Dear Families,

We are so excited to be starting a project all about our amazing families. Each class member will be getting one great, big page to write, draw, and show photos of our families! We brainstormed some topics we might want to include on our pages. Who is in our family? What places are we from? What celebrations, cultures, traditions, and foods do we have? Everyone has such different, unique, beautiful families and we are going to spend December sharing about them and getting to know our community better!

This weekend, you could start having conversations about your family. Are there any photos or drawings or stories we could include in our sharing book?

If you haven’t already, it is time to harvest your microgreens growing at home! You can even reuse your plastic containers to plant more! Div. 6 co-wrote this post about microgreens.

Last week, we planted microgreens and it has been really cool to watch them grow. Microgreens only take 14 days to grow and when you start off they need a dark place. After 4-5 days, they need sun or light for 16 hours a day. After they grow, they turn into micro versions of the plant – it is in the name: MICRO greens. We need water for them, but we don’t really need soil. They can grow in coconut skin. We planted some at home and some for school. There are many different types of microgreens. We wonder which one will grow the tallest!

On Thursday and Friday this week we are harvesting and taking home our class microgreens!

Several weeks ago, we took our math learning outside to explore groups of 1000 and begin our number sense unit. We were surprised at how long it took us… and then how small the amount looked! Last week, we connected our learning to a photo of a beaver dam that Ms. Carley found at the Burn’s Bog! It looked so similar to when we collected groups of 1000 sticks! With each photo at the bog, we got more information for our estimations of how many sticks were in the photo. Our understanding of number sense, place value, ordering, comparing, adding, and subtracting has come a long way!

After estimating how many sticks were in the dam, we solved a wordless story problem about the beaver who might have built that dam. The next day, we were inspired to create our own story problems and came up with stories that had all sorts of math operations. Some were about addition, time, division, measurement, patterns, and more! Where can math live inside stories?

Recently, we have been talking about Remembrance Day. We talked to our families about our connections to war and peace. As a class, we created this blog post to share with our families about our experiences.

Poppies are a powerful symbol of Remembrance Day. We made poppy art by painting the poppies, drawing the stems, and then outlining them with sharpies. Finally, we cut and glued them onto our poem paper with buttons.

We also started a new tradition of planting poppies in the fall and saving seeds in the summer. We used our careful observation skills and new tools to create “up close” drawings and considered how poppies spread their seeds. After making paper pots, we planted some of our seeds indoors. We are going to plant the rest outdoors.

On Tuesday, November 10th, we wore poppies and had an assembly with a moment of silence.

We remembered the soldiers that fought for us. We remembered the loss and the love. We remembered the sacrifice. We considered things that are important to protect.

Wishing you all love and peace this Remembrance Day. Thank you for sharing your stories with each other and our class.

This week, Division 6 inquired about trees. We learned two ways that we can group trees, as evergreen or broadleaf. We explored the importance of species diversity and focused our learning on one very important native evergreen, the Douglas Fir. Outside, we looked for clues to figure out which trees were Douglas Firs, and looked closely at the different parts of a tree to identify them. We looked at leaves, buds and cones, and even found a worm that had made a home inside a cone! Today, we came up with 247 new wonders about trees! What a fantastic week.

– Ms. Devon

People celebrate in so many ways and for so many reasons. In the fall, we are met with celebrations and remembrances of life, of love, of harvest. This year, Div. 6 learned about Día de Muertos, the Day of the Dead, which was celebrated on November 1st-November 2nd. Does your family have any celebrations in the fall?

One of the celebrations that many Div. 6 families share is Halloween! Over the last few weeks, we had fun creating haunted houses with Ms. McGivern. We practiced our place value fluency with some Halloween math, acted out some Halloween words with drama games, and created spooky stories and poems in our journals. Friday afternoon, we also got to see the whole school’s costumes during the virtual Halloween parade! What a fun way to bring our community together!

Div. 6 had the opportunity to create stories with diverse plant invitations this week. What do these materials look like, smell like, and feel like? How can we draw them closely? How can we combine them with familiar materials to create new stories? Stay tuned for photos of our wall gallery! Can you create some new stories at home?

In Div. 6, we would like to offer a warm welcome to our student teacher, Ms. Devon! She is a student from UBC and is excited to be working with our class! We look forward to building our learning together. Here is a short introduction note from Ms. Devon:

Dear Division 6 Families,  

My name is Devon Naylor and I am excited to introduce myself as a teacher candidate spending my practicum with Ms. Carley this year. I began my two–week practicum on October 26th. I will also be spending each Thursday working with the class throughout the year. During the spring I will be teaching for two months. The class has been very welcoming. They are gentle and kind and I have enjoyed going outside and connecting with nature together. I look forward to getting to know them more. 

Sincerely,  

Ms. Devon 

Div. 6 scientists, engineers, artists, readers, writers, mathematicians, and problem-solvers were hard at work this week!

We worked on finishing our STEAM turkey obstacle courses! We loved sharing our unique and creative ideas with our classmates! Here is a virtual gallery of the obstacles that some students wanted to share.

A team of our Div. 6 actors created a video for our upcoming virtual Celebration of Learning on Tuesday at 9:45! They created masks, a script, and rehearsed their announcement of Super Hero Day next Thursday, Oct. 22nd! Can you make or wear a superhero costume that day? We had some pretty creative super hero masks being made this week! We look forward to creating a new video project soon!

We took our learning outdoors, making careful observations of types of leaves with particular characteristics. Can you find any examples of simple or compound leaves on your walks this weekend? How about “toothed”, “lobed”, or “toothless” leaf margins?

As “Anywhere Artists”, we used our amazing perspectives to notice some interesting things in the forest. Can you see the fox, the T, and the triangle in the photos below?

We learned a new game called, “Target Thinking” in Math to practice and develop our fluency with addition and subtraction as we move. Let me know if you would like a copy to play at home! And don’t forget to sign up for Epic Reading! Our class code is hqa2214.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Ms. Carley