The Dunblaine School
Quality Education for Children with Learning Disabilities
School Projects, Clubs, and Extra-Curricular Programs
Having such a tight-knit community of students has made our special co-curricular and extra-curricular programs a key component of the Dunblaine spirit. There's something for everyone, and lots of opportunities to discover hidden talents and new friends.
School Show
Each year, all of the Dunblaine classes collaborate to produce a musical and theatrical performance for our families, friends, and alumni. The production involves direction and choreography, costumes, set design, and stage management, with teachers, parent volunteers, and students pooling our efforts to ensure an amazing evening. It’s also an opportunity to showcase individual musical and dance ability, particularly for senior and graduating students. Across our entire community, this is one of the highlights of the year, and usually becomes the principle focus of the term as the curtain date approaches.
Tuck Shop and Pizza Lunch
Two classrooms at Dunblaine have traditionally hosted a weekly Tuck Shop and Pizza Lunch delivery program. In addition to bringing the school community together, these events consolidate skills around gracious dealing and accountability, mental math, currency familiarity, and money planning. For the hosts, these programs introduce the concepts of inventory management and basic accounting. Profits have typically gone to arranging an end-of-year trip for the hosting classrooms.
Hiking Club
For our more athletically-inclined students (and those intending to become so), Hiking Club combines mapping and orientation, planning, safe city navigation, and fitness. As a group, we plot successively distant targets in the greenspace and parks around Dunblaine using Google Maps, creating waypoints and regularly assessing our progress while on the road. Hiking Club normally operates after school in the fall and/or spring, subject to weather.
Yoga for Kids
Yoga classes attempt to bring relaxation, focus, strength, and harmony to our kids. Through breathing techniques, guided relaxation, and yoga postures, the children learn to increase their concentration, become more flexible and release tension.
Social Engagement and Activism
Dunblaine regularly comes together at the initiative of one of the classrooms to raise money or supplies for an important social issue or crisis. This has included food and clothing drives, clean-up-the-neighbourhood litter collection, and more recently, a book/game sale and raffle to support communities in need.
While engaging with current events and issues, our students learn how gratifying it is to have a positive impact on the community and the wider world, while also gaining an appreciation for effort and cooperation.
Social Emotional Learning Program
The Social-Emotional Learning Program is comprised of a carefully crafted curriculum that aims to develop social-emotional learning skills in our students. These skills are of critical importance to students’ mental health and overall healthy development. The program covers a number of skills, and each lesson will allow students to apply these everyday skills as part of their learning.
Ultimately, the goal of this program is to provide students with the tools to express their feelings and understand the feelings of others, support healthy relationships, support decision-making and problem solving, and foster their understanding of their own identity and sense of belonging.
The program covers the following topics:
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Listening & Following Instructions
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Conversation Skills
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Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication
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Feelings
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Empathy
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Friendship