Div. 11 has loved learning in January!

This new year and Lunar new year, we have been thinking of one word that will help us be our best selves. We chose our word and have started creating art! If you want to read the story that inspired us, it is here: One Word for Kids: A Great Way to Have Your Best Year Ever.

In numeracy, we are learning and practicing addition and subtraction! Some fun moments were when we went on addition scavenger hunt and when we played bump to help us build our fluency!

In literacy, we have been reading a novel called Wishtree! We are practicing so many strategies for understanding and sharing our thinking about books!

We have also started our storytelling sessions again – sharing, revising, and then performing! We love hearing each other’s stories and seeing them typed up on the board! We especially love being a special character in the performance! Whose story did you perform in this week? Thank you Colin, Maia, Sebastian, Celine, and Ethan! We look forward to hearing our other classmates share next week.

We have three new published books this week! Congratulations to Amelia, Felix, Benjamin, Yuha, and Ian, on your creations! Our collection is growing!

This week was literacy week and we were focused on learning about our culture and heritage. With our buddies, we explored the stories of our names. Can you have a conversation this weekend about what your name means? We hope to share with our buddies again on Tuesday.

In science, we have been connecting our learning to Wishtree! Just like Red is a home for many creatures, where can we find homes? What do homes look like? How are they different?

We have special new artifacts to explore – whose home is this? We explored bird houses, honey combs, wasp nests, shells, and more! Our magnifying glasses helped us look closely and wonder about these homes.

Next week, we will continue our bird inquiry and start to go on some bird walks! Be ready for dates you can join us!

Our next garden day is next Tuesday, Jan. 31. Please let me know if you can join us 1-2:30pm!

Looking forward to our next learning adventures!

Dear Families of Division 11,

Thank you for such a wonderful December!

Our class had an incredible performance at our winter concert! Thank you again to Maia’s family for helping us sparkle!!

We loved spending time with buddies creating our mittens and eating and dancing together at the Pancake Breakfast!

We hope you love your special holiday creations!

Thank you for all your cards, gifts and words! Our amazing class community makes my heart so full. ❤️

In math, we love exploring patterns! Can you find any patterns around you this weekend?

This week in Div. 11, we continued our amazing stories! We are publishing our books and sharing them with our classmates. We will continue to update our story board too!

How can puppets help us explore stories? We love Ms. Carley’s new puppets!

We love art with Ms. McGivern! She teaches us fun concepts. These are our monsters wearing underpants!

We love time to explore materials and solve puzzles together!

We have shown so much improvement in singing and dancing for our winter performance! See if you can find a few minutes to practice over the weekend!

This week was very exciting! We loved being creating and wondering about the world around us!

We are excited to learn our winter concert song! If you have a chance, please practice our song and dance at home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWsX5IA82Ag

This week, we continued creating stories in story workshop! We love making stories with materials, drawing, painting, writing, and sharing our ideas. (If any story workshop materials from the library or the classroom make their way to your home, please send them back when you can! :))

We have been exploring the water cycle! This week, we showed the water cycle with loose parts and then we went on two water walks in the community! Thank you to all the parents who joined us! We appreciate you!

Where did you find the water cycle?

Did you see or hear any birds on our walk?

We looked closely and created observational drawings of our forest treasures this week, especially learning parts of the birds!

We love our Daily Five reading stations with Ms. Guise! Here are some of the fun ways we read and explore words!

Div. 11 & 12 created land portraits to show the special, amazing people we are! Thank you for being you!

This week, we spent time reading and learning about Remembrance Day. We made poppies with our big buddies and our classmates, During our school assembly, Sebastian and Sophia shared about why our school and class made poppies. We hope you have a beautiful, reflective Remembrance Day today.

“We honour with poppies because they show love, respect, and remembering.” – Sebastian

“We made our poppies with hearts and a flower centre to show kindness and peace.” – Sophia

Another big focus of our week was writing our pen pal letters in English and translating them to Spanish! We were so proud of writing our letters and connecting with our pen pals. On Thursday, they were finally ready. We weighed our letter, found the right amount of stamps, and walked our letter carefully to the mail box! We can’t wait for our pen pals to receive our letter and we are looking forward to getting their letters too!!

On Tuesday, we became water droplets in the water cycle going on a grand journey! Starting in a variety of different places, we rolled the dice to see if we would stay or travel to another part of the water cycle through many processes! By collecting beads throughout our journey, we were able to track where we travelled and create a story to go with it!

Our storytellers of the week were Felix and Colin! Thank you for sharing your exciting stories about protecting the forest and working together!

We chose a song for the Winter Concert on Wednesday, December 14th at 7:00pm! There will also be a dress rehearsal on Tuesday afternoon. Please mark your calendars for this winter fun!

On Thursday, your child brought home a home reading package, including: ziplock book bag, welcome letter, reading log, and two books to start with! Please send your children back to school with their book bags for our exchange on Mondays and Fridays, if they are ready to switch books!

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This week was full of adventures.

We shared stories of our celebrations and families.

We shared stories from our imaginations.

Storytellers shared their stories aloud while Ms. Carley typed them on the whiteboard. Then we reviewed and revised together. Finally we had actors help act out our stories. We had so much fun – we can’t wait for more story tellers to share! Thank you Amelia and Mariam!

We created stories using loose parts and then drew and wrote them down! Thank you Sebastian, Maia, Charlotte, and Kela for sharing your stories today!

We learned about the Ojibway Seven Sacred Teachings through stories from and songs with Mr. Asham and Elder Dave Courchene on Zoom. You can find the video we watched about the teachings here.

As scientists, we explored water mysteries, such as the case of the missing puddle!

We had our second garden workshop day! Thank you to the parents who were able to join us!

We also used our observation skills of sight and touch to explore forest beings that were preserved and shared from the Beatty Museum! We look forward to looking closely with tools next week and creating art and stories inspired by these forest treasures!

The bird was soft. – Leah

The chipmunk and the other animal over there were very soft and I liked it but the chipmunk was softer. – Amelia

I like that bird that the people cut the wings off. – Sebastian

I like the rocks. – Max

I like the squirrel. – Ian

Actually the squirrel was a little bit softer than the chipmunk. – Maia

It was fun to touch all the artifacts and the wings and the squirrels and chipmunks were softer and for the rocks I think that the firm part of the fossil was different than the rock part. – Benjamin

I like hummingbird. – Niko

The chipmunk is the cutest. – Ethan

Our monitors loved caring for our class this week and we felt proud and happy when we read their messages!

Thank you for a wonderful week, Div. 11! I look forward to our next week!

We are learning about different celebrations in Div. 11! Last week people celebrated Diwali. This week, many people are celebrating Halloween today and Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) on Nov. 1st & 2nd.

It was fun watching the school have a costume parade and creating haunted houses inspired by the artist, Friedensreich Hundertwasser.

We are amazed at how many animals migrate for the winter and how these journeys and places connect us all. Today, we learned about the migration of the Monarch Butterfly and the connection it has to Día de los Muertos. We look forward to reading more stories about Day of the Dead and creating some special sugar skull art on Wednesday. What special celebrations does your family have?

We look forward to our second garden day tomorrow!

Be safe and have fun this evening, if you are trick-or-treating!

Wow, we have had an amazing time continuing our inquiries, and story telling in Div. 11! Here is a snapshot of some of our highlights!

Our Story Workshop

We have been busy building stories with characters, problems, and solutions in our classroom and library! Today, we wrote some of our stories down! Congratulations, writers!!

Our Bird Inquiry

We got to read our very first letter from our pen pals! We have so much in common! We are so excited to send our photos! If you were away, don’t worry – we will take yours when you are back!

Water Inquiry

On Wed. Oct. 26, we went to the Fraser River Discovery Centre and New Westminster Boardwalk.

Getting to the Centre was an adventure! We saw and experienced so many types of transportation! We took the bus, skytrain, and walked across train tracks! Then we saw boats and trains travelling around us!

Inside the Discovery Centre, we learned about the Fraser River and the impact of pollution on our watershed and food webs. Then we had some time to explore the other learning invitations of the centre and dug like archaeologists, balanced barges, put on puppet shows and played with models!

Outside, we observed the spaces below and above, looking closely with our eyes and binoculars! We used field guides to understand and wonder about who lives here. We used charcoal to create representations of what we saw.

We were inspired by the maps at the Quay and explored maps of the watershed and Metro Vancouver area in class this morning! Then we started creating our own maps!

Buddies & Halloween

With our big buddies, we created haunted houses! We can’t wait to see our buddies next week! Please remember, you can wear a Halloween costume on Monday if you want!

We hope you had a reflective and wonderful day of Truth and Reconciliation. We loved spending last week engaging in learning, listening, and reflecting. We loved hearing Indigneous author, Nicola I. Campbell, read her books Shin-chi’s Canoe and Shi-shi-etko on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then we had the opportunity to learn about traditional techniques in Coast Salish art. After our assembly, we found the beautiful stones that Div. 1 & 2 left in the community and forest. We look forward to continuing our learning journey. Be sure to visit our orange hearts on the window of our classroom!

This week, we explored different mediums in representing the flowers that joined our class this week! We hope you enjoyed the bloom your child brought home today!

We created self portraits with our loose parts and wrote about who we are after reading a funny story called My Dog is As Smelly as Dirty Socks.

We continued our water inquiry by going on another water walk and exploring the stages of the water cycle! Can you find water on your walks this weekend? Even on sunny days, we found many examples of where water lives!

In math, we have been learning games like “Beat the Teacher” and “Target Thinking” to practice our fluency! Teach your families our new games, and let me know if you want a board game to bring home!

We have started learning about our emotions and self-regulation, using a program called the Zones of Regulation. Can you check in with each other about how you are feeling this weekend?

We hope you have a chance to talk about these snapshots of the last few weeks!

We are thankful for our families and our learning. Wishing you a restful holiday weekend!

We had another wonderful week together! Div. 11 brainstormed some of the amazing things about our week. Here are their voices:

“We had tons of fun!”

“We made a lot of things!”

“We got pen pals from Mexico!

“We are going to study three types of birds. They are Black-throated warbler, Orange-crowned warbler, and the Wilson Warbler.”

“We had  the Terry Fox Run!”

“We played outside in the forest.”

“We made art from our forest treasures!”

“We went on our first gardening day!”

“We made increasing, decreasing, and repeating patterns with geometric shapes!”

“We had another gym day and music day!”

“We have a goal of listening.”

Next week, there are some special days:

• Monday is a Pro D Day
• Tuesday and Wednesday are photo day
• Thursday is a Orange Shirt day assembly. Please wear orange
• Friday is the Truth & Reconciliation Day (no school this day)

Families, please fill in this short survey so I can continue to learn how to best support your child this year: https://forms.office.com/r/ZtLDdMm3u6