Category: ADST

Dear families,

We had a week full of fun! On Monday, children had fun during our Jump Rope for Heart time. There were 10 stations set up by Division 1 for all classes to enjoy! Click here to see a video of the gym set up.

Black History Month
We learned about the life of Mohammed Ali and Martin Luther King through his “I Have a Dream” speech. We had discussions about colour and how blacks were treated in the past and continue to be marginalized today. We discussed privilege, kindness, what we can do, and then wrote our reflections.

Applied Skills & Technologies
According to our grade 2/3 curriculum, students are expected to be able to do the following:

• Use materials, tools, and technologies in a safe manner in both physical and digital environments
• Develop their skills and add new ones through play and collaborative work
• Explore the use of simple, available tools and technologies things that extend human capabilities to extend their capabilities 

On Valentine’s Day, we thoroughly enjoyed our Friendship Fruit Salad! Thank you to everyone for your contribution! Every student had an opportunity to help prepare the salad by cutting fruit, peeling oranges, or separating grapes from vines. I loved how so many were coming back for seconds! It was so delicious. Why? The secret ingredient: made with love. 🙂

We had an abundance of apples for our fruit salad so we decided to bake apple crumble on Friday. We enjoyed it so much too because of the secret ingredient. I loved how we had 10 cutting boards with partners respectfully taking turns cutting the apples into small pieces.

Here’s the recipe we used:

• Cut 10 apples into small pieces. Mix 75 ml sugar, 15 ml flour, 5 ml cinnamon, 60 ml water and add to the apples.
• Topping: 250 ml oats, 250 ml flour, 175 ml brown sugar, 1 ml baking powder, 1 ml baking soda, 125 ml melted butter, cinnamon, and vanilla.
• Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes in a 9 x 13″ pan.

This week, we continued to use the laptops to practice our communication skills using email. Many students are beginning to understand the parts of an email. On Friday, I introduced them to a new app: Microsoft Word. They played with their names by using the text formatting features like bold, italics, underline, shading, and changing fonts, size, and colour.

Grade 2 Mathematicians
We have been exploring addition. There is more than one way to add. My goal according to the curriculum is to show them different strategies beyond what we typically do, which is to regroup or what some know as “carrying”. I introduced them to decomposing into 10s and 1s and recomposing (e.g., 48 + 37, 40 + 30 = 70, 8 +7 = 15, 70 +15 = 85). If you’d like to support at home, have your child practice both of these ways to add 2 digits plus 2 digits.

We are authors.
I gave students developing/proficient/exceeding samples of stories at their grade level to assess against a single-point rubric. It was amazing to hear them compare and discuss differences and what would make it better. They took new insight to make their OWN stories even better!

We had mini author’s circles to read our stories to each other and receive feedback too. It was great to hear them share ideas to help improve their classmate’s stories.

Upcoming week

Wednesday, February 22nd is Pink Shirt Day. All students are invited to wear a pink shirt.

Friday, February 24 is our District Pro-D day. All staff have been invited to attend sessions at Burnaby Central and Moscrop. I am excited to be presenting two sessions! Click on the images to read the session details. I share this because I believe it helps you better understand my teaching philosophy and beliefs.

Next week, we welcome back our student teacher, Ms. Kim, for five weeks!

Have a wonderful Family Day long weekend!

Thank you for your continued support at home. We appreciate you!

Gratefully, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

I hope you are having a great weekend so far! Tomorrow, February 13 is Jump Rope for Heart. CLICK HERE to learn more and here to donate. A reminder to wear RED tomorrow and runners. If your child doesn’t have red, then Grizzly gear is great too!

We are authors and storytellers.
I read the story Ralph Tells a Story by Abby Hanlon. He discovered he not only had many stories to tell, but they had value and are worth telling. It taught us that stories are everywhere. We are story. Each day, we have an opportunity to share a part of our story with each other during Community Circle time to develop our connections and understanding of our similarities and differences.

Students have continued to enjoy working on their stories. This week, they had an opportunity to read it to a classmate to receive feedback on how well they described the characters, setting, problem, and solution. Some took their feedback to make improvements in their story right away! We now have some ready to begin publishing!

“All that we are is story. From the moment we are born to the time we continue on our spirit journey, we are involved in the creation of the story of our time here. It is what we arrive with. It is all we leave behind,” 

-Richard Wagamese 
Ojibway author from Kamloops B.C.

Speaking of story, I wrote an article for SFU that was just published recently on their education page – a first for their Share Your Story series. CLICK HERE for the link to the article. I’d love to hear what resonated with you. Please feel free to share in the comments or send me an email. Thank you!

We are mathematicians.
Grade 2s continued to work on our addition and subtraction math facts using our random numbers chart. If your child no longer has theirs at home, simply take an 8.5 x 11″ paper and randomly write 0-9 on one side and 10-20 on the other side. You can choose to have another sheet with all the numbers from 0-20 to practice. Here are the facts we covered thus far:

• Commutative property: a+b=c and b+a=c. You can switch the addends and the sum is the same.
• +0 & – 0
• +1 & – 1
• +2 & – 2
• +10 & – 10
• Making tens (combinations that equal 10 like 0+10, 1+9, 2+8, 3+7, 4+6, 5+5)
• +/- 9 NEW this week! Students loved learning the +9 and -9 strategy for addition/subtraction in math! It was like magic using the power of digital roots! They liked my magic wand I used for the effect. Please add these to your child’s skill practice. Thank you!

Look at the Addition Facts Chart below. If your child memorized the strategies so far (listed above), they would have learned 105 facts with only 45 left because of the commutative property! We still have some strategies up our sleeve, so let’s keep practicing with our random numbers chart at home! Thank you for your support! I practiced these with my kids at home and over the years, they have thanked me to “forcing” them to practice and memorize them. It just gives them more confidence in math overall especially when they move into the intermediate grades. Grade 3’s can  use these strategies to practice this too!

Next up: Doubles and Doubles +1. Then we’ll only have 35 facts left!

We also started learning how to add two-digits together with regrouping through play. Each person had a partner. They rolled two dice to create random numbers to solve the equation together. They were so engaged and worked well with each other!

We are communicators.
We had our second session of emailing on Friday. I am grateful that almost everyone memorized their login credentials to make the login process so smooth for us all. They are definitely reaping the benefits of being able to login efficiently! Thank you for your support! Students also are learning the basic parts of an email and are becoming better communicators by adding:

To: [Email address]
Subject line: [Short description of the email]
Salutation or greeting phrase: [Dear Ms. Chan,]
Body: [Message]
Closing: [Gratefully,]
Signature: [Ms. Chan]

We can reflect. 
It has been a while since we visited our eportfolios in SpacesEDU but last Thursday, we worked on two posts: Art and a reading.

The expectation is they share all of these in their reflection:  

• Describe what we did
• What I am proud of  
• Two “I can” statements  
• What I would do differently next time  
• What I learned about myself

We are artists.
Students thoughtfully considered and wrote what love means to them around Valentine’s Day. They also had fun hiding their name in and amongst all of the words! Here is a sample of a reflection and an image of our bulletin board.

Valentine’s Day
Thank you to parents who already communicated what your child will be contributing to our Friendship Fruit salad on Tuesday. If you wish, they can bring in their fruit on Monday, and I will keep it in the fridge for Tuesday. So far, we have contributions of raspberries, oranges, grapes, apples, kiwi, and a banana. Repeats are ok! Thank you! We will have bowls and spoons for them.

Your child should have brought home a list of classmate names on Thursday. If they are preparing Valentines, we would like all children to be included, please. Thank you for fostering inclusion.

As always, we appreciate your support at home. Should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to ask. Your children are working so hard every day to improve. We are so very proud of them!

Don’t always have time to read our blog posts? Looking for a real reason for your child to read? Here’s a tip: Have them read our weekly blog posts TO you as you cook OR instead of something else they are reading OR read it together so you can talk about what they are learning in school.

Grateful for you all and loving being their teacher because they bring me such joy, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

Happy Lunar New Year! We read a story called Sam and the Lucky Money. If you’d like to learn a little more about some of our traditions as well as to listen to the story, check out this video:

Anyone interested in ringing in the new year of the rabbit, Brentwood Mall will have a lion dance at 1pm (today) on Saturday, January 21 starting at 1pm in the Upper Centre Court. They will go through the Skybridge into the Grand Lobby for the second act and end at the Plaza.

We are readers.
I love finding authentic and real reasons to read and write. This past week, we scoured through many joke books from our school Library. Students chose a few that we enjoy to share over the PA next week during Literacy week. Some students will have an opportunity to read their jokes. Please have your child practice their jokes at home so they can read it fluently with expression and enthusiasm! It’s all in how a joke is delivered! Everyone has a joke to practice at home so just in case someone is away, they can be the backup person. Thank you for your help and encouragement!

We are authors.
We continued to develop our characters for our story by considering what they look like, their character traits and what they can do, and their core values and beliefs. Then we moved along with our storyboards. We thought about how our stories would begin, what the problem would be in the story and how it is resolved. I love how enthusiastic they are to work on and tell their stories!

How you can support at home: Ask your child to tell you all about their character(s). Have them explain what happens in the beginning of the story, what the problem is, how the problem might get worse before it gets better, how it is resolved, and then how the story has a satisfying ending. The more they practice telling their story verbally, the easier they will find writing it down!

We are scientists.
We were body scientists learning about our private body parts. How you can support at home is to have conversations to solidify what they learned and to answer any questions they have.

This week, we dove into learning more about oceans. We learned about our 5 oceans with some facts about each one. One of the things that resonated with many was pollution in our oceans and how that is affecting our wildlife in the oceans. We practiced taking notes during our learning. This will help prepare us for when we do our own research!

We all logged in!
Thank you so much to parents who helped their child memorize their usernames and passwords. It really helped to make the lesson run more efficiently and helped them have a better first experience. For the students who are still trying to memorize, please continue to support at home. Thank you! We were all so proud of ourselves to learning how to log in successfully! We practiced it a few times!

The next step next week will be to learn how to log in to Office 365. Since your child has a school account, they can download O365 onto your computer at home or just use the web version in a browser. Want to give your child a head start? Practice logging into O365 at home so they will be proficient the next time we use laptops! Please feel free to go to the Gilmore website and click on Office 365 (2 options):

A new login box will appear:

Type in the username@edu.burnabyschools.ca so it will look something like this:

#######@edu.burnabyschools.ca [no spaces]
The number is the same one they were memorizing. It’s their pupil number.

They will need to be taught where to find the @ sign. Teach them to press down the “SHIFT” key while they press on the number 2.

When students can’t login successfully, most of the time it is because they forget the “edu” at the beginning or they spell “burnabyschools” wrong. As you know, every letter, number, and symbol of the username and password has to be accurate or they cannot log in successfully.

Once they login, you are welcome to explore but the key point is just to learn how to log in to O365. So, practice logging in, teach how to log out, and practice logging in again.

I have to say that everyone was very patient and understanding especially when they had to wait their turn to receive their username and password. Great resilience! Proud of how quickly they learned!

Thank you!

We are grateful for your continued support at home. Thank you for your time to extend learning and to discuss what they learned at school. We appreciate your consistency with bringing planners to and from home too.

It’s not too late to bring gently used books for the book swap this Thursday! Looking forward to a fantastic Literacy Week!

Have a wonderful weekend! 🙂

With love and gratitude, Ms. Chan (and Mrs. Paulich)

Dear families,

Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful winter break with friends and family! I thoroughly enjoyed listening to all of the stories and fond memories shared.

We are authors.
For the past two weeks, we dove into our inquiry about what makes a good story. I am a firm believer that learning should be meaningful and relevant. The more we engage learners as active participants who are given time to question, explore, analyze, and eventually create, the more invested they are in their learning. When we move beyond the lower level thinking tasks that include basic recall and  instead, stretch our brains to think more critically with reflection, learning is more rich and fun!

We started with talking about the “hook” we generally find at the beginning of books we read. It is an opportunity for an author to entice a reader to want to flip the page and read on because they are excited to learn what happens next. So in partners, we studied a minimum of five books to analyze and evaluate the story beginnings that did just that. Then as a whole class, pairs had to justify why the books they chose met the criteria of having the “hook” and they had to explain why. [Higher level thinking skills on Bloom’s Taxonomy]

Next, we did various character studies by describing their appearance, traits and things they can do, core values, and beliefs. The more we learn about traits, core values, and beliefs, the better they will begin to see themselves reflected in various characters. The more they learn about themselves, the more self-aware they become about their strengths, who they are, and what they stand for.

A couple years ago, we had an author visit to teach my class about the importance of building characters in our story. Prior to that, I hadn’t placed much value on understanding our characters in our minds before we wrote our stories. We have to spend time envisioning and nurturing our main character in order to develop a strong story around them as they interact with other characters. So, students have been diligently working on creating their ideal character in their quadrant: Details on what they look like / character traits and what the character can do / core values / beliefs. I love watching them discover who their main character is and the excitement of seeing their character come to life on paper!

Today, we started building a brainstorm bank of ideas for different problems and solutions to use in our stories. Again, students were given an opportunity to work in pairs to search for the problem and solution in different picture books. They were so motivated to read and were so engaged as they recorded and added to our chart. We will continue to add to our list so they can be inspired by various problem-solution combinations. However, I will be encouraging them to be use it as inspiration to be even more creative!

I am very excited about how our inquiry into what makes a good story is turning out so far! Stay tuned!

Literacy Week
We have a fun week of activities planned for Literacy Week next week! There is one event new at Gilmore: A Book Swap! Many families have books they no longer read. This is a great opportunity to share well-loved stories with others! Please choose books published after 2010 and in good or excellent condition. Children can bring them in anytime this week.

Date of book swap: Thursday, January 26!

Grade 2 Mathematicians BUT applies to Grade 3’s too!

We reviewed even and odd numbers. They LOVED this catchy song: Even or Odd. 😉 Have a listen!

Your child should have come home with a piece of paper with random numbers (0-10) on one side and (0-20) on the other side. This is their random numbers chart. They are learning their addition and subtraction math facts. So far, they have practiced +/- 0, +/- 1, +/- 10.

This is how it works: If your child is practicing +1, use their finger to tap on the random number. Say the sum. We are aiming for this to be automatic. They are not actually calculating or adding 1 to the number, they are simply thinking and saying the next number up. Click here to watch a video of me explaining it.

If they are practicing +10, then use the (0-10) only. If they are practicing -10, then use only the numbers above 10 on the (0-20) side.

We will be moving on to +/-2. Click here to watch a video on me explaining this. Skip counting by 2s will be great practice!

We are also practicing skip counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s forwards and backwards, starting at ANY number. Please feel free to have fun practicing this as you walk home, in the car, or at home! You can use a deck of cards to have random numbers to start.

Listen to these skip counting songs: We’re Counting by 2’s.  Let’s Count by 5s.  10s Lift Off! More catchy songs!

If you haven’t checked out our Mathematician’s Play page recently, take a look!

With Mrs. Paulich, the grade 2s have been learning about measurement.

With Ms. Pears, the grade 3s have been learning about increasing patterns and being able to describe them: For example: “Start with one red & one black cube. Add one more red cube to the right each time.” Have fun practicing at home!

We are scientists.
Scientists in our room have been learning about sources of water: oceans, lakes, rivers, wells, and springs. As scientists, we are always learning to be curious! So after some basic knowledge about each of the water sources, we got into groups to be curious and record our wonderings on large chart paper. Each group started at a different water source. After a few minutes, they traveled to the next water source. They had to read the questions first before coming up with new questions to add. Then, we moved again to another water source to read all the questions and to add more. This strategy is called carousel because they move from station to station around the room like a carousel. They loved working collaboratively and seeing the questions their classmates came up with prior to them coming to the station! Next up will be reviewing the questions and learning about relevant questions and what makes a deep thinking question versus one where they can easily find the answer on Google, for example.

Computer IDs and passwords
Thank you so much for helping your child memorize their computer IDs and password. This will make their experience of logging in far less stressful when they know it by heart. My goal this term is to have them become proficient with logging in, sending an email in Outlook, composing a document in Word, and creating one slide in PowerPoint. Ambitious? Yes, but I think it’s possible! Consistent in our lessons will be talk about being responsible digital citizens who THINK before we post or share. More will be shared next time about this.

Gratitude & Joy
My heart is always filled with gratitude for your support at home. Please continue to encourage your child to read for enjoyment and include some time to talk about what they read and to make connections. For students who have writing as a goal to improve, please encourage your child to practice writing at home too.

My time spent in the classroom brings me such joy! If you’d like to listen to me share on a couple recent podcasts that I was a guest to get a better glimpse into my teaching philosophy, experiences, and what it might feel like to be in our class, please feel free to have a listen. I love sharing about how teaching and your children bring me joy! The things I share can apply to your life as an adult and parent too. There are multiple takeaways to help you live a better life. If you listen, I would absolutely love to hear what resonated with you. I would greatly appreciate it!

Teaching Champions with Brian Martin – EP 152

Wisdom & Productivity with Efrain Martinez

With sincerest gratitude AND joy, Ms. Chan