Category: ADST

Dear families,

We continued to use the word “self-discipline” to practice self-regulation skills so we can build the habit as a character trait. I encourage you to use this word at home to remind them to follow expectations even though they may not feel like it. Remind them this is to build a healthy habit of focusing on doing what they need to do despite distractions.

Here’s how ChatGPT would explain self-discipline to an 8 year old. Perhaps it resonates with you and you’d like to share it with your child:

Self-discipline is like having your own superpower! It means being able to control yourself and make good choices, even when something fun or distracting is around. It’s like being a superhero who can focus on what needs to be done, like finishing homework or chores, even when you really want to play or do something else.

Just like a superhero follows a plan to save the day, self-discipline helps you stick to your plan or goals. It’s about staying determined and not giving up easily. So, when you want something, self-discipline helps you work towards it step by step, even if it’s hard sometimes.

Having self-discipline doesn’t mean you can’t have fun or enjoy yourself! It’s about finding a balance between having fun and doing what you need to do. It’s a skill that grows stronger when you practice it, and it helps you become really good at things you love doing!

We are authors.

We wrote a letter to Santa or to our family. On Thursday, we walked with Ms. Santorelli’s and Ms. Tai’s classes to drop off our letters in the mailbox. Please check SpacesEDU for our picture! There are a few more families who have yet to initiate access to SpacesEDU. I re-sent an invite on Thursday evening so you can view the reflection posts your child has created.

We are mathematicians.

We started learning about fractions. Here is the grade 3 curriculum on fraction concepts.

Big Ideas:

• • Fractions are a type of number that can represent quantities.

Students are expected to know the following:

• • Fractions are numbers that represent an amount or quantity.
  • Fractions can represent parts of a region, set, or linear model.
  • Fraction parts are equal shares or equal-sized portions of a whole or unit.
  • Provide opportunities to explore and create fractions with concrete materials.
  • recording pictorial representations of fraction models and connecting to symbolic notation
  • equal partitioning

They are quick learners! We learned that the top number is called the numerator and the bottom number is the denominator. One key understanding is that fractions must be equal parts.

We first learned about fractions of a whole like pies and pizzas. We can slice these whole items into equal parts.

Then we learned about fractions in a set. I absolutely love to plan hands-on, interactive activities where students use higher level thinking which include two of our core competencies: critical thinking skills and communication skills. They created increasing levels of difficulty for classmates to practice naming the fractions.

How to support at home: Find items at home your child can use to create fractions of a set. Ask them to tell you what the fraction is and to explain how they know. See if they can remember that the top number is called the numerator (how many as part of the set) and the bottom number is the denominator (how many total in the set).

Addition Fact Fluency

This week, we have been practicing our doubles: 1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 2 = 4, 3 + 3 = 6, 4 + 4 = 8, etc. to 10 + 10 = 20

If you don’t have one yet, please create a random numbers chart to practice 3-5 minutes every day. I can tell you that this goes a long way in helping your child feel more confident with learning their facts. In December, we will start learning about addition so having these facts solidified will allow your child to focus on addition concepts and not have to also worry about accuracy when calculating. So far, here are the ones we learned:

• +1, -1
• +2, -2
• +10, -10
• Making tens

Next will be practicing our doubles +1 (1 + 2 = 3, 2 + 3 = 5, 3 + 4 = 7, etc.) so learning the doubles will be the key to success to learning doubles +1.

Alternate game to practice doubles: Take a deck of cards. Remove the Jack and King. The A = 1 and the Queen = 0 (zero). Shuffle the cards and divide them equally. Play Doubles Race. Each player takes a turn to flip over one card at a time. The first person to call out the sum for the double, takes the card. For example, I flip over a 5 and I call out 10 before my partner. Then I keep the card. Then my partner flips over the card. Whoever calls out the doubles sum first gets that card. Take turns flipping over one card at a time. Have fun!

We are scientists.

We learned about different water sources including local watersheds like oceans, lakes, rivers, wells, and springs. We discovered that the majority of fresh water is stored underground and in glaciers. We also learned that less than 3% of earth’s water is fresh water and only about 0.5% of this fresh water is accessible so we need to do our part to conserve it. Our fresh water is a limited resource and is not being replaced at the same rate as it is being used.

We learned about the water cycle. Check out this video that explains the water cycle. Students loved dancing to this song by Blazer Fresh on GoNoodle! Me too!

Please feel free to check out this song: The Water Cycle Song.

A Special Scientist Visit

On Wednesday, Ms. Cramb, our grade 5 teacher down the hall, gave us a special presentation! Thank you to her dad and her dad’s friend from SFU, she was given some liquid nitrogen to share with almost all of the primary classes.

She taught us about states of matter and introduced us to dry ice or liquid nitrogen.

They got to witness how it froze a banana, strawberry, blueberry, eraser, pencil, rubber tube, metal rod, and balloon!

I was impressed with not just the questions they asked, but the many meaningful sentiments of appreciation they individually shared with Ms. Cramb at the end of the presentation.

Ask your child what they thought and how they felt about the presentation. Then to push their curiosity, ask them to come up with three more questions they are wondering about. Then feel free to learn together by researching the answers! I wonder what you can learn together! Have fun!

ADST & Science inquiry

Each week, we have one to two opportunities to learn with the laptops through thoughtfully planned scaffolded learning. On Friday, we learned some tips on how to do effective researching and how to keep us safer.

Our curricular competencies for ADST: Applied Skills & Technologies

First, we sparked curiosity by brainstorming questions about owls. Then we practiced how to search facts about owls. Within minutes, they were sharing cool facts about owls with each other!

How to support at home: Ask your child what they learned about owls so far and record 3-5 new things they wonder about. Encourage them to use their core competency of critical thinking skills to come up with new questions. Then have fun researching and learning together!

We are artists.

Ms. Kapusta says: This week, students began planning for a communal art project we will be making together as a class in the upcoming weeks. We will be using coloured paper to create a dynamic winter scene inside the classroom. We took a vote on what we wanted the scene to be and we settled on Santa’s North Pole! Students used their Creative Thinking skills to plan out what they want the scene to include and sketch out their vision. Through this communal art project students will “create an artistic work collaboratively and as an individual using ideas inspired by imagination, inquiry, experimentation, and purposeful play” (BC Curriculum, Arts Education 2/3).

It will also be a great way for students to grow their Social Awareness skills as they’ll be working together towards contributing to the classroom community in a positive way. In the afternoon, we practiced some community-building by working together to decorate the classroom for the holidays with paper chains and snowflakes. You might be able to catch a peak of students’ snowflakes hanging in our classroom windows. They turned out really beautiful! 

We are musicians.

For the past two weeks, we have been practicing our songs with Mr. Kenney’s class. Some students can use some extra support at home to learn the words to our songs so please practice. Thank you for your support at home.

Here are the links to the two songs we will be performing on Tuesday, December 12. There will be an afternoon performance at 1:30 pm and an evening performance at 6:30 pm. Students are asked to return to school at 6:00 pm (not earlier, please). Mr. Turpin would like them to wear black bottoms and a plain white top, please.

Winter Sleigh Ride 

Hot Chocolate

Sign Language

Since the beginning of the year, I have been teaching them different American Sign Language signs. They love it! Here are some of the ones they learned so far. I wonder how many you can learn from them?

Ways to Support at Home

A great way to connect with your child about what they learn in school is to read these blog posts together! If your child is ready, have them read the blog post to you. This is a meaningful way to have them practice their reading while also talking about what they learned. Ask your child to teach you what they learned. Being able to teach a concept to someone requires a deep understanding of the material. When they explain something in simple terms or teach it effectively, it can also solidify their knowledge which makes it easier to recall and apply the information in different contexts too.

Also, when you see a note in the planner stating what we learned that day, this is a phenomenal opportunity to ask them to teach you about it. If new concepts are reviewed within 24 hours, their understanding sticks better and if you ask them to teach you, it’s even better!

Next week

We have some exciting things happening next week!

• On Monday at 9 am, we have Metro Vancouver visiting our class to present a workshop on the Watershed Water Cycle! This is a free workshop and will directly enhance our Science curriculum.
• On Wednesday at 11:15 am, we will be making crystal candy canes. We will need some parent volunteers. If you are available from 10:30 to 11:15, please send me an email at Livia.Chan@burnabyschools.ca to let me know and I will send you more details. Thank you so much for your help!
• On Thursday, we have our OWL in the Classroom workshop! If you haven’t paid on School Cash Online yet, please do. Then please fill out this online form as soon as possible.

We will also need your child to bring in a glass jar, please. If you have extras, please send those to school too in case others do not have one. Thank you so much! We need these to make our crystal candy canes on Wednesday, Dec. 6. Your glass jars will be returned after the activity.

I am deeply grateful for your continued support by encouraging daily reading and writing, practicing math concepts and addition/subtraction facts, talking about what we learned at school, and using the same language we use for social emotional learning (for example: stretch zone, self-discipline, teamwork, determination). The more we notice and name what we see, the more effective we are at nurturing the character skills that will become habits through to adulthood. Being able to master self-discipline has the potential for future success in many areas of their lives. If this resonates with you too, let’s both work together to use the same language for consistency! 🙂

Grateful for your and our connection, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

What a great way to end the week with bowling at Rev’s for our first field trip of the year with Ms. Santorelli’s and Ms. Tai’s classes! Thank you to all of the parents who helped drive and supervise during our stay. When I looked out to the back of the classroom and saw so many parents standing there, my heart felt instantly grateful.

I appreciated seeing the support, encouragement, and celebrations throughout our time there. So many smiles too!

We are mathematicians.

We worked on solidifying our understanding of place value to develop our number sense. We learned how to expand the numbers into expanded notation. For example, 563 = 500 + 60+3.

Ways to support at home: Check that your child understands the following concepts. Give them random numbers and have them fill in the place value chart, expand the number, and draw the base 10 blocks. Generally, where it gets tricky for students is when there is a zero in the tens or ones place. They need to zero to “hold its place”. Here’s what they need to know:

• 100s, 10s, and 1s
• understand the relationship between digit places and their values (e.g., the digit 4 in 342 has the value of 40 or 4 tens)
• understand the importance of 0 as a place holder (e.g., in the number 408, the zero indicates that there are 0 tens)

Grade 2’s are expected to demonstrate a complete understanding of place value concepts to 100 and grade 3’s to 1000 in order to be considered proficient on the proficiency scale.

We love our Big Buddy time!

On Friday, our big buddies came to our room for a visit! We started by reading together. Then we practiced our math facts with our newly learned random numbers chart.

How to support at home: We are encouraging all children to practice their math facts at home. This is a fantastic way to practice at home! You’ll notice that on the left-hand side, there are digits from 0-9. On the right, there are numbers from 10-19. So far, we practiced the following:

• +1 and -1 which is just counting up or down by one number
• +2 and -2 which is counting by twos up or down. I want to see children trying NOT to add with their fingers for these. Please practice skip counting forwards and backwards so they can become fluent: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20 and 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19.
• +10 (only use the left side) and -10 (only use the right side)
• Making 10s (only use the left side) so when you point to 6, they say 4. When you point to 2, they say 8.
• Coming up: Doubles. Get ahead and have your child practice 1+1=2, 2+2=4, 3+3=6, 4+4=8 and all the way through to 9+9=18, 10+10=20

Then we did a paper chain challenge! Students connected with another buddy pair for this challenge. Everyone was given one sheet of paper, scissors, and an arm’s length piece of tape. They were given 20 minutes to come up with the longest chain. We saw great communication, teamwork, and excitement!

Some teams had tape left over so they turned these pieces into more chain links. Way to use your core competencies of critical and creative thinking! So resourceful!

Diwali

Diwali is a “festival of lights”. We read a book and watched a short video on this celebration. Please ask your child what they learned!

Save the Dates

• Monday, December 4: Metro Vancouver Watershed Water Cycle (free in-class presentation)
• Tuesday, December 12: Winter concert at 6:30pm and an afternoon dress rehearsal
• Thursday, December 7: OWLS presentation (paid in-class presentation; look out for more information to come next week)
• February 12 & 26 from 9:30 (1 hour): Ice skating at Bill Copeland (paid field trip; we will need parent volunteers, please. Ice skate rentals are available.)

As always, your children bring me such joy and I am ever so grateful. Thank you for your continued support at home every day. If you can help make sure your child can understand the math concepts, that would be greatly appreciated!

With a heart full of gratitude, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

We have some exciting news! This week, we welcomed Azaan to our classroom! Please feel free to introduce yourselves to his parents when you see them before or after school and help us make them feel welcomed, thank you. 🙂 We are thrilled you have joined our class, Azaan!

We continue to focus on gratitude and appreciating the many things we take for granted like peace. We read a few books about Remembrance Day.

We learned the art technique of tearing to create poppies to decorate our classroom wreath that was displayed at the assembly.

Thank you to Ms. Kapusta, we made beautiful poppies too. It’s in our hallway for all to admire.

We also shared and thought about what peace means to us and presented our ideas at the assembly. I felt so proud of them. Check out what they shared:

So many shared how they felt nervous. I taught them that physiologically, our brains don’t know the difference between nervous and excited. This was the perfect opportunity to be challenged in our “stretch zone” to overcome it. In the past few years, I have really tried to retrain my brain to see nervous feelings as excitement and it works! See it as opportunity to grow and embrace it. Also, the more we challenge ourselves, the more we grow. Click here to watch the Simon Sinek video that helped me better understand this concept.

Chunk Spelling

For the past few weeks, we have been having fun reviewing sounds and word endings. They all enjoyed discovering the new words they could make with the “at” ending while using their sound boards. It also helped them think critically when they came to a beginning sound that sounded like a word but wasn’t one or was a word but it didn’t have the same sound as in the word family. For example, dat (not a word) or what (has “at” at the end of the word but makes a “uht” sound rather than “at” sound).

Week after week, students will be introduced to a new word family to create words with different consonants, blends and digraphs. After they review, they work with a partner to challenge themselves to think of larger fancy words with the word family. Some examples of bigger words were: scatter, flatten, and attic.

So far, we practiced with “an, at, and, ash, ack”.

We are mathematicians.

One of my favourite things I love as a teacher is coming up with engaging and meaningful ways to teach concepts instead of a worksheet. We had a LOT of fun going around the room to practice our place value concepts! Numbers were randomly placed around the room. At each number, a different combination of base ten blocks were there. Students had to figure out how many hundreds, tens, and ones and record it in a place value chart. Then they had to write the number down.

We had some challenging ones where there were more than 10 ones and more than 10 tens! So we had to use our critical thinking brains to figure out that 11 ones means that there is an extra “ten” and one “one”.

Next, we were given numbers, like 325 and we had to represent the number using base ten blocks. We worked with a partner to show we can represent the number by drawing the value of each digit in the number. Practicing this concept is a great way to support at home!

We learned the Place Value Rap song to help us remember that the “Ones are on the right. The tens are next in line. Look once more to the left for the hundreds every time.” Have a listen and sing along with your child at home!

Bowling & Pizza Lunch

We are really looking forward to our first field trip on Friday, November 17! Thank you to all of the parent volunteer drivers who have offered to support us. On last count, I still need one more parent to help drive.

On the same day, there is a pizza lunch offered to everyone. This is a fundraiser that our dedicated PAC has organized. If you would like to order pizza on Friday, November 17, please CLICK HERE to learn more. Last day to order is Tuesday, November 14.

ADST

On Friday, Mr. Klarich stepped into our classroom when we were working on our newest post in SpacesEDU for our e-portfolio and was so impressed. Students were asked to choose a piece of writing they felt proud of, share what made them feel proud, and include what they want to improve on in their writing. Take a look at your child’s account in SpacesEDU. Some may still have their post as a draft because they weren’t quite finished.

Some students noticed comments left for them by their parents in a previous post. They were SO excited to see that so thank you so much for taking the time to review and leave a comment.

Absences

If your child will be away, I always appreciate an email. The office is requesting that sending an email is a more efficient way for them to record absences and they much prefer it over leaving a voice mail on the school main line. Please email kitchener.info@burnabyschools.ca. Thank you for supporting our office staff with this request.

Weather

The weather is turning. It’s a great idea to have a change of clothes for your child at school. Please bring a labelled bag at your earliest convenience. Thank you.

Also, please click here to check Burnaby District’s information on school related closures.

Deep Gratitude

Last week, I checked to see how many families open these email notifications to learn about what we covered the past week. Wow, my heart was so warmed and touched by the high percentage. Thank you SO much for your interest and for being my supportive partner in your child’s learning. You made me feel valued for the time I spend on writing these weekly blog posts. I am deeply grateful for you.

If there is something more you would like to see, please let me know. These are written for you so you can be informed and more importantly, so you can extend your child’s learning at home. The more support your child gets at home, the more they develop a love for lifelong learning and develop the habit of having a curious mind that is a critical thinker (one of our core competencies) who reflects on their learning (another one of our core competencies). As they share what they are learning about, they have an opportunity to practice their communication skills (yes, yet another core competency).

One way to think of these core competencies are what some say are 21st century skills. This is such a very important part of our curriculum! Learn more here.

I feel so blessed to be your child’s teacher. They bring me such joy every time I see them! I love seeing you during morning drop off and pick up too! 🙂

Enjoy the rest of the long weekend!

With a heart full of gratitude, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

It’s hard to believe we already spent 20% of our school year together! It is a pure joy to spend every day with your children. They make me feel so happy and well loved!

We are a community.

We meet as a community every single morning during our Community Circle time. This is one of my favourite times of our day after Heart Time because we get to share our stories. We always share how we are feeling and often something we feel grateful for. The more we learn about each other, the better we can understand each other. Biologically, we are over 99% the same but it is our history, culture and families, upbringing and environment, experiences and individuality that make us so unique.

Did you know that being in a positive state, our brain is 31% more productive than when it is at negative, neutral, or stressed? Happiness researchers have also found that gratitude leads to higher baseline levels of happiness. We learn better when we are feeling positive and have filled our hearts with spending time with people who bring us joy right from the beginning of our day!

So when we meet to connect during Heart Time (soft start) and in our Community Circle, it sets us up for an optimal level of learning together.

How to support at home: Talk about your understanding of community. What is a community? What does it mean to be a part of a community? How do you contribute to the communities you are in? How can they contribute to being a part of the communities they are in (e.g., school, sports teams, clubs, outside of school activities, families, etc.)

In Social Studies, we started learning about what makes a community by brainstorming. This was a starting point with some of our ideas shared. Click on the following links if you’d like to learn more about the curricular competencies and content learning standards for Social Studies for grade 2 and grade 3.

We are mathematicians.

We started learning about number concepts and place value. We learned the difference between a digit and a number. Digits are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Digits become a number when we give the digit a value. We created our own place value charts and using a deck of cards, worked with partners to compare who had the larger number.

How to support at home:

• Gr 2 – Quantities to 100 practice: Flip over 2 cards to make a number. Flip over 2 more cards for a second number.
  • Compare. Which number is bigger/smaller?
  • How many tens? How many ones?
  • Flip over two more cards for a 3rd number. Put these 3 numbers in order from smallest to biggest.
• Gr 3 – Quantities to 1 000 practice: Flip over 3 cards to make a number. Flip over 3 more cards for a second number. Flip over 3 more cards for a third number. Then ask the following:
  • Compare and order the numbers – Which number is the largest? Smallest?
  • How many hundreds, tens, ones in the first number, second number, and third number?
  • What is the value of the hundreds, tens or ones in each number?

Please check out our We Are Mathematicians page to see the differences in learning outcomes for grade 2 and 3.

We are readers.

On Wednesday, it was pajama day! 

In the afternoon, we built forts to read under. We had so much fun!

How to support at home: Continue to model and foster a love for reading. At this age, children still enjoy reading and sharing books with their parents. Visit the public library regularly. We are blessed that the McGill Library is nearby.

We are artists.

Thanks to Ms. Kapusta, we finished our zentangle pumpkins and cats and it is up in the hallway for everyone to enjoy since last week! On Hallowe’en, we also made jack o’ lantern bookmarks practicing following directions and folding.

Hallowe’en Experiences

Thank you to everyone for your generous contribution to our Hallowe’en party! We had so much fun on Tuesday! Ms. Santorelli, Ms. Kapusta, and I were very proud of their Dem Bones dance! If you haven’t checked it out already, I uploaded the video (thanks to Ms. Kapusta for taking it) on SpacesEDU. All parents should have access now.

After Hallowe’en, we worked on reflecting on our day by writing in our journals. We are learning to brainstorm ideas first and then write paragraphs with more details including more thoughts and feelings. I am proud that so many have shown improvement in their writing already! We will be uploading a sample of our writing in SpacesEDU, reflecting on our writing progress, and setting  personal goals. This practice will help us develop our core competencies of communication and reflective thinking.

How to support at home: When you do something as a family, have conversations about what your child thought and how they felt about it. This way, when it comes to their journal writing or talking about the books they read (especially when we get into our Reading Groups), they will have practice thinking and sharing about their thoughts and feelings.

• What did you think about _____? It was fun/awesome/great because _____.
• How did it make you feel and why?
• What are you grateful for?
• Share something specific that made you laugh or brought you joy.

ADST: We are technology wizards!

Almost everyone has memorized their login usernames and passwords, thank you! Please help them memorize it so they can login as soon as possible. This week, we practiced becoming more proficient at using the tools in Word to make our names bigger, bolder, italicized, highlighted, etc. We now know how to rename a file. We also learned how to add an image and resize it so that it keeps its proportion. Next, we will be learning how to add text boxes. All of these skills will prepare them for when I teach them how to use PowerPoint so they can create powerful slides to present their Passion Projects.

Since your child has an O365 account, they can use it at home. Please feel free to sit with your child and get them to show you what they have learned so far. Any extra time at home will help them become even more proficient! I love this time because I get to see so many kids step up as experts to help others. They have opportunities to support classmates and develop their leadership skills! They also feel good when they can help.

Soon, we will be starting to talk about Passion Projects. This is one of my other favourite things to offer. Last year, all but one student said this was their favourite thing to do in school! If you wish, you can start brainstorming and talking to your child about what they may be interested to research and learn more about.

Bowling on Friday, November 17

We apologize for the inconvenience of bowling not being added to School Cash Online until recently. If you can help drive, we would greatly appreciate your support! We are looking forward to our first field trip!

Hip Hop

You may have read that Hip Hop will resume this week. Unfortunately, it will be delayed. Once we have final dates, we will let you know. Thank you for your patience. We know your children are looking forward to dancing again!

Gratitude

Thank you for your continued support at home. The more you can bring in what we are learning about in school, the more it solidifies their learning. I appreciate you so much!

Gratefully, Ms. Chan