Dear families,

One thing we strive for is to make school a place we love and look forward to be. This all happens by design and with great intention as we plan engaging and meaningful activities every day. I love the connections we have with each other as we learn about ourselves and each other in our safe and caring community. Our goal is to help them cultivate joy through relationships and as we learn. We are better together and stronger together! We are so blessed to be their teachers!

Hip Hop

So proud of them! Hip Hop was a fun way to learn how to dance! If you were not able to see the performance, the video was uploaded to SpacesEDU, but there is a slight issue right now with parent access. Once I hear back from SpacesEDU and it is fixed, I will send out an email to inform you. Regardless, find the email with the invite to set up your account to view.

Introduction to Daily 5

We appreciate Ms. Kapusta, our ELL teacher, who comes into our room every Wednesday to support our learners. This week, we introduced a structure that ignites joy in reading and writing that introduced this framework. Students were also introduced to a new program called Chunk Spelling. Here, they practice putting together initial consonant sounds, blends, and digraphs with a word family. Click here to learn more. Ask your child about their first experience with Daily 5!

 

Introduction to Passion Projects

Passion Projects is one of my most favourite things to offer to learners! There is SO much rich learning that can happen! As written in their planner last week, students were asked to come up with three things they might be curious to learn more about. Click here to check out the slide deck. They have only seen the slides up to the links to websites. I will share the following slides this week.

Please have a conversation with your child about the top three things they would be very interested and curious to learn about and teach to classmates. Check out our initial list! Click here or on the image on the right to enlarge.

These passion projects are intended for students to work with a partner because there are SO many additional skills they can learn by working with a classmate (collaboration, communication, listening, speaking, taking turns, negotiating, co-planning, etc.) but I will offer choice to work independently. Please also speak with your child about their preference. As mentioned before, we will be using PowerPoint so if you wish for your child to get a head start, please feel free to show them some tools. I will be introducing PowerPoint this week! Many of the tools will look familiar to them since they are the same in Word. SO excited!

We are artists.

Students thoroughly enjoyed working on this art project! Always love how they all receive the same set of instructions but each one has its own personality and flare!

We are scientists.

Week after week, Ms. Kim has led our salmon observation in Ms. Barndt’s classroom. This week, we saw that they have grown to approximately 7mm and do not have their sacs anymore. We continued to learn about the chicken’s life cycle. Ask your child about what they’ve learned so far!

We are storytellers.

This past week, Ms. G. Lee had us working in groups to tell a story using various story workshop materials. Then they brainstormed their stories on a graphic organizer. Ask your child about their experience and what their story is about!

 

Exciting upcoming events

• April 13 – Microplastics in-class workshop hosted by Institute of Urban Ecology at Douglas College
• April 14 – Ice cream sandwich sale day
• April 24 – Pro-D Day
• April 28 – Diversity assembly
• May 4 – Student Led Conferences; early dismissal at 1:45pm
• May 5 – Walkathon
• May 17 – Arts Umbrella performance at Granville Island. We will need parent volunteer drivers, please.
• May 24 – Class photos
• June 23 – Science World field trip with Division 12. We will be taking transit and will need parent volunteers, please.

How you can support at home

As always, we are grateful for your support at home. Some suggestions on how:

• Read our blog posts each week so you can have conversations to review and extend learning. Better yet! Read it WITH your child or have them read it to you!
• I highly encourage you to be curious WITH your child.
• Ask them what else do they wonder about? Model curiosity by sharing what you wonder about based on the topic. Research to dive deeper into their curiosities to foster a love to become lifelong learners.
• Many students at this age read independently. It is important to have conversations about what they read. When my own kids were in elementary, I tried to read the books they read so we can have conversations about the characters, plot, etc. It was a wonderful way to connect and to build a lifelong love of reading.
• Many children spend more time reading than writing at home. Encourage your child to write. Find a real reason to write. We have more students in our class who are better readers than writers. Since writing is a skill, the more time they spend writing, the better they get at it. Encourage them to re-read their writing when they are finished.

On Thursday, we said good-bye to Ms. Kim. She has worked very hard during her time with us to get to know your child and plan fun, engaging lessons. We wish her well in her continued journey to becoming a teacher.

I write every blog post with love and a heart full of joy and gratitude. Your child brings me so much joy so I thank you for sharing them with us. Have a wonderful rest of your long weekend!

Gratefully, Ms. Chan