Div. 11 had a wonderful first week together! Here are a few small snap shots to celebrate over the weekend!

We are getting to know one another – building, reading, exploring, and sharing!

We read Our Class is a Family by Shannon Olsen and thought about all the ways we will be a family together this year.  We also talked about what our class family wants to feel like and be like! We are going to keep adding – What other words and ideas could we add?

We were excited about Dot Day, inspired by The Dot by Peter Reynold! Take a look at some of our amazing creations!

After reading A Kid is A Kid is a Kid by Sara O’Leary, we wrote letters to our new teacher to share some special things about us!

We started creating surveys to learn about each other and tallying all that information to create graphs in math! What a fun week!

Where will our learning take us next week?

Dear Families of Div. 11,

Welcome to our Division 11 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

Dear Students & Families from Div. 5 (2021/2022 school year),

Please take a moment to save your child’s blogfolio entries. The Burnaby School District is no longer able to support this medium, so you will need to save your child’s work and photos, if you would like to keep them.

Wishing you all a wonderful year with your new teachers and new classes! Thank you again for sharing your journey with me.

Love,

Ms. Carley

Dear Students & Families in Div. 5,

It has been so wonderful having you in my class community this year. Thank you for sharing your kindness, creativity, and big ideas with our class. We loved learning about each other and taking action in our community. Thank you for your leadership, compassion, and courage.

I so appreciated all your kind words and cards over the last week and all year. I will treasure them always.

I hope you all have safe and joyful summers.

Ms. Carley

P.S. Here are a few photos to celebrate the last few weeks of our learning.

We had the opportunity to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Month by learning from one of our little buddies’ mom, Mikelle Sasakmoose. She shared about her family and culture, and taught us how to make dream catchers. We loved learning and connecting with our buddies.

Thinking about our favourite parts of the year:

Over 40 Diversity club members shared what pride meant to them and together we created a joint statement to share:

Div. 5 had an amazing week learning from community member, Lori Snyder, and in place as we travelled to the Fraser River Discovery Centre and New Westminster Quay!

On Tuesday, we had a visit from Lori Snyder, Metis educator and herbalist. She taught us about some of the plants that live with us here on Burnaby Mountain. She shared salves, honey, apple cider vinegar, and many more treasures she created from the plants and shared her perspectives with us. We were so thankful for our opportunity to learn from her and ask many questions.

On Thursday, we loved travelling on the bus and skytrain to get to the Fraser River Discovery Centre. After our snack, we walked along the river seeing what we noticed in, on, and around the river! We spotted tug boats, speed boats, paddle wheelers, cargo, birds, logs, plants, flowers, pollinator homes, pride flags, and more! We loved connecting with our friends on new playgrounds spaces and eating our picnic lunches outside!

Our workshop was next, and there we dug for treasures as archaeologists, looked closely to wonder about what those treasures could mean to their original owners, and then play a trading game to examine the values different items were given as well as the fairness of trade. We learned so much about the Fraser River and its important role in indigenous communities and during early contact and trade with Europeans colonizers.

Dear UHE families,

Our diversity club students were so excited to welcome you into our school conference with our progress pride flag.

We are so thankful to acknowledge and celebrate  International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia with you all.

Please feel welcome to attend the virtual IDAHAT day celebrations at this link May 17 from 4:00-5:30pm on Zoom: https://sd41.sharepoint.com/sites/SOGI_Construction/SitePages/IDAHAT-Reimagined.aspx

At this year’s event, speakers from the LGBTQ+ community will share thoughts and experiences on the theme of “Authenticity.”

We are so thrilled to be welcoming you into our classroom next week. We are proud of our community, and the creativity, collaboration, and kindness that we share with one another.  Thank you for sending in your preferences – you will be receiving an appointment time shortly.

Look out for our forest art that will guide you into the space!

Div. 5 is learning about different types of writing! We have started a magazine project, sharing our learning with different types of writing!  We love having choice in our learning – choosing topics that are meaningful and interesting to us! Here are some of the elements you might notice!

• letter from the editor
  • we love introducing ourselves and our topics to our reader – who are we, what are our connections to the topic, and what do we hope for our readers?
• articles
  • interesting informational writing about our chosen topic!
• creative story writing
  • how can we weave a story connected to our topic?
• advertisements
  • what elements have we noticed in ads around us? How could we analyze and incorporate them into our magazine?
• persuasive writing
  • can you share an convincing opinion about your topic?
• advice column
  • what advice would you give?
• art & art reviews!
  • we have been exploring some amazing artists and creating amazing art this year! Which special pieces will you include?
• book reviews!
  • which book club book will you share about?
• fun elements such as puzzles, comics, games, word problems, quizzes, and more!

We can’t wait to share our learning with you!

We love learning about each other and our communities in division 5! We were so excited to share in celebrating Eid al-Fitr this spring! Thank you, Umair, Ameena, Khurram, Fatima, Myel, Noor, and Farbod for sharing your culture and traditions with our class. It was a wonderful way to celebrate Ramadan and Eid! Eid Mubarak!

Div. 5 have been amazing big buddies – last week, we created outdoor scavenger hunts for our buddies to solve, and this week we spent the morning reading together. Tell your family about getting to know your little buddy!