Category: Continuing Learning at Home

Dear families,

We had a wonderful first week together! Everyone is settling in well as we learn about each other and our classroom routines. I just can’t help but tell them how much I appreciate them because of the joy they bring to my heart! Thank you for sharing your beautiful children with me. I am committed to making it a phenomenal year of growth, love, learning, and joy in each other’s presence because we all will play a part in making it happen!

I really appreciate the thoughtful and thorough Families and Partners Information forms you have filled out and returned to me. I still have a few to collect so please send it back to school on Monday, if possible. If you need another copy, CLICK HERE. It has brought me joy to read them over and to learn more about your child and your family!

Meet the Teacher Night

On Wednesday, I met with many of you to tell you a little more about me, my passions, beliefs, and teaching philosophy. Thank you for being there! I know some of you couldn’t be there so here is a very quick recap plus some extra information:

• What is key to building a warm, welcoming and inclusive environment where all children love to be, where they can feel like their authentic selves, and where they feel like they are a key contributing member with gifts and leadership qualities? Building a kind, thoughtful classroom culture based on children feeling loved, seen, valued, heard, appreciated, and safe is KEY! I love cultivating love and joy, and teaching them how to cultivate joy too! We will regularly practice expressing gratitude, which is key to increasing our level of happiness; when children are happy, they learn better because it activates more centers of our brain! These are non-negotiables. (If you are interested, I included some links to my blog posts on the topics.)
• I love to plan for fun, varied, relevant, and meaningful lessons and activities. I aim to make them engaging so children are motivated to learn. How do I do this? I try to make learning feel like an experience that involves not only their active brains but their bodies. They have learned lot of sign language so far! Ask them to teach you what they know!
• A common question centers around blended grade classes. We have almost an even split between grade 2s and 3s. If you’d like to learn more, CLICK HERE. For most of my career, I have taught grade 2/3. This is my absolute favourite combination! They have a beautiful opportunity to learn together at this age group. Many of your children’s learning will be driven by personal goal setting and reflection so it empowers them to take ownership of their own learning.
• I am a firm believer in developing core competencies and curricular competencies through the learning standards. I love to foster a sense of curiosity. One of my favourite things to offer are Passion Projects!
• I will not assign a lot of paper homework but I will send home unfinished work from time to time. I highly encourage children to read and write every day or practice their math skills, especially depending on the areas they need further development.
• All primary classes will be collecting $30 for school supplies. You will be able to pay on School Cash Online once it is set up.
• I added your email address to this class blog. Every time there is a new post, you will receive email notification. I aim to write weekly blog posts to keep you informed about all of the fun and engaging learning we get to do. I believe that these blog posts help to tell our story. Please see this as a gift to provide you with an opportunity to share a big part of their school life with you. Use it to solidify learning, deepen their understanding, and grow their curiosity. Thank you for your investment in your child’s education and thank you for being partners with me! Happy reading!

HAWKS Week

Last week was HAWKS week. Every day, we focused on a different word. We read stories that were aligned with the theme of the day, had discussions, and learned how to sign:

H = Helpful
A = Accepting
W = Welcoming
K = Kindness
S = Safety

For helpful, we played a balls in a basket game where we had to help our partners on our team move some balls to and from the baskets. They had fun!

For accepting, we read a book called The Dot by Peter Reynolds and used oil pastels to create our own dots. I’m sorry but I forgot to take a picture of their beautiful art! I will share it next week. We also had an opportunity to join a live event with Peter Reynolds on Friday for International Dot day! They got to hear him share his story.

For welcoming, we did an interactive activity where we practiced 5 different levels of being welcoming and made our own special handshakes with some classmates.

When your children line up in the morning, please encourage them to say hello to their classmates already in line. This really fosters a sense of welcoming and belonging. It also helps develop their comfort with each other in social interactions and makes them feel less like strangers. You can model this to them too when you say hello to their classmates already in line. Feel free to ask them their name. “Remember that a person’s name is to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” – Dale Carnegie

• Level 1: Smile only with no teeth showing.
• Level 2: Smile with teeth.
• Level 3: Smile with teeth and wave.
• Level 4: Smile with teeth, wave, and have wider eyes that say, “I’m happy to see you!”
• Level 5: All of the above but with an even larger big mouthed smile and waving both arms to say hello!

For kindness, we read a couple of books on kindness and wrote our first journal entry!

For safety, we practiced being safe in the gym with Mr. Ho, our PE teacher for the year.

Math

Children had fun graphing our classmate’s birthdays! We got to see that there are a couple months where we have no birthdays and a month where we have birthdays three days in a row!

All About Me in a Bag

Your child should have come home on Friday with a paper bag and an “All About Me Bag” notice. CLICK HERE if you did not receive the details on our first presentation opportunity!

I will be using a rubric to assess. CLICK HERE to see it. This will give you and your child a better idea of how to prepare. No pressure! This is their first presentation and I know they will continue to improve throughout the year. They will have many more opportunities! It truly is incredible how much they develop over the year with their communication and presentation skills.

How can you support? Please help them choose 3 items. For each item, help them come up with at least 3 details about each. It would be very helpful to write down what they want to share, practice reading it over and over again so they will feel more confident. Here’s a tip: Video record them presenting. Watch it together and have them reflect on what they can improve. Then practice again and record after a few more tries. I bet you’ll see an improvement!

Thank you! Presentations will begin anytime next week. If they are ready on Monday, they can present. If they aren’t ready until Friday, that’s okay too! I’ll find time for them to present on Friday!

Families as Partners

Thank you for booking an appointment to spend some time with me this week as you will have a fantastic opportunity to tell me more about your child. All appointments are 10 minutes long. I will refer to the information sheet you filled out and take some extra notes based on our valuable conversation.

If you did not book an appointment yet, please CLICK HERE to choose a time. I am really looking forward to it! I am so grateful for your time!

Terry Fox Run and Early Dismissal

On Friday, September 22, we will have a Terry Fox Run. After recess, we will gather in the gym for a short assembly and then walk to Willingdon Park for our run. They will be back on time for lunch. Please have your child dress appropriately for the weather and to bring a water bottle. Thank you! Look for fundraising information on the school website if you are interested in supporting the Terry Fox Foundation. It will be added early this week.

In the afternoon, there is an early dismissal so please pick up your child promptly at 2:00pm. Children often worry when their families don’t pick them up on time during early dismissal days.

Gratitude

In the short time I have been at Kitchener, I feel so blessed and grateful to be placed here. Staff, families, and children have made me feel so welcomed and so supported. I am so fortunate to be placed in such a warm and inviting community. Thank you to ALL of you for your part in making Kitchener such a phenomenal place to be! I appreciate you!

With a heart full of love and gratitude,

Ms. Chan

Dear families,

They say that time flies when we are having fun and that we are! How are we already in the middle of April?

We are learning how to research.

Mrs. Paulich and Mrs. Papapanagiotou taught us about the importance of citing our references. We will be doing a simplified version but they will be expected to learn how to properly cite in the intermediate grades.

Another important part of researching is recording what we find by paraphrasing so we learned what this meant and practiced with our Passion Project partners. I was so impressed with how quickly they grasped this! Give it a try at home! When reading a non-fiction book together or researching something online. Ask your child to take a sentence and practice paraphrasing. This is an important skill when showing others you understand when truly listening.

We learned about microplastics.

Students learned about and how they enter the environment. They analyzed samples of water from an urban area and graphed their results. They learned what microfibres are and where they came from. Lastly, they brainstormed ways to help reduce microplastics in the environment. Thank you to the Institute of Urban Ecology at Douglas College for coming to Gilmore to teach us!

We learned about autism and stuttering.

This month at Gilmore, we are focusing on learning about accepting differences. Every morning on the PA, we learn more about different ways that people are different. This past week, we learned about Down Syndrome too. In our class, we read two books and reflected on each one. I invite you to listen to the story and have a conversation with your child about what they learned and how they can accept and empathize with others.

Passion Projects

It is SO exciting to see students work so collaboratively with their partners during this time! This week, they worked hard on their proposal for their research.

Here are a few of the ideas they will be working on and teaching us in a few weeks!

• Blobfish
• Speaking French
• Chihuahua
• History of video games
• Tigers
• Lions

Next week, they will be adding this to their SpacesEDU e-portfolio as a record of their progress. If you have not yet activated your parent accounts to view your child’s reflection posts and the Hip Hop video, please do so. If you’d like me to re-send the invite, please let me know. It’s a quick click of a button!

Passion Project time is a great way to develop their core competencies:

• I can communicate in order to collaborate.
• I can apply critical and reflective thinking to acquire and interpret information, and to make choices about how to communicate their ideas. (paraphrasing)
• I can reflect on my work and experiences and tell others about something I learned. (We will be reflecting on our progress!)

Grade 2 Mathematicians

This past week, we learned how to subtract with regrouping. Some of you may know it as “borrowing”. Whether your child is in grade 2 or 3, this is a great time to review and reinforce this at home. For grade 2s, they subtract up to two-digits (75-38=__) and for grade 3s, they subtract up to three-digits (755-388=__). Our goal is that your child will be able to explain how this is done and to not simply solve the equation. As Einstein said, ““If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Just a reminder to continue to practice learning addition and subtraction math facts at home.

Thank you for your continued support at home!

Please note that our Walkathon date has been changed to May 19 due to the change in date for the all day Track Meet. There is an opportunity for your child’s artwork to be chosen and included in the Yearbook. If your child is interested, please have them submit it to the Community Office early next week.

Sincerely, Ms. Chan

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

Dear families,

What a fantastic time celebrating Literacy Week! Every morning, we had students from our class go on the PA during morning announcements to tell jokes! I loved their confidence as they spoke clearly. Thank you for helping them practice at home. We also had daily trivia questions for primaries and intermediates!

We had something special every day of the week. On Monday, all primary classes read Dear Children of the Earth by Schim Schimmer. Then we wrote a letter to Mother Earth, which some students will read at the Celebration of Learning assembly on Wednesday. (It was supposed to be today but it was postponed to next week.) We will be MCing the Celebration of Learning assembly so please have your child dress in blue (again). Every person in our class will be saying something at the assembly. Some already memorized their lines! This is not necessary but it would be great if you help your child practice reading slowly, clearly, and with enthusiasm. Thank you for your support!

Please feel free to watch and listen to the book read by the author himself!

Ways to support at home: Talk about what you are already doing as a family to take care of earth. What more can you and will you be doing? What would you like to thank Mother Earth for?

On Tuesday, it was wear a shirt with words day for our class alphabet scavenger hunt.

On Wednesday, my Uncle Bill come to our class to read The Seven Chinese Brothers because it was guest reader day. It was a very appropriate book for him to read because he has six Chinese brothers! He had so much fun reading to them and giving them a history lesson about the emperor at the time of the story and the Great Wall of China. I learned a few new things too!

Feel free to watch and listen to the story!

On Thursday, we had our first ever book swap. Click on image to see tweet and short video!

All week, Gilmore school has had a continuous reading marathon! What this means is that there was someone in the library every day this week, reading…even during lunch! Friday was our turn in the library to contribute to this marathon. Congratulations to the whole school because we accomplished our goal!

We are mathematicians.
Grade 2’s have been working hard on skip counting for the past two weeks. If they did not finish their workbook, then it was brought home for homework. Please support them in finishing it. It is not due until Wednesday. I offered a hundreds chart to help them. Some may not have taken a hundreds chart home with them. Click here to download one for yourself to use at home.

The random numbers section on the bottom of each side is to practice skip counting from any point from 1-100. Choose a random number to start. If they need more practice with skip counting backwards, you may want them to practice more of these.

Next week, we will start learning how to add with regrouping so please continue to have your child practice their math facts using their random numbers chart or a deck of cards.

Grade 3’s: Please practice math facts for doubles plus one.

As you may or may not know, our school growth plan has a numeracy focus now (new this year). So, if I hosted a Math Literacy Fun Night for you and your child to attend, would you be interested? The purpose of this would be to teach you some fun games you can play to help your child improve their number sense, number concepts, and learning of math facts. I understand that it’s one thing to ask you to help your child practice their math facts, but it’s so much better if I show you how and have you practice and play with them at school so you can replicate the fun at home! 🙂 Please CLICK HERE to fill out this quick questionnaire to share your interest and availability. Thank you!

Exciting news!
Starting on Monday, we will have a student teacher from SFU join our class for the week! The primary goal of this first week is to get to know your children and learn about our classroom and school operations.  Then from February 21 to April 6 (with spring break in between), she will have some co-teaching and teaching opportunities.

We would like to welcome Ms. Kim to our class! We wrote letters to help you get to know each of us better! 🙂

Tennis Lessons Begin!
We have tennis lessons that begin this week! Please ensure your child wears runners on Tuesday and Thursday for the next two weeks.

Gratitude
Every day, I tell your children that I love and appreciate them. They are very special people who bring me such joy every day! The TOCs that come into our class always tell me we have a very lovely and sweet class and that we do! I love the connection we have and how much fun we have together working and playing. Overall, they work hard during assignments and listen well during lessons and activities. I feel blessed to be their teacher. My heart is full of gratitude for the role I get to play in their lives. Thank you so much for being our partners in supporting your child’s learning at home.

Always feel free to leave a comment about what you just read. We’d love to hear from you!

With love and kindness, Ms. Chan