Our Lady of the Lake School Growing in New Ways!

New technology is just one of the exciting changes at Our Lady of the Lake School

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I am very happy to be sharing some new and exciting information about our coming school year here at Our Lady of the Lake.   With recent renovations completed and the smell of fresh paint still in the air, the team is working hard to finish schedules and wrap up other exciting new changes before the students return.  From technology to enrichment to staff, there’s so much that’s new!

Our Lady of the Lake School has a strong commitment to technology, with an impressive array of iPads for students, a cutting edge iMac computer lab and smart boards in every classroom.  The addition of Chromebooks and Distance Learning technology is a natural step, but it also opens up exciting new opportunities. The capacity to cross platforms and to explore the powerful learning tools provided by Google Education not only means new devices for students to work with, but whole new teaching strategies in the classrooms.

Here is a quote from one of our 5th grade teachers:  “We are really excited and have decided to set up our curriculum, and break down our units by introducing different apps.  The culminating activity would be a project using the new app, while incorporating core subject material.  Some of the apps are Prezi, Pages, iMovie, Movie Maker and so on.  Blogging is also a large part of the curriculum so we have set up "KidBlog" for both 5th grades.”  We are very proud of our enthusiastic and inventive staff! 

Our kindergarten, first and second graders will make use of Rosetta Stone to get a great start in learning Spanish.  This is a subscription program, so the children will also be able to log on at home for extra practice.  We have hired a Spanish teacher to teach at other grade levels.

We will welcome a whole new crew of little ones this year, as we launch our new preschool. With flexible full-day and half-day options, the preschool provides an exceptional, affordable opportunity for young learners to take advantage of a full school facility, with access to everything from our dedicated art and music room to our computer lab and fully equipped gym.

The students will get to share some of this good news with our community through online updates, using the new Video Studio space dedicated this year.  High-definition digital video cameras will let them record their own news segments, to post on the school website. What a fun way for our school community to get breaking news directly from the students -- and with such a busy calendar, there will be lots of news to share! 

But with all this change, we’re still focused on keeping all the great things that students and families have already learned to love, from making our Washington, DC, trip an annual tradition, to our active PTO, parish play, sports events, school concerts, exceptional arts classes and more.  It’s going to be an exciting year, and we can’t wait to get started!