Category: Field Trips

Dear Division 11 Families,

Thank you so much for joining us on Wednesday, even on such short notice. From identifying problems and needs, planning and sketching, to creating their cardboard prototypes, our students worked incredibly hard. It was wonderful to see how proud they were to showcase their work, and we truly appreciate your presence and support. We also had two other classes visit, and it was heartwarming to see how engaged the audience was with our inventions.

In this project, we developed so many of our core competencies of critical thinking, reflective thinking, creativity, communication, and more! Well done, Division 11!

We Are Mathematicians

In math, we have been learning about 3D objects and their properties. Through hands-on activities, such as building with toothpicks and plasticine and using magnetic rods, students explored how to count faces, edges, and vertices. As we worked through these concepts, we discovered patterns. For example, with prisms, we learned that the number of edges can be found by multiplying the number of sides on the base by 3. A triangular prism has a base with 3 sides, so it has 9 edges (3 x 3). A hexagonal prism has 18 edges (3 x 6). In a short time, our students have done an amazing job learning the names and properties of various 3D objects! 

We Are Artists 

Tying into our lessons on geometry, students explored how to use shading techniques to make their drawings look three-dimensional and realistic. They each drew a cone, cube, cylinder, and sphere, then arranged them into a creative “impossible stack.” Shading was a new skill for many, but students rose to the challenge and were excited to see their drawings come to life! 

Important Updates 

Market Day – Monday:
Students from Divisions 1, 2, and 3 are excited to share their amazing handmade products, from jewelry to stuffed toys made from scratch. Prices vary, with most items around $5 and a maximum of $10. Please send your child with an appropriate amount of money they can manage independently. 

Construction Update:
Fences will be going up around the school, restricting access to the back door from the annex/big gym side of the school. Please help your child line up at our usual morning spot by walking around the school close to Kitchener Street. 

Body Science presentations on Tues, June 17:
Students in our class will have their presentation on Tuesday afternoon. The parent information session will be on Monday, June 16 at 6:30pm on Zoom. Please see the email from the office for the zoom link. 

Book Swap on Wed, June 18:
Students who brought in at least one book will go to choose new to them books on this day! Might not be too late to bring in books on Monday! In my previous schools when we did this, almost every child brought in a book to swap. They absolutely love this event and went home super excited to share their books with their families! 

Field Trip to McGill Library and Confederation park on Thur, June 19:
We are excited to join Ms. Forbes and Ms. Rinaldo’s classes this Thursday! Please review the notice by clicking here. Children are usually extra hungry during active field trips so please bring extra snacks. It might be easier for them to wear their bathing suits under their clothes too. 

Thank you, families, for your continued support at home. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. And to our amazing dads, happy Father’s Day on Sunday! 

Warm regards, 

Cailyn and Livia 

Dear families,

It was another week full of fun, joy, and meaningful learning!

We are writers.

This week, we worked very hard on opinion writing and worked with Ms. Wong-Reinhardt too.

We are passionate about learning!

To practice our non-fiction reading and writing, Passion Projects is a perfect exercise! We learned about the importance of using reputable resources. Ms. Chan taught them about the tree octopus. They all believed it was true because it looked like an informative website with detailed information, images, and various pages. Feel free to check it out: https://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

We discussed the types of websites we would consider as reputable. For example, we would not use information from Wikipedia but we would use information from a site like National Geographic for Kids because it is a longstanding company with a good reputation for doing valid research and sharing it with the world.

In addition, we practiced so many critical thinking skills! (It’s one of our favourite core competencies we love having your child develop! We learned about plagiarism and how we cannot just copy and paste text into our PowerPoint presentations. Here are some of the higher level thinking skills we started using:

• evaluate which websites to use
• understand what we are researching and reading
• analyze to determine what information we want to include based on our inquiry questions
• decide which slide the information should be recorded
• change the words yet keep the facts and meaning (paraphrasing)

Students were instructed to add a Resources slide to record the websites they used to find their facts. They learned how to copy the web address and paste it into their last slide. (Triple click on the URL. Use shortcuts: Crtl+c to copy and then Crtl+v to paste.)

Working on our Passion Project helps us develop our core competencies of communication, reflective and creative thinking too!

Ways to support at home: It is like music to our ears to hear that many students are working on their Passion Projects at home!  It is important that they are the ones doing the learning and work. It is okay that you teach them PowerPoint skills, how to paraphrase, and help them read the information. Be the guide on the side and please refrain from doing anything FOR them. The more they do, the more they learn. It is still relatively early in teaching them all the skills they need to produce a good presentation. We are scaffolding their learning so the best way to help is to teach them the skills on a different topic, for example, so they are given the opportunity to practice critical thinking to APPLY their new learning to their own Passion Project. We appreciate you for supporting their learning!

We are mathematicians.

We continued with learning division. This week, we built on our understanding in representing division in multiple ways: sharing, grouping, and real life word problems.

Students had fun creating their own word problems. In order to do so, they needed to have a solid foundation of dividing by sharing and grouping. Here were some clear examples of proficiency that demonstrate their full understanding:

Ways to support at home: Have fun writing word problems together! Many found “division by sharing” word problems easier to create. However, there were only a few who truly understood how to write a real life word problem for “division by grouping” so if you can reinforce this at home, that would be greatly appreciated! If you need to review, look back at last week’s blog post or here is the link to the short video.

We are scientists.

Learning standard: observable changes in the local environment caused by erosion and deposition by wind, water, and ice

Students enjoyed the visible nature of discovering how erosion and deposition works. We blew the top of the sand hill and then slowly poured water on top of sand to demonstrate erosion and deposition. They watched the sand from the top of the hill be moved by wind and water to deposit the sand at the bottom of the hill.

Then we watched a short video to see cool examples around the world of how wind, water, and ice (through weathering) caused erosion and deposition (moved to a different location). Feel free to watch the video here to see examples. We learned from a song too! Watch it here.

Image by Laura Candler

We are athletes.

After two sessions of tennis with Marcus, they have demonstrated good perseverance, growth mindset, and skill development!

Sports Day

We enjoyed spending the morning together collaborating, cooperating, and competing in fun activities!

Save the Dates

• Thur. May 22 at 6:30pm – Kitchener Community Dinner; CLICK HERE to RSVP
• Fri. May 23 at 4:00pm – Karnival for Kids @ Burnaby North Secondary; CLICK HERE to learn more.
• Thur. May 29 at 1:30pm – Volunteer Tea; please RSVP asap
• Fri. May 30 at 2:00pm – Early dismissal
• Fri. June 6 – Pro-D day; school not in session
• Thur. June 19 at 9:15 (all day) – Burnaby Public Library visit & Confederation Park (Notice will be sent home next week. We will be travelling by public transit.)

Thank you so much for your continued support! We hope you are available to join us at the Community Dinner and Volunteer Tea! Everyone is welcome!

Gratefully, Ms. Kim and Ms. Chan

Dear Division 11 Families,

We hope you are having a wonderful weekend!

We had an amazing time on our field trip to Britannia Mine Museum. Thank you again to our parent drivers for making this trip possible! We’ve created a folder with photos from the field trip, which will be shared with you via email soon.

Here’s a glimpse into the fun learning that has been happening in class over the past week:

Science


This week, our class went on an exciting field trip to Britannia Mine! We learned all about the history of mining and how it has impacted local communities over the years. Students got to wear hard hats and ride an underground train, giving them a real sense of what it was like to work in the mines. They also saw live demonstrations of old mining equipment, which brought the experience to life. Inside the museum, we explored interactive exhibits that showed how minerals are extracted and processed. One of the biggest highlights was gold panning—students had so much fun searching for minerals and were thrilled to take home their discoveries. We left with a deeper understanding of Earth science and the effects of human activity on our environment.

The Smart Cookie

Among the many books we read this week, we reflected on The Smart Cookie by Jory John. This heartwarming story explores themes of self-awareness, growth, and confidence. As a class, we discussed how being “smart”   can mean different things to different people, and that intelligence comes in many forms. Students shared what makes them feel smart and created “I am smart because…” statements to celebrate their personal strengths. This activity not only helped students recognize their own unique abilities but also strengthened our classroom community by highlighting the diverse ways we all shine as “smart cookies.”

Here’s a link to the book: The Smart Cookie.

Language Arts

In Language Arts, we focused on building the structure of our stories and learning key writing techniques. Students began typing their first drafts, organizing their ideas into clear sections and creating a solid layout to support the editing process. A big focus this week was writing strong introductions that hook the reader and draw them into the story. This stage of the writing process gave students the opportunity to strengthen their work before moving on to peer feedback and revisions.

Math


This week in Math, we began learning about multiplication! Students explored the concept as “repeated addition” and “equal groups of” through games, real-world examples, and hands-on activities. One of the highlights was a new game called Circles and Stars, which helped reinforce the idea of equal groups in a fun and visual way.

Feel free to try playing this game at home to support your child’s learning—we’ve included a link here to show how Circles and Stars is played.

Happening This Week:

• April 8th – Science Workshop
  This workshop will take place in our classroom from 9:00–10:00 a.m. Please help your child arrive on time so we can begin smoothly. For this activity, we are looking for 2L plastic bottles. If you have any at home, we would greatly appreciate you sending them in for us to use!
• April 9th – Honeybee Workshop
  This workshop will be held in the gym from 2:00–3:00 p.m. Students will be dismissed from the gym afterward. Thank you, families, for sending in your forms!

We are always so appreciative of your support. Have a relaxing evening!

Warm regards,
Jake, Cailyn, and Livia

Dear Division 11 Families,

We hope you are enjoying the beautiful snow outside! My son was so excited that we built a family of snowmen even before breakfast. I can’t wait to hear about all the fun the students had in the snow.

Bowling

We had so much fun bowling on Tuesday! A huge thank you to our family volunteers for driving our students and supporting them during the field trip. Our students were so supportive of one another, cheering each other on. Even those who were brand new to bowling said they can’t wait to do it again!

Social Studies: Lunar New Year

We wish everyone a happy Lunar New Year and good luck in the Year of the Snake! In Social Studies, our students have been learning about New Year traditions around the world. On Wednesday, our students had the opportunity to learn more about Lunar New Year. They rotated through various stations, participating in fun activities such as using chopsticks to pick up small objects, learning to write Chinese characters, and playing a Korean game. Thank you to all our students for sharing their experiences and knowledge with us, and a special thank you to Mrs. W.R. for planning such a fun afternoon!

Math

Our students have been working on double-digit addition and subtraction. We’ve been focusing on understanding the concepts rather than just memorizing the algorithm. This week, they’ve been using counters to show subtraction with regrouping. I’ve attached a video that explains this process so you can support them at home as well. Developing a strong understanding of this concept is crucial, as it lays a solid foundation for future number concepts and helps them apply their knowledge to more complex math problems later on.

At the end of the week, we moved into 3-digit subtraction too and subtraction across zeros!

How to support at home: Practice subtraction with regrouping together. Ask your child to explain their understanding. In math, one of the curricular competencies is to:

• Communicate mathematical thinking in many ways
• Explain and justify mathematical ideas and decisions

Affirmations

We talk to ourselves. Learning to have positive self-talk is an important part of developing our core competencies of positive, personal self identity. This is especially important when we face challenges or when we are working through hard things in life.

An affirmation is similar to a pep talk you give to yourself. It’s a short, positive sentence that you say to yourself to help you feel more confident, strong, and happy. Saying affirmations can help us all believe in ourselves and remind us of our personal strengths, identity, core values, and what makes us who we are.

On Friday, we started writing our own affirmations on Word in Office 365. We also listened to this affirmations song by Snoop Dog. Our buddy class performed this song with actions at our  last assembly.

How to support at home: Talk to your child about how we can be a good friend to ourselves. There are things we would not say to a friend. We shouldn’t speak to ourselves like that either. Share about how you talk to yourself using positive and encouraging language. If you have affirmations you use often, share those with your child.

One thing Ms. Chan shares often is this: Learn to be your own biggest cheerleader. We have one important job in life. We need to take the best care of our own human: ourselves. Our mental and emotional health is key to taking good care of ourselves!

Thank you for your continued support. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend—wishing you a restful evening and a great start to the week ahead!

Gratefully,
Cailyn and Livia