Dear families,

I believe it is important for my students to know that their teacher is a lifelong learner – still learning and wanting to learn more so that I can become a more effective teacher. They listen to me share things I learn from my PLN (Professional Learning Network) on Twitter and the books I am reading. One of the books I am reading is called Grand Conversations, Thoughtful Responses: A Unique Approach to Literature Circles. The author, Faye Brownlie, has a second edition just released on October 29, 2019 so I am looking forward to read the updates.

Students have either been reading with me in our Guided Reading group or they have chosen a book to read and meet in their Literature Circles. The book choices at this time are: Crenshaw, Frindle, and Rules. On Tuesday, they started reading and jotting down connections, questions, interesting word choices by the author or unknown words in preparation for the “Say Something” strategy. On Wednesday, they practiced the “Say Something” strategy for the first time. I thought it went well for their first time. Some shared personal connections, some found interesting word choices like “thought-grenade” from Frindle, and some shared a funny part of the story. I enjoyed the natural responses that classmates had when they felt exactly the same way in response to a certain part of the story. I can’t wait to see how their conversations evolve over time.

We learned about Aboriginal Veteran’s Day and appreciated their service contribution. Students practiced writing their own “tweet” around the theme of pride – how soldiers felt a sense of pride to be Canadian and fight for peace. Later, we made poppies to decorate our class poppy that was displayed at the Remembrance Day assembly. On the poppies, we wrote our personal messages of appreciation. We learned about why we wear poppies. During the Remembrance Day assembly, we listened to a number of moving letters as if they were written during the war from the perspective of a father or mother who stayed home and the father or son who went to war. These letters were written by students in Division 2.

We continued to work on our stories in Office 365. If you are looking for “homework”, they can always read for 20 minutes, work on their stories in O365, practice their Math (see our Math page), or go to Tynker to code.

Today, we went into the Library to practice our coding skills using Tynker. I was so impressed with their perseverance skills. Some found parts of it hard but they kept trying. Learning to code develops not only computational thinking skills in ADST (Applied Design, Skills, and Technology) but goes beyond curriculum and into the core competencies of personal awareness: self-determination, self-regulation, perseverance with challenging tasks, and resilience. There is such value in the struggle.

“Enduring and persisting in the face of struggle are crucial to learning, because learning is a hard and messy business. It’s not an easy expedition. Helping children develop the resilience they need to persist when they bump up against intellectual and social challenges is one of most important ways we can help them make the trek successfully.” – ResponsiveClassroom.org – The Value of Struggle

Coding also dives into the other core competencies of critical thinking: analyze, investigate, develop and design. With all the critical thinking they must have done during this time, if their brains made music, the library would have sounded like a loud rock concert! You know they enjoy an activity when I tell them they have one minute left and you hear a chorus of, “No or aww”.

We finished off the week with tracking our core competencies of Personal Awareness and Responsibility as well as Social Responsibility. Where are we at with our self-determination, self-regulation, and well-being? How do we contribute to our community and care for our environment, how do I solve problems in peaceful ways, how do I build relationships, and how do I value diversity? It will be most interesting to see how they move along on the continuum in these areas.

Enjoy your long weekend, everyone!

Sincerely, Ms. Chan