 289 (57%) are male.[1] 319 (63%) have a primary language other than English, and 14% have been living in Canada for less than five years. Most students live in the western side of Toronto, while some of the students live on the eastern side of Toronto. Some students come by a car, while many others come by bus or walking. Bus tickets are given out, if the school recognizes that the place where some students live are farther than a standard (3.2 kilometers for grades 6 to 8).[2] Child and Student tickets are given out. The school has been the home for Scarborough's gifted programme for exceptional students since 1971, when classes for gifted students were created, which made Churchill Heights a dual-track school. Churchill Heights is closely aligned with Woburn Collegiate Institute, as Churchill Heights is where the majority of the students in Woburn originate from, and there is therefore a strong partnership between the two schools. Some examples of the partnership of these two schools are the Robotics and PEG programs, which have Churchill Heights students participating on Woburn teams, and Woburn mentors helping Churchill teams.
Extracurricular activities
Programming Enrichment Group (PEG)
PEG is a group of dedicated students who meet on a yearly basis after school to study advanced computer science topics and discuss algorithms and approaches to difficult problems, often on the level of the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). Topics covered and types of problems approached vary depending on competition entries. Churchill Heights has always been involved in PEG, as Woburn has decided to allow Churchill students to be members of PEG and that is how they get their base for next year in Woburn's Computer Science courses one year early. The learning methods used vary as well: sometimes students meet in study groups with their leader teaching them and solving practice sheets or programming problems, sometimes they are taught by one of the senior students, sometimes they work on the problem as a team, and sometimes they are taught by their coaches.
PEG students meet after school typically two nights per week to prepare for competitions in programming. Every year, members take part in competitions at provincial, national, and international levels. Since its formation in the early 1990s, PEG has competed successfully in a large number of competitions.[3]
PEG members who "make the cut" and remain in the program until the end of the year in Grade 8 are given an additional elective option for Grade 9, if they intend to study at Woburn. This extra elective, not mentioned on the course selection sheet, is the Grade 10 Computer Science course; PEG members are permitted to take this course (and all successive Computer Science courses) a year early, and can take the Grade 12 Enriched course twice.
LEGO Robotics
The Churchill Heights Robotics has a long history as a successful team. It is a team of students who build and program robots to compete in the First Lego League, which is the largest robotics competition for those students not yet in high school. Churchill Heights is known for its success in these competitions, as it has routinely placed near the top at about every single competition that it has been in. Unfortunately, they were not able to qualify for the Provincial Championships in 2007, as they were eliminated due to three other teams receiving additional points for using the worse RCX robots, instead of the NXT robot that the Churchill Heights team used. In 2008, the Churchill Heights team won the teamwork award at a competition, which allowed them to qualify for the subsequent Provincial Championships, which they were unable to win. In 2009, for the first time ever, the Robotics team won the playoffs out of the 16 teams that qualified out of 33 that participated. They received the Champions (Director's) Award and 1st place robot performance award. The Churchill Heights Robotics has always been assisted by the mentors from Woburn, who are former members of the Churchill Robotics, and they pass on their useful experience, which is very useful. As an inside joke, the members of the Churchill Heights Robotics team sometimes refer to themselves as the "RoboNerds".
Churchill Music
The school is known for its music programme, which consists of a couple hundred students in band classes, an Intermediate Choir, a Stage Band, which is like a jazz band, a Senior Band, and the new Grade 7 Band, also consisting of Grade 6's (Grade 7 band is not needed for 2008-2009 year due to lower grade 7/8 student population-created specifically for year 2007/2008). The music programme in Churchill Heights only consists of students in grade 8 and below, which means that they had to face older students in every competition that they competed in. The Senior Band has won numerous awards and prizes every year in the Ontario Band Association Festival,[4] in which they have received the Silver medal or above for the last four years. This year at the OBA, the Senior Band has once again achieved a Bronze award.
In addition, the Churchill Heights music programme also has a yearly Christmas concert and another yearly spring concert. These concerts occur in the auditorium at Woburn, (It used to be in the gym at Churchill, but due to overflow, they started using it in the year 2007/2008) and the students who are not performing are all in attendance when the Bands and Choir have their dress rehearsal at Woburn. The Senior Band, dubbed "Junior Band" because of the excessive amount of 6th graders, consists of the flute section, the clarinet section, the trumpet section, the trombone section, the alto saxophone section, some baritones, two tenor saxophones, a tuba, a bass clarinet, and too many junior percussionists.
The Stage Band is more of a jazz band. Currently it consists of a two trumpets, three alto saxes, three trombones, one guitarist, two tenor saxes, a baritone sax, one pianist, and one percussionists. The most special part about this year's Stage Band is that we introduce two clarinetists, who play alongside the shrunken trumpet section.
Alumni
- Ed Robertson and Steven Page
- Christopher Jackson − awarded US Navy medal for action in the war in Afghanistan [1][2]
References
- ^ "School Profile". http://www.tdsb.on.ca/profiles/4396.pdf.
- ^ "Toronto District School Board Student Transportation". http://www.tdsb.on.ca/_site/ViewItem.asp?siteid=106&menuid=332&pageid=259.
- ^ "PEG Achievements". http://wcipeg.com/index.php?page=achievement.
- ^ "Ontario Band Association Awards 08'". http://www.onband.ca/cbf/awards08.php.
External links
Categories:- Elementary schools in Toronto
- Schools in the TDSB
- Gifted education
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