Dear students and parents,

Students, thank you for your continued work in OneNote. I love checking and reading your work each night because although you are probably asleep at the time that I am typing my feedback and writing messages to you, I feel like it is my special time with you, if that makes any sense. I hope you have enjoyed the new Daily Challenges I added last week!

Parents, I really appreciate you for joining me in our meeting on Zoom last Friday night. To see so many of you there touched my heart! My main goal was to provide us with an opportunity to connect face to face albeit behind a screen. Here are some of the main points:

• Thank you for your continued support at home!!! I hope you can feel in your heart and mind my deepest gratitude.
• Schools will re-open on June 1st. We will be receiving more information from the District about health and safety protocols. Returning to school is a family decision. I am here to support your family regardless of your decision. To learn more, visit BC’s Ministry of Education’s website.
• Tips on OneNote: Use the new checkboxes to indicate completed work. Use the Highlighter to mark important information like instructions. If you haven’t noticed, what you see on the Content Library is exactly the same as your Hand in page for the day so now you only need to go to the Content Library when you login.
• We shared some ideas on how we can celebrate the end of the school year “together”. If you have any other ideas, please let me know!

Last week, we started our new unit on multiplication. Please go to We are Mathematicians to see what is in our grade 3/4 curriculum for learning standards. The gist of it is that students will become more fluent recalling multiplication facts but for grade 3’s, this is not intended so the focus is on understanding the concept of multiplication (repeated addition, skip counting, arrays, groups of) which will be the focus this week. Having said that, learning math facts this year while there is some extra time at home will prepare them for next year. For grade 4’s, they will need to multiply up to 3-digit numbers by 1-digit numbers (example: 826 x 3 = 2,478).

I hope the Passion Projects are coming along. They all had a chance to provide us with an update during our Book Club meeting last week so it sounds like it’s going well! This part of remote learning is probably one of the most important opportunities for your child to take. If they found the right passion project for themselves, then they will be self-motivated to learn. To me, this is one of the ultimate goals of education: to learn how to learn and think for themselves, to be curious and develop a passion for learning, to foster perseverance with a positive attitude as we go through the learning process (it is a process!), and to communicate or share what was learned with others. Please email me if you need any support. Our presentations will be on May 25, 27, and 29th on Zoom. During our Friday Zoom meeting, we will be co-constructing some criteria with students for the presentations.

Upcoming Week Schedule: Check Outlook Mail for invitations!

• Tuesday, May 19: Book Club meetings on Zoom – Check schedule on OneNote
• Wednesday, May 20 at 1:00 pm: PowerPoint lesson on Zoom – All welcome!
• Friday, May 22 at 10:30 am: Whole Class Meeting on Zoom – THEME: Wear a hat or crazy hair!

Please send me an email to let me know your thoughts around your child returning to school in June. I understand that you may not have made a decision just yet. I would just love to hear your current thoughts knowing they may change. Thank you! Email: Livia.Chan@burnabyschools.ca

I hope you enjoyed your long weekend! I have a favour to ask: Please give your child a big hug for me. Thank you! I would love it so much if you upload a picture of you hugging your child “from me” in the email you are sending to let me know your intentions about returning. That would absolutely make my day! 🙂 Thank you so much!

Sincerely, Ms. Chan