Welcome back to school! Bienvenue de retour !
Welcome to Division 9’s class website. Here you can learn about our classroom activities through weekly posts. I will update the website throughout the school year to share information on both upcoming and past activities.
My name is Mairi Anderson, and I will be teaching Division 9 this year! This is my second year at École Brantford and my fourth year teaching in Burnaby. I am a white settler from Red Deer, Alberta, in Treaty 7 Territory and have been living here in Coast Salish territories for the past four years. I am grateful to live, learn, and play on the beautiful lands here, and am continually learning about the Indigenous communities who have called this place home for many, many generations.
This summer, I enjoyed some quiet time with family and friends, hiking in the Rocky Mountains and biking on Salt Spring Island. I love being outdoors, cycling, and making art. I believe that it is important to have a strong sense of place and appreciation for the land we live on, and love to learn through experiential learning!
We will continue to follow Health and Safety Guidelines prescribed by the Ministry of Education. The Burnaby School District and Brantford Administration have sent out general emails explaining current protocols, and detailed information is available on the District website: https://burnabyschools.ca/covid-19-sharing-clear-and-current-information/. This letter provides details specific to our classroom routine.
There is a lot of information to share, so here it is in a bulleted list:
Health Protocols and Drop-Off/Pick-Up:
- Parents are asked to walk their children to the outside door of the classroom. Students cannot be dropped off and picked up through the roundabout as this area is now reserved for staff only. Upon arrival, please have your child line up outside the classroom door, but to avoid congestion, we ask that parents/guardians wait in the gravel field. We are expected to do a health check of students upon arrival. Please stay until your child has answered the questions and entered the classroom. If your child answers “Yes” to any of the questions below, he/she/they will not be allowed to attend school for the day:
- Do you have a fever, chills, or a cough?
- Are you feeling a sore throat, loss of appetite, extreme tiredness, headache, or body aches?
- Do you feel nauseous or experiencing diarrhea?
- Is anyone in your household ill?
- If you arrive after 8:45 am, please do not come to the classroom door. Instead, please bring your child to the front doors of the school to check in at the Office. Similarly, if you need to pick up your child before 2:48, please let me know in the morning and I will send your child to the Office to be picked up there.
- Upon entering the class students will hang up their jackets and backpacks and proceed to the sink to wash hands. After handwashing, students will sit at their tables and work independently while their classmates complete handwashing. Once everyone has washed hands, we will commence our lessons.
- Students will be asked to wash their hands when they arrive at school, before recess, after recess, before lunch, after lunch and before leaving to go home. They will also need to wash their hands after they go to the bathroom, anytime they wipe their noses or sneeze/cough into their hands.
- Students will be encouraged to social distance from each other and staff outside of our class. Within our class, we will aim to maintain minimized physical contact among students but will not enforce 2 metres of distance.
- Grade 3 students are currently not required to wear masks in the classroom, nor outside of their cohort. However, we encourage mask wearing to help us all keep healthy!
- At the end of the school day, please wait in the gravel field and wave as your child exits the classroom. If you require that your child leaves independently to pick up a younger sibling or attend after school care, please contact me to confirm a plan. Thank you!
Food
- Students are to bring a recess snack, bagged lunch, their own utensils (if required) and 1 or more water bottles (labelled with student name). No lunch drop offs will be permitted, nor sharing of food/drinks. Students must bring home all their food wrapper garbage.
- While we love to celebrate birthdays in our classroom, due to COVID-19 guidelines around food-handling, we will be unable to bring food goods such as cupcakes and cookies to school to share with other students in the classroom. We will instead celebrate in our own special way in class.
- Brantford is a peanut/nut-free school. Please be mindful to avoid nuts or nut butter in snacks and lunches that are sent to school. Thank you!
Supplies and Clothing
- Students will keep their individual supplies in designated cubbies and/or in bins near their chairs. Students will keep required material at their desks and will not be able to touch materials in other students’ allocated space. Please see the attached is a school supplies list, and aim to have the supplies ready for Monday.
- Students are asked to have a pair of indoor shoes to be kept at school. Runners or sneakers are the best, as these shoes will be worn for Phys. Ed.
- We will take our learning outside as much as possible so please be sure that your child is dressed appropriately for the weather (including appropriate footwear) and that they bring an extra change of clothes.
- To avoid the spread of COVID-19, as well as distractions and/or loss of treasured toys, please do not bring personal items such as toys or stuffed animals to school.
Library
- Students will be visiting the library for story, activities and book exchanges weekly. It is important that students take care of their library books so they can be kept in good condition for everyone in the Brantford community. Students will be responsible for bringing their books back for the exchange day. There will be a fee for unreturned or damaged books at the end of the school year.
Our Learning Routines and Classroom Expectations
- In Division 9 we will work hard! We will strive to do our best and understand that everybody’s best looks different.
- As a teacher, I will be planning with the First Peoples Principles of Learning in mind. These are principles based on common elements in the learning approaches in Indigenous societies, and support a mindset of growth, responsibility, and reciprocity.
- I will be encouraging daily reading at home. Reading with your child models fluency and tone of voice!
- As part of our language development, we will be working on weekly “dictées” based on specific sounds in French.
- At the start of each day, students will be expected to complete weather chart work independently, before we meet at the carpet for a class check in. We will work on strengthening social-emotional development, value of class community, and set the expectations for the day.
I have planned for a broad range of topics to study in line with the BC Curriculum. Homework and class notices will be communicated through student agendas. Parents/guardians are requested to read and sign agendas daily. .
I will be sending home more information next week regarding the learning activities for the month of September.
I have sent home a paper copy of a Family Introduction Survey with students. This survey is to help me get to know you better, so I can best support all students throughout the year. Please respond to the questions as you feel comfortable. Thank you for taking the time to complete it!
If you wish, take a look through old blog posts on this site to see some of the work my former students and I enjoyed! Last year, I switched to FreshGrade part way through Term 1. While FreshGrade permitted me to post individual photos of students, I found that I was better able to share the breadth of activities we do as a class through my blog, so I will be posting updates to this platform throughout the year. I am to post once per week, on Friday afternoons, to go over some of the notable activities of the week.
I know that there may still be many questions as we open our classrooms this fall. I will keep you informed of any information that affects the learning of your children. You may contact me by email at mairi.anderson@burnabyschools.ca; I will do my best to respond to parent emails within one day. In urgent cases, I can be reached through the school office at 604-296-9002. I welcome any comments you may have. I am confident that as a class we will be able to support each other through the challenges and successes of the 2020-2021 school year. I look forward to getting to know all of you and to working together with you to help your children excel!
Warmly,
Mme Mairi Anderson
pronouns: she/her/hers/elle
