Welcome to École Our Lady of the Prairies School                                                      

Bussing Available in the following areas:                       Hamptons, Lewis Estates, Country Club, Westridge, Copperwood, Donsdale, Cameron Heights, Glastonbury, Gariepy, Oleskiw, Dechene, Ormsby, Thorncliffe, Aldergrove, Lymburn, Jamieson Place

Serving the following Areas:                                                 Gariepy, Oleskiw, Westridge and Callingwood

100 Voices (3 to 5 year olds)   

Kindergarten (French and English)

1 to 1 iPads - Grades 4 to 6

Challenge Based Learning

Reggio Emilia Inspired Learning

École Our Lady of the Prairies School is proud to be recognized as one of Canada’s most innovative learning spaces.  Each student in grades 4-6 engages the Alberta curriculum in a challenge-based learning environment that includes the use of their iPad throughout the day.  In our Pre-K through grade 3 classrooms iPads also are present in the classroom as learning centres.  We were one of Canada’s first schools to offer a 1:1 iPad instructional ecosystem to our students and are one of the country’s foremost examples of the use of the iPad as a tool to support instruction.  This year alone, many teacher-leaders and school principals from throughout central Alberta have visited the school to learn from the work we are doing in the school.  Our use of digital technologies in the school allow each student to engage in creating knowledge and in sharing their understandings through interactive blogs, multi-media movies, and other means of communication that they would not be able to experience in many schools.

École Our Lady of the Prairies School is proud to provide its students with an opportunity for its students to engage in their learning through project-based/challenge-based learning activities. These activities connect to the school’s four essential questions; “How do we learn?”, “What can we create?”, “What does it mean to lead?”, and “How can I make a difference in the world as a child of God?” Through our Challenge-Based learning approach our students are provided with ongoing opportunities to put into action the core values of the school – inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation and reflection in all classes. 

In placing these core values in action teachers engage students in an ongoing process that begins with a big idea and cascades to the following: an essential question, a challenge, guiding questions, activities, resources, determining and articulating the solution, taking action by implementing the solution, reflection, assessment, and publishing.

Our 100 Voices (Pre-Kindergarten) and Kindergarten programs are based on the Reggio Emilia approach.  In this environment learning is encouraged and developed through student-led investigations, using their diverse perspectives, learning styles, and interests as a guide to inquiry.  This approach also influences the instruction in our classrooms in grades 1-3.  As a support to the many modes of inquiry the students are engaged in, all of our classrooms from Pre-Kindergarten through grade 3 have in-class iPad learning centers and offer rich opportunities for the children in the classrooms to engage in exploration through digital multimedia and through the natural world around them.

*Please see our Reggio-Emilia information page for further details about the world-renowned Reggio-Emilia approach to learning.