Dear students and parents,

I miss you! Thank you for your continued time and effort spent on your learning at home. An absolute highlight every night is to review your daily tasks and write messages to you. Know that when I look at your work, hear your audio recordings, and especially watch your videos, I have a big smile on my face and my heart is warmed. It truly fills my bucket and my soul. Thank you for your hard work!

Last week, we had our very first class meeting on Zoom. Reading your feedback after our meeting touched my heart. I was thrilled to know that you all thought it was very nice to see everyone. Looks like you really enjoyed playing Zoom the Room. My secret agenda was to get you moving and doing some exercise too. Mission accomplished! I am so looking forward to our next Zoom meeting on Tuesday, April 28 at 11:00 AM. Please sign in a few minutes beforehand so we can get started shortly after 11. Thank you! Please check your Outlook email for the invitation and accept the invitation so I know you will be attending. Return to your email to find the link on Tuesday morning. See you again soon!

All Earth Day work submitted on time was shared at our digital online Celebration of Learning. Click here to view all projects. There were other submissions after the deadline so please go to OneNote to check those out under Collaboration Space > Class Ideas > Earth Day. Please feel free to add more compliments. Check it out!

In Math last week, we focussed on addition with regrouping. For grade 3’s, you will need to know how to add 3-digit with 3-digit numbers with regrouping (596+388 =    ) and grade 4’s will need to know how to add 4-digit with 4-digit numbers with regrouping (5967+3885 =     ). Students were asked to demonstrate this by creating their own equations. They were challenged to create larger and larger numbers to add. Then students were asked to record themselves teaching me how to add with regrouping. These were the highlights of the week. You make great math teachers! I saw some great cinematography too with camera movement and zoom in shots! Fancy! Thank you, parents, for helping! And thanks, Isaac, for the image. Next week, we will begin with subtraction facts and then move to regrouping.

On Friday, I asked for your reflections and self-assessment on your own learning in the past two weeks of learning at home. Thank you for taking the time to write. I really enjoyed reading your honest thoughts. I sense that there are parts of this learning at home that you like but the part you don’t like the most is that you don’t see your friends and that you miss coming to school. I’d like to remind you that you are all doing a good job of doing our part so that we can return to school sooner – thank you. I hope that our Zoom meeting will help with the feelings of missing each other. I understand it is not the same. I appreciate your feedback that you are enjoying the tasks that I have been giving you. Many of you expressed that you like the Collaboration Space because it feels like our Community Circle that we had every day so we will continue to use that. I’ve got more great ideas coming your way! If you have an idea too, please share! If you have not completed your reflections, please go to the Reflections section to fill out. I would love to hear from you too. Thank you!

We also started thinking about our Passion Project or a Genius Hour concept. Students were asked to go to the “I’m a self-learner” section to create a new page to record what they want to learn for “flexible learning”. What is it that you have always wanted to learn how to do or learn more about? Now that you have more time at home, what a fantastic opportunity to dive into those passions! My son has learned so many unique things at home on his very own that he would not have been taught at school like playing the melodica, card tricks, Japanese, stop motion short films, video editing, skateboarding, to name a few. Here’s your opportunity! The world is your oyster!  You will be recording what you wish to learn more about in our Collaboration Space on Tuesday so you will be able to see what others are interested in also. The learning could be the process and you can work on a final product at the end too! A couple samples were shared in OneNote that I will share here as well. Kiana recorded herself reading aloud and Zia researched zebras. Thanks for sharing! Enjoy!

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Reminder: We have a Pro-D day on Monday, April 27. There will be no tasks posted in OneNote. Enjoy your day! I feel like I have learned a LOT lately but I absolutely love to learn so I will be doing more professional development!

Look out for more tasks on Tuesday! There won’t be a lot because your biggest task will be participating in our virtual class meeting. We will be sharing how we are feeling and something you did over the weekend so please come prepared. Thanks! Can’t wait to see you!

Did you notice that I added my Twitter feed on the right? Comments are always welcome on our blog. Click on Leave a Comment. It can be found right under the title of this post. Thank you!

Sincerely missing you,

Ms. Chan