WillowWood School

3:30 pm.

WillowWood has a cafeteria that offers a variety of lunches made fresh each day. Our menu is healthy and nutritious, and no junk foods or is sold on our premises.

Accommodations can be made.

WillowWood School has a uniform policy. Students in grades 1-6 are expected to wear a white WillowWood sweatshirt or gold shirt along with blue pants. Students in grades 9-12 are expected to wear a black/grey WillowWood sweatshirt or golf shirt along with khaki coloured pants.

Every one of our classrooms is equipped with a digital interactive display screen. Each student enrolled at WillowWood receives a high-end laptop computer. Lessons, assignments, grades, and communication occurs through our Blackbaud platform (a cloud-based software). We have been offering virtual learning options for the past few years, both to domestic students and our international cohort abroad.

WillowWood School has been offering online courses for the past few years. As such, the transition to virtual learning was remarkably smooth for us. WillowWood offers online courses as well as a hybrid option in which students can learn in-person and online.

Our school is non-denominational.

WillowWood offers Gardening, Work-out, Cartooning, Volleyball, Table Tennis and Badminton, Tabletop Games, Rock Band, Chess, Podcast, Meditation, Homework, Writer’s, and Horticulture clubs.

Students may take courses in Physical Education or Personal Fitness. Our physical education classes play variety of sports including Basketball, Softball, Soccer, Ice Hockey, Volleyball, Badminton, Ultimate Frisbee, Flag Football, Table Tennis, Badminton, Curling, Bowling, Tennis, Dodgeball and athletic games.

WillowWood is a member of the Small Schools Athletic Federation (SSAF) and competes against other private schools in Toronto. The SSAF has separate leagues for girls and boys, and students play in under 14, under 16 and under 20 age divisions. We field teams in Basketball, Softball, Soccer, Ice Hockey, Floor Hockey, Volleyball, Badminton, Ultimate Frisbee, Flag Football, Table Tennis, Badminton, Curling, Bowling, Tennis, and Dodgeball.

WillowWood School features a gymnasium, a personal fitness room, a music room, a crafts room, a computer science lab, and a a science lab.

We have a full-sized gymnasium with a total of 6 basketball goals that can be fitted with appropriate equipment to allow volleyball, badminton, soccer, and floor hockey to be played. WillowWood also has a fitness room that features free weights (dumbbells, barbells, weight plates), treadmills, elliptical machines, and stationary bicycles. Our outdoor space features a basketball court, a volleyball court, a table tennis table and two chess tables.

WillowWood School offers a robust English as a Second Language (ESL) program in which students learn to speak, read and write English through a combination of instruction, field trips, and classroom immersion. The International Students in ESL receive much more than academic education: Our instructors take care to introduce new students to Toronto as a city, and Canada as a culture. They also work towards integrating ESL students into the wider student body through holiday meals, trips together, clubs and athletics. International Students are a key part of how we demonstrate our multicultural values and curiosity about the world. Students make solid friendships across cultures, whether they take those lessons back home or into their future adventures in Canada.

Yes.

In Lower School, when a student requires more intensive intervention, enrichment or remediation, they have the opportunity to participate in our Additional Support Program. These programs include Orton-Gillingham and Remediation Plus Reading programs, Reasoning and Writing, Reading Comprehension, Expressive Writing, Math Support, Homework/Text Support, Organizational Skills, and Assistive Technology. Orton-Gillingham and Remediation Plus are two multisensory, systematic phonics programs that are designed to help students who are experiencing difficulty learning to spell and read accurately, or who have dyslexia and/or language learning disabilities. The Homework/Text Support Program offers support for what is happening in the classroom. This can include anything from projects to homework, to math support and organizational skills. Students will review learned concepts taught in class and learn how to highlight and chunk important information. It also includes the teaching of software strategies to learn to become more proficient in transferring, planning, and organizing their thoughts and ideas into writing. High School students can enroll in TOSS (Teaching Organization and Study Skills), an extra-fee small-group class focused on helping students manage and develop their executive functioning skills, time management, assistive technology, and self-advocacy abilities. TOSS can be a credit course or a non-credit course, and its administrators will work with you to fit it into your student’s schedule. High School students can always get extra help in Homework Hubs, tutorials and workshops before school, at lunchtime, and after school. We also offer a tutoring program for students requiring that. The programs are divided into detailed, comprehensive lessons that focus on specific phonic sounds. Students are taught phonological awareness, phoneme-grapheme correspondence, syllable instruction, and morphology through systematic and cumulative instruction.

All of our students are encouraged to challenge themselves to achieve excellence in academics, athletics and the arts. Some of the ways this is addressed is through lunchtime clubs which allow for artistic abilities to be developed further, theatrical performances such as annual school plays, and external academic competitions such as those organized by the University of Waterloo allow academic rigour.

The school has relationships with a number of professionals who provide such services.