Dear families,

We hope you had a good chance to celebrate your child’s report card that went home on Friday! We enjoyed writing about all the strengths and how well they are doing so far this year. For us, it is always a great time to sit to reflect on each child’s learning and to make clear our intentions for how to support them. The goals were ones they set for themselves. We are looking forward to supporting them and seeing them reach their goals!

Gratitude, Kindness, and Celebrations
Our class continues to focus on gratitude and kindness. Every Thursday, we share something that our heart is grateful for during our Thankful Thursday Community Circle time. On Fridays, we celebrate a success from the week. The goal is not that we only celebrate once a week but that we celebrate all of the small daily wins throughout our day. My celebration this week was this: I am celebrating all of my students for their hard work and dedication to their learning. I am proud of their accomplishment so far and am so looking forward to seeing further growth over time as they work towards their goals.

Climate Challenge
Thank you for participating in the Climate Challenge for the past four weeks. Starting on Monday, please return the package to school for a chance to win prizes. Click here for a digital copy. We have another Zoom meeting with TJ this Thursday morning!

Medical School Doctors of Division 6
This past week, we started our new unit on the basic structures and functions of body systems. We started with the circulatory system. To learn more about what will be covered in this unit, go to our We are Scientists page. Students were put into groups of three to read through a book about the circulatory system. The goal was to read parts of the book to not just learn facts but more importantly, to develop a sustained curiosity by asking questions and then asking even more questions.

Key question about systems: How do the systems of the human body work together?

The goal is to learn about the four body systems and then they will choose a disease of interest to research. I am so excited to share that our culminating event will be to attend the Gilmore Medical Conference 2021 as doctors and experts in our field! Students will attend as participants to listen to research findings from their fellow medical colleagues!

Passion Projects
Next week before we head out for our break, students will be presenting on their Passion Projects. They do NOT need to be finished yet! This is just an opportunity to share what they have been working on and receive some feedback that will help guide them as they move forward.

Mathematicians
In Math, we have been learning about equivalent fractions. This past week, they logged on to Khan Academy to practice their understanding of Place Value. At home, they are always welcome to log on to practice math concepts. I highly recommend that you sit down with your child to take a look at what Khan Academy has to offer so whether they need a challenge or more review at a lower grade, it is available for them. To find login information, please go to O365 OneNote > Name > Handouts > Accounts. All of their account information is there (including All the Right Type and Epic).

Letter Writing
Students were so excited to learn that they have little buddies in Ms. Sokugawa’s class! We wrote our first letter to them this past week! Buddies will look very different this year. They will not get to meet or spend time with them like they may have in past years but we didn’t want to let that stop us from having buddies. They will be more like pen pals. We also started writing letters to some of the residents at Seton Village. It was a good walk around the neighbourhood for our Jingle Bell Walk!

Digital Portfolios & Self-Reflection
We have been working hard on our Digital Portfolios. We all started with PowerPoint but we have too many older iPads in our classroom that have trouble with the program so I made the decision to switch to a different platform: FreshGrade Connect. Some students have opted to stay with PowerPoint and that is fine. I imagine that some may want to move to FreshGrade at a later date and that is fine too. They will just upload their PowerPoint file. As always, I like to offer voice and choice so if they want to continue with PowerPoint, that is great too. Here are the expectations for each post:

• Explain the piece of work. What we did.
• Tell what went well or what they are proud of.
• Share what challenges they faced or what was in their stretch zone.
• If you were to do this activity again or something similar, what would you change to make it better or what would you do differently next time?
• Optional: What did you discover about yourself as a learner?

To view your child’s FreshGrade account, I will send you an invite shortly. They set their own passwords so if they do not remember, simply have them click on the Reset Password button. They will receive an email to reset. This is good practice for them to manage their own passwords. To view your child’s PowerPoint, ask them to login to the O365 account to show you.

We are artists.
Ms. Paulich taught us about zentangles. They worked on some beautiful art that is now on display in the hallways! They used pastels to make their artwork pop! They are currently working the next piece: The Grinch! We are looking forward to seeing their final products!

School Events
Thank you for sending gifts for our Angel tree. We are still collecting if you wish to bring toys to school. We appreciate you for sending food for the Food Bank too on Friday!

Questions about School
We often have parents tell us that their children don’t share much about what they do in school all day.  We always encourage parents to read our blog posts WITH your child. This is a great way to start the flow of conversations! What does this accomplish?

• Have them read it aloud to you. This gives them a real reason and good practice to read!
• It is another opportunity to not only show your interest in what they are learning but get engaged in their learning! When questions come up in your discussions, demonstrate what curiosity looks like. Model asking questions and more questions. Then jump onto Google to research the answers to the questions you came up with together! This fosters the idea that we can be lifelong learners always curious about the world around us and there is joy in learning together.
• It helps them review or reinforce their learning. It is an opportunity to ask them what they learned but don’t ask them that general question of “What did you do in school today?” I found that kids don’t really want to answer that question perhaps because it’s too big of a question to answer.

Instead, here are some sample questions you could ask instead with values in brackets!

• What is one interesting thing you learned about (be specific)…? (engagement in learning)
• What was your favourite part of school today? (finding joy in school activities)
• What made your heart happy? (finding joy)
• What is one kind thing you did to help/support others? (service to others)
• What part of your day are you most grateful for? (grateful heart)
• Did you give “today’s best” and work on improving your goals? (work ethic)
• What did you do today that was in your stretch zone? (growth mindset)
• What is one thing you are celebrating from today? (recognizing strengths or growth)

When you ask these kinds of questions, you are showing them what you value. Give these questions a try and let me know how your conversations about their school day changes!

As always, we are here to support you and your child in their learning journey. If you would like to have a conversation about what you read in the report card or would like to discuss other things about how they are doing in class, please feel free to reach out. Send us an email at Livia.Chan@burnabyschools.ca or Marianna.Paulich@burnabyschools.ca. We would be happy to talk to you! We appreciate you as our partners in your child’s learning. Thank you for sharing your wonderful children with us this year. We truly and absolutely LOVE working with them! We are all so blessed to be in the same Division 6 family this year!

Please feel free to leave a comment on this post! We would love to hear from you!

Grateful for you and our connection,
Ms. Chan and Ms. Paulich