Dear Families of Div. 13,

Welcome to our Division 13 community! I am very excited to be a part of your child’s learning journey this year and I am looking forward to getting to know your family.

Our goals for this year are community, collaboration, and creativity. The learning will take place across curricular areas, and is based on inquiry, experience, and exploration. We are excited to bring our learning outside into the community!

We will be using our classroom blog as one of our communication tools this year. Here you can find snapshots of our journey and materials to support learning at home. Please check the blog on a regular basis, or subscribe to our newsletter for updates about our class community. A newsletter came home today – please take a look together 🙂

Love,

Ms. Carley

On Monday, we came in to discover that many of our beans had grown! We loved seeing how they continued to grow throughout the week!

This week, we did so much amazing weaving! Here are some photos from day one of our learning journey! Thank you to all the parents who came helped us!

Day two!

Day three! Look at all the amazing progress we made througout the week!

On Wednesday, we went on our second big forest walk! During this walk, we heard so many birds! We also saw so many bugs, especially slugs! We saw that one of the paths is closed for habitat restoration, and by reading the sign, we learned about some ways that our actions can be harmful or helpful for the plants and animals. We also spotted nursing logs, mushrooms and fungi, and many plants we have been learning the names of! Div. 16 is so observant and thoughtful! Here are some more living and nonliving things that we noticed!

On Thursday, we got to see an amazing art exhibit put on by Ms. Yee and Ms. Taylor’s classes in collaboration with some SFU artists! They had audio, video, and mixed media displays! It was an incredible day! We can’t wait to go visit the exhibit when it opens in the fall at SFU!

We had sports day today! Div. 16 showed amazing sportsmanship and teamwork! Wow! I am so proud of you al!

I can hardly believe we are going to be starting our final week of school together! Your final week of grade one!

Please remember to:

• bring a bag to take your school work home!
• return your home reading and library books to school!

Other reminders about the last week:

Mon. June 23

• Final day of Weaving!
  • (If you are available to help a small group of students at 8:55-9:40, please let me know! We will try to have everyone finish their weave!)
• Picnic Lunch in the park at 11-12:10pm
  • (students will bring their regular lunch that we will eat outside at Richard Bolton Park, and Ms. Carley will bring some treats and activities to play with!)

Tues. June 24

• Forest Games at 1040-12pm

June 26th

• Last day 9-10am

We had such a lovely week last week!

Some of our highlights:

We had hot dog day on Wednesday! Thank you so much to the PAC for putting on such a wonderful lunch! And thank you to the parents who volunteered to help!

We loved continuing on with our money math! We made money dice and then have been playing many games to add up our money totals!

We went on a forest hike together! We found so many amazing plants and animals and talked about their names. Can you take your family back to this special forest walk?

I loved seeing your drawings of our time on our nature walk! Here are some that Div. 16 wanted to share on the blog!

We had big buddies and loved playing and building with them!

On the pro d day, I saw our beans started growing!

This upcoming week:

Mon. June 16

• Weaving at 9-10am
• Spirit day: Wear Red!

Tues. June 17

• Spirit day: Wear Yellow!

Wed. June 18

• Spirit day: Wear Green!
• Weaving at 9-10
• Nature Walk at 1:15-2:45pm
• Home reading books are due!

Thurs. June 19

• Weaving at 11-12am
• Spirit day: Wear Blue!

Fri. June 20

• Sports Day!
• Early dismissal at 1:30pm

This week we had so much fun exploring the plants and animals on Burnaby and Grouse Mountain!

On Monday, we learned that adaptations can be described as “structural” and “behavioural”! For example, bears going into torpor (sometimes thought of as hibernation) is a “behavioural adaptation”, and their big claws and other special body parts are “structural adaptations”.

On Tuesday, we explored the concepts of living and nonliving things and did a scavenger hunt to find them outside!

Then we had our garden day with Pablo and explored:

• Compost Bin Health – we learned ways to measure the health of a worm bin and encourage better habitat in the current bin
• Trees in trouble – we examined trees for signs of damage or poor health and investigate conditions that may cause trees and other plants to become unhealthy!

On Wednesday, we went to Grouse Mountain! After riding the gondola up, we visited the Feast House where Elder William told us stories, shared songs, and taught us dances of the animals (orca, raven, eagle, and wolf).

Then we had four stations where we explored life cycles, skull bones and footprint molds of animals, and the needs of living and nonliving things.

Next, we visited the Grizzly Bears, Grinder and Coola, and learned about their stories, the lives, and their bodies! We loved the bears!

Finally, we went to the Kid’s Treetop Canopy Adventure where we got to walk across treetop bridges and nets! It was like we were living in the trees!

We wrote reflections in our journals but make sure you share all the things you loved about your trip with your family this weekend!

Thursday – we loved doing money math this week!! (Financial literacy). We worked on our piggy bank booklets and we counted all our money for popcorn sale to see the different ways we can make one dollar! We also learned about making change if we had two dollars! See if you can find money math at home this weekend!

Friday – we planted beans! First, we observed the seeds with our magnifying glasses, asked wonders, made predictions. Next, we planted our seeds and watered them.

Some of us are finished our latest story workshop stories! We are excited to display them!

Our flower art is framed and ready for display too!

What an amazing week!

Here are a few special things about next week! Check out the Important Info tab for more dates!

• June 11th
  • Hot dog day at 11:30pm
  • Art walk 1-3
• June 12th
  • Library books are due
  • Twin/triplet day
  • Early dismissal at 2pm
• June 13th
  • Pro D Day (no school)

This week was full of adventures!

We had an amazing field trip to the Museum of Archaeology! First we visited the Wall of Namu. Then we learned about petroglyphs and cave paintings. Next we split into two groups. In one, we made our own cave paintings in the lab’s “cave”! In the other, we visited the Museum’s garden which was planted with only plants that are Indigenous to the land we live on. We even got to plant three different seeds there. We hope they will grow and be healthy! Finally, we went back to the museum to look around some of the exhibits. We were amazed at the weaving, the Indigenous art, and the other exhibits!

We started the Safe Bodies Safe Kids program this week. We will be exploring topics such as personal safety, personal boundaries and how to seek help when needed. For each lesson, I am sending home a note describing what we are discussing in class in greater detail. It would be great if you could continue these conversations at home.

We finished painting and writing drafts of our new stories!

We got to experience some new materials! Our school photo interrupted our stories a bit but we are looking forward to finishing these new ones next week!

In math, we continuing measuring with non-standard units! Then we started learning about financial literacy! Tell your families about the book we read about saving and spending!

Our parent appreciation day was on Tuesday – we hope the amazing family volunteers in our community feel loved and appreciated! Thank you so much for all you do!

Next week reminders:

• Garden day June 3rd (families are welcome to come join us!)
• Grouse Mountain field trip June 4th

Every week is such a joy to be in Div. 16!

We have been loving creating our new story workshop stories, and recording them with drawings! Next, we will be writing and paining our stories in a new way!

For teacher appreciation day, the PAC treated the teachers to such a lovely day, including making our own bouquets! So, of course we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to create art! We drew and coloured what we saw and will be putting up a new bulletin board with our gorgeous still-life flower art, with a focus on contour lines.

We loved connecting with our new big buddies. We made a Venn diagram together to learn about things we had in common and things that made us different.

We can’t wait for the fun adventures of the next few weeks!

• Museum of Archaeology visit on May 28th!
• Grouse Mountain field trip on June 4th!
• Forest Walks
  • June 11th 1-3pm, June 18th 1-3pm
  • (please let me know if you are available to join us outside!)
• Weaving
  • June 12 – 10:40-12pm, June 16 – 9-10am, and June 19 – 10:40-12pm
  • (please let me know if you are available to come help us in class! No experience necessary, we will all learn together, inspired by the weaving our school is making with Caitlin!)

Love,

Ms. Carley

(PS. I love the portrait of me from this week! Thank you, S!)

It was such a pleasure seeing so many families at Student Led Conferences this week! You did a wonderful job of touring your spaces and so much learning that you are proud of!

This week, we finished our Bear Art inspired by Indigenous stories and art techniques.

We created beautiful flower art using sharpie and pencil crayons.

In math, we started learning about measurement! We explored non-standard units of measurement, and Div. 16 had some very creative ideas! Some different ways we measured each other’s height was

• 9 pencil crayons long
• 7 books
• 4 blocks high
• 5 name tags
• 8.5 rainbow straws
• 10 animal toys
• 14.5 Keva blocks
• 12 stacked chairs

However, we found that it was hard to compare heights using these tools! We realized that standard units and tools could help us! So we learned how to use rulers, measuring tape, and meter sticks to measure the centimeters (cm) of items (and people!) around the room! We look forward to exploring measurement in many ways!

We started some new story workshop stories and look forward to continuing to build them and write about them! We are going to try some new story workshop routines next week!

We visited the special story workshop in the library for some new inspiration too!

Thank you so much for your interest in helping for our upcoming field trip to Grouse Mountain! There was overwhelming interest so we did a draw to determine who can join us! I wish we could bring more of you with us! However, we will be going to the SFU Museum of Archaeology on May 28th, so please let me know if you would like to come for this field trip, or if you would like to join on us on some other local walking field trips.

Thank you for the warm welcome to your community, Div. 16! I am so excited to be teaching each and everyone of you this year! We had such a lovely first week together.

We explored who lives on the mountain – noticing plants and animals along the path and inside the forest. When we look closely, who can we find? Tell you families about who you saw!

Our school is so fortunate to have Caitlin Aleck from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation coming to create a weaving with and or our school. She shared about how weaves are used to share stories and histories. We brainstormed many questions about what our school feels like, the plants and animals that live here, and what makes our school special and unique. Then we shared these ideas with Caitlin and we learned how to add to the school’s weaving. We will visit her one more day for everyone who didn’t get a chance to add to the weave yet! We can’t wait to see what our school’s weaving will look like once everyone has added ideas and added weaving in. Thank you for sharing with us, Caitlin!

We have also been exploring Coast Salish art, exploring techniques and working to create our own inspired art! We have been learning stories of bears as we connect to our science exploration.

In math, we practiced some addition and subtraction and then jumped into Data Analysis! We have been creating surveys and graphs to share to learn about each other and represent data in interesting and helpful ways!

We continue to work on our Daily 5 jobs and love to make books during word work time! I am so impressed by the creativity shown during explorations!

I can’t wait for our second week together!

Love,

Ms. Carley

Some reminders:

• I am looking forward to meeting you at Student Led Conferences this week! If you haven’t signed up for a spot, please email me directly to arrange a conference 🙂
• The UHE PAC is going to be hosting a Hot Dog BBQ lunch for our school on Wednesday, June 11th!  Please kindly let us know what your child’s food preferences are for this event by filling out this form.  We kindly ask that you do this before May 27th.  Please fill out one form per child.

Sending you all another thanks for your beautiful cards, gifts and kind words as we parted before the winter break. It has been such a pleasure and honour getting to know your children and your families and I look forward to hearing all about how the year goes for them while I am on maternity leave! I hope the first day back went great for everyone! Here are a few more photos and updates from our last week together:

We finished our “Best Part of Me” bulletin board. Div. 12 is definitely full of amazing people with incredible talents.

Many students published their first or second books in story workshop! I am so proud of their amazing writing and art.

We spent a lot of time with our big buddies during the last week! Playing outside together, eating pancake breakfast in our PJs and making beautiful winter ornaments!

Our pen pal letters arrived from Mexico! Here are a few! They are all in our portfolios for you to explore with us soon, along with many other learning treasures! We can’t wait to share our next ones!

We spent our last chilly day with our little buddies for the term, and are looking forward to new adventures with them soon!

As mentioned in my previous email, we are so thrilled to have Ms. Macphail as our new teacher for January to June! She is wonderful and knows your children from her time TOC’ing in our class as well as covering other leaves around the school over the last two years.

I promised your little ones that I will come visit later in the year, so I will email around that time to let you know.

Sending love and best wishes to you all!

Love,

Ms. Carley

We have been getting ready for the winter holidays with our big buddies! We learned such a cute crafts to decorate our homes with winter cheer! On Wednesday, we will be going to the Pancake Breakfast and PJ Day with them too! Only four days left before the winter holidays!

Wishing everyone who celebrated Hanukkah last week so much love and joy!

We went exploring what we could find when we looked closely! We have been noticing that when we are quiet and calm, there are so many birds, squirrels, and other animals we can find! We wondered who and what could have nibbled on these leaves!

With our little buddies, we have been learning about tools to capture our observations, such as cameras! We loved using this new tool as we explore the forest!

One of our classmates found a piece of bark and explored the forest trying to find the tree it belonged to. She noticed so many different qualities of the different tree bark. Finally she found the tree it had come from!

We are loving continuing our bird inquiry! We have learned so much about our warblers! We hope our next pen pal letter will be delivered on Monday so we can enjoy it before the break! We have one more zoom workshop with Alison this week too!

We love reading in Div. 12! Here are some of our cozy spots!

We have been busy making books for story workshop!

Our Best Part of Me bulletin board is almost ready! Here are a few more photos!