Category: Help

Children learn to show their ideas on paper gradually. They begin with pictures, eventually experimenting with strings of letters or “pretend writing,” and eventually work their way towards what we can identify as words and sentences. This does not happen overnight, and each stage of writing development is valuable and worthwhile!

In order to help your child develop confidence as a writer at home, here are some helpful tips:

• Give them lots of opportunities to use pictures to show different kinds of ideas (made up stories, family adventures, retelling a familiar story from a favourite book, drawing about a nature wonder they have)
• Encourage them to check their picture for details: Have they answered the important “who, what, where” questions? Is their idea clear? What kinds of details would help their reader understand their message even better?
• After drawing their picture, can they label any of the people or objects in it? Writing “mom” next to my picture of my mom or “ball” next to my ball helps my reader know what the pictures are trying to say.
• When writing words, help your child “trust their sounds.” This means that they say the word to themselves slowly, and s-t-r-e-t-c-h out the sounds, writing each as they hear them. At first, they may only hear one or two sounds and only write down a couple of letters. That’s okay!  They might even get the letters wrong. Also okay! The key is that they do this themselves, to develop confidence in their abilities and practice some foundational phonetic skills that they will build on as they move forward in their writing journey.
• Remind them that using “kid spelling” is great! This inventive spelling that children create when sounding things out is an important step in their writing development. I like to tell them that they don’t need to worry about “book spelling” (meaning conventional spelling) because they aren’t books! So don’t worry if they don’t spell things “right.”

It helps to continue to practice letters and letter sound with your child in fun and engaging ways, like their Alphabet Jive book, rhyming songs, and ABC books. Help them notice letters around them, showing them the sounds they make. This helps them build the knowledge necessary to use in their writing as they sound things out!

Thank you for your continued support! You’re doing great!

Hi Families!

Below are some of our important (and fun!) links, all in one place! If you find a great website or app that you like to use with your child, feel free to comment below.

Fresh Grade: https://freshgrade.com/freshgrade-classic/

Microsoft 365 (to access Teams): portal.office.com

Epic! Books: https://www.getepic.com/sign-in

Zorbits: https://zorbitsmath.com/

IXL Math: https://ca.ixl.com/inspiration/family-learning

Ms. Hintersteininger’s Blog (Music Teacher): http://sd41blogs.ca/hintersteiningerk/

Mr. Anderson’s Blog (School Counselor): http://sd41blogs.ca/andersons/

Art Hub for Kids: https://www.youtube.com/user/ArtforKidsHub

Lunch Doodles with Mo Willems: YouTube via The Kennedy Center

Burnaby School District Resource Links: https://learning.burnabyschools.ca/resources/

Burnaby School District Activities: https://learning.burnabyschools.ca/elementary/

Hi Families!

On the bottom left of this page is a “Translate” button! If you, like many of our families, do not speak English as a first language, and need a bit of clarity, click on that yellow button and choose the flag representing the country/language that you want to read. Auto-translate software isn’t always accurate, but it can help if needed.

Easy!

-Ms. Osiris

Hi Families!

Fresh Grade is currently the easiest way to share your child’s learning with me, and it’s easy! You can do it from a web browser (like Chrome or Safari), but its even easier to download the Student app onto your phone or tablet.

In order to post content (like pictures , videos, or audio files) to an existing Activity or Post, or to create a new item in your child’s portfolio, you will need to be logged onto the Student account. This login information can be found on the Resource Access document that I sent out the first week of April (I have copies of these saved if you can’t find yours).

If in a web browser, go to: https://student.freshgrade.com/#login

If on your phone or tablet, search for “Student Fresh Grade” in your app store (it’s free!).

Viewing Posts

The nice thing about Fresh Grade is that it allows me to know who is interacting with the posts! I see when post, announcements, and activities are viewed. Knowing a student is seeing posts is one way of keeping “virtual attendance” and not seeing things is a clue that I may need to check in.

Activities

If I am “assigning” activities, they will appear, at first, the same as other posts. However, you will notice a “More” button on the right side of the post. Click this to see the full activity description, including any links or resources that are needed to complete the task.

To post your child’s work for that activity, click the “Upload” button right in the post, rather than creating a new one.

Posting Work

If you are posting your child’s work or sharing their words outside of an “activity” that I have assigned in Fresh Grade, you can easily create a new post by clicking the big green “Add New” button at the top of their portfolio page. If you are using the web browser, you can upload files by selecting them from your saved files. If you are on the app, you can either select files, or, for pictures or audio recordings, you have the option of taking pictures/recordings right in the app itself (this unfortunately doesn’t appear to work for videos).

Assessment

For most posts, I will be just commenting on their uploads or comments. I would love it if you could read them my reply! If they wish to comment, you can either upload a voice clip of them speaking, or you can scribe their words for them, typing as they speak.

There are other ways of assessing work build into Fresh Grade (such as a score out of 5, for example), but I have yet to feel the need to use anything other than comments. If this changes, I will note it directly in the activity description.

Sharing With The Class

Because students’ portfolios are private, I will likely sometimes ask permission to post student photos to this blog, so that the rest of the class can see. Given that the blog is public, any images with student faces will be cropped or blurred, to protect their privacy. Families and students can say “No thank you” if they do not want their work shared.

Thank you for your continued support and effort!

-Ms. Osirs