Ms. Carley's Classroom Blog

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!

This month was full of amazing adventures!

We recently started our hip hop lessons and are excited about getting ready for our performances next Thursday, Dec. 7th (dress rehearsal in the afternoon, concert in the evening)! Costume reminders: please wear brown, grey, orange, or yellow! Ear headbands and pigtails are recommended! Our theme is animals: reindeer, dog, lion, and shark! Try to practice the routine at home!

We participated in a Fair Trade lesson with the support of SFU Fair Trade ambassadors! They were so impressed with our ideas, questions, and understanding! Share with your family!

We created self portraits! We came up with poetry to describe the choices we made in materials. Here are a few examples:

“I am as strong as a rock.” – Shion

“I am as adventurous as a falling leaf” – Sandra and Rosha

“I am as flexible as a blade of grass” – Ruben

We have been working on writing, revising, and publishing our “Best Part of Me” writing. Here are some of our hands and arms that help us do amazing things! Stay tuned for our new bulletin board! What is the best part of you?

We continued making connections, sharing in imaginative play, and searching for birds and fungi with our little buddies!

In story workshop, we revisited our stories!

Then we drew and painted our stories!

Next, we revised our writing!

We also started our storytelling time, where we got to tell, revise, and act out our classmates’s stories! We can’t wait for our turn to be storytellers! Thank you for being our first storyteller, Vira!!

Ways to support at home

• Read daily – see if you can practice your home reading as well as other interesting books!
• Practice your chunk spelling with your menu ideas!
• Try telling your story workshop story to your families so you get more ideas of what to add!

This week was full of learning about important events in our community!

On Tuesday, we were so thrilled to have Vira and her mom, Rucha to come in and share about Diwali with us! Vira presented a powerpoint, we read a story, and then Rucha showed us how to make rangoli in a few different ways! Thank you so much, Vira and Rucha! Wishing everyone who celebrates a wonderful Diwali this Sunday!

We got to spend some time in the garden this week! We noticed it is time to put our garden to bed. We explored what makes up compost and mulch! We also made special bird feeders for the birds who will be staying this winter, instead of migrating! Where did you hang your bird feeder?

We learned more about our three warblers, who have started their migration down to Mexico! We were joined from Alison at Amigos Alados, who showed us what our warblers sound like, what they eat, and then guided us in drawing them!

We finished our first pen pal letters and took them to the mail box to be sent to California, and then Mexico! It was so much fun! We can’t wait to receive ours!

Finally, we spent time reflecting on Remembrance Day. Thank you to Fatima and Kingston, for bringing our beautiful wreath to the assembly. Ms. Holliday told us she was so proud of our quiet, respectful behaviour in the assembly. We hope you have a beautiful Remembrance Day tomorrow and this long weekend.

A few reminders:

• No school on Monday for the Remembrance Day holiday observance
• Home reading book exchanges on Tuesday & Friday – try to read together each day
• A notice for our new routine of “Chunk Spelling” came home this week, as well as an activity menu. Please take some time to review the notice and practice with your child, if you get a chance!
• We have a special bird presentation about birds in our neighbourhood on Wednesday, to prepare for our bird walks!
• Our first community bird walk will be Thursday, Nov. 16th at 1:15-2:15! Please let me know if you can join us! 

The last two weeks have been so much fun!

We created and noticed repeating patterns outside!

Next, we created so many increasing patterns! Tell your patterns how to describe the pattern rule!

Finally, we have been creating and naming decreasing patterns! We don’t have photos here, but you could make one with your family to show off what you know!

On Oct. 25, we walked over to SFU For a forces and motion field trip! We learned and tested Newton’s Three Laws of motion. What was your favourite experiment?

We had our last few sessions of gymnastics!

In story workshop, we have been creating story maps! It is exciting to see how our stories are getting onto paper!

Our next story workshop step is getting our stories written into sentences!

Ms. Carley brought in some beautiful flowers for us to create still life art with! Div. 12 created the art with such care, focus, and precision.

With our little buddies, we had a very rainy forest exploration! How was the forest different in the rain? One of the groups was on the hunt for mushrooms, and they found so many!

On Halloween, we had buddies where we read together, made crafts, and then had a dance party!

We had an Originz Art Starts presentation about the origins of hip hop! We loved dancing, beat-boxing, and rapping along.

We had a halloween parade! We loved seeing everyone’s costumes!

Home reading came home! Please take some time to read with your child each day!

We are looking forward to our adventures next week!

On Tuesday, Nov. 7th, we have two very special events:

• A special presentation and activity about Diwali with Vira and her mom, Rucha!
• Our second garden workshop with Roots2Grow and Pablo! Parents are welcome to join us at 1:15-2:15! Please let me know if you can attend!

Thank you to everyone who could join us for our celebration picnic! We had so much fun gathering with food, exploring with bubbles, chalk drawing, and playing all over the playground and field with Div. 13 and our families!

We started exploring patterns this week! On our first day, we created as many patterns as we could think of using our pattern blocks. What types of patterns do you notice?

With our big buddies, we created Venn Diagrams to learn about each other and notice the things we had in common! Then we loved having our buddies read to us… or showing off our reading to them!

In story workshop, we considered how we could add juicy details to our stories!

In gym, we have been loving exploring gymnastics! Div. 12 members are talented gymnasts! And they are so focused and careful as they move through the space.

Every week, we have been visiting the forest with our little buddies. Each time, a few new children join us and now we have met everyone! How can we find balance in the forest? What is the perfect forest recipe? Where can we find hidden mushrooms? We are looking forward to some more new forest intentions next time!

It was such a pleasure meeting everyone at our Parents as Partners Conferences last week! Thank you so much for sharing with me and visiting our classroom.

We look forward to our SFU Science field trip next week! A big thank you to all the parent volunteers who have offered to join us!

This week was full of connections in our community and in the forest!

We were so happy that Shion has been joining us in class this week! Together, our class community created our #Best Class Ever board thinking about what makes our class special!

On Tuesday, we met our big buddies in grade 5/6 class with Ms. Taylor and Mme. Madeline. We went on a special walk to the forest.

On Thursday, we took our math to the forest to continue creating bar graphs! We loved getting creative with bar graphs this week!

We have also started a special art project that we are excited to show you during “Parents as Partners” night next week!

On Friday, we became the big buddies with our UCC little buddies! We used our imaginations to play and create together!

On Wednesday and Friday, we joined Div. 13 in exploring what we are thankful for, and finished the week by creating a graffiti bulletin board! We hope everyone has a lovely long weekend with their families. We are thankful for you!

I look forward to seeing you next week for family conferences, and hopefully even at our Celebration Picnic on Friday afternoon!

The last two weeks have been full of important learning and connecting. We have been growing together as a class family, welcoming new members, and sharing about ourselves.

Today, we wish everyone a beautiful National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. This week, we read stories and shared in activities to recognize and honour this day at school.

We had our first Amigos Alados session last week with Alison and learned about the three birds we will be learning about this year! Amigos Alados is an international classroom exchange and migratory bird conservation project that spans across Canada, United States, and Mexico. Through this program, we will have pen pals in Mexico and will be studying different birds that migrate through all three countries following the Pacific Flyway migratory route. Your child has chosen their inquiry bird: the Orange-Crowned Warbler, the Black-Throated Warbler, or the Wilson’s Warbler. We hope you enjoy the beautiful colourings they brought home this weekend! 

We had our first garden workshop day! Even though it was pretty rainy, we had so much fun! We explored and sorted seeds, collected them around the garden and wondered how they spread, and harvested our amazing garden vegetables! We hope you enjoyed the vegetables that came home to you!

Last week, we had our first introduction to story workshop in the library! This week, we returned to building on or creating new stories! We even got a chance to start sharing them with the whole class!

In math, we took our graphing and tallying outside! This week, we started learning about picture graphs (pictographs).

We added a new morning choice of connecting through story boxes with our new table partners during mindful minutes! We continue to learn and build our routines together.

Next week, we will be meeting our big buddies for the first time on Tuesday! And on Friday, we will be meeting our little buddies from the University Child Care! We will be exploring the forest together and building our relationships with one another.

We can’t wait for our adventures of learning and exploring next week!

October events for families to look forward to and join us for:

• Oct. 2 – National Day for Truth and Reconciliation – no school
• Oct. 6 – Little UCC Buddies in the Forest
• Oct. 11 & 12 – Parents as Partners Conferences (a sign-up will be coming home this week!)
• Oct. 13 – Picnic Celebration in the Park! (all family members welcome!)
• Oct. 17 – Little UCC Buddies in the Forest
• Oct. 24 – Little UCC Buddies in the Forest
• Oct. 25 – SFU Science Field trip
• Oct. 31 – Halloween & festivities

Please let me know if you would like to join us for any of these October dates! We would love to have you!

We have had an amazing start to the school year! Div. 12 students are so creative, kind, and fun! Here are some ideas for how we want to be this year! We add a few more words each day! We loved writing in our journals about our hopes and promises for our class.

During explorations, we have created so many wonderful structures and stories! Here are just a few examples!

In math, we have been playing games to practice our computational skills, and we started using graphing to learn about each other! What question did you ask your classmates?

Today was Dot Day! On Monday, everyone made dot day art with their temporary homerooms! We might need to make some more as a class because we had so much fun! See if you can spot some Div. 12 artists featured here!

The first week of school was all about having a Growth Mindset! In Ms. Carley’s class, we made a garden to show how we are all growing. Everyone is at a different stage and brings a unique perspective with them! When we learn about each other and ourselves, we can be our best selves!

Then we got a chance to visit our very own UHE garden to explore with our five senses! This helped us be ready for our outdoor scavenger hunt! Tell your family about all the things you found that were rough, smooth, green, smelly, quiet, loud… and more!  We can’t wait to take our learning outside more this year!

Dear Families of Div. 12,

Welcome to our Division 12 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 will be taking our learning outside into the garden, forest, and community spaces quite often, so please ensure your children bring appropriate clothing and footwear for the weather each day.

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