Category: Field Trips

Dear families,

So much we’ve enjoyed since our last post!

We had a wonderful opportunity to be an artist with Arts Umbrella in our gym. Students took a picture of their art and wrote reflections in their SpacesEDU account so please check there.

Click here to view a video of our beautiful and creative artwork! I co-created one too! It has been decades since I used pastels and paint to create art and it made me feel grateful for the opportunity.

We also had the opportunity to learn about financial literacy with a visit with Nita from Vancity. They learned about saving money and compound interest. You probably saw the can piggy bank they made to keep.

On Wednesday, May 17, thank you to our parent volunteers and the appreciated organization of Ms. Barndt, our class along with others went to Granville Island to watch students from grade 6 to 10 perform Box Car Children. This play was based on a popular children’s book series. We are grateful to the parents of Jeremy H., Addie, Cristina, Ethan, Chloe, Kiran, Sunny, Nassi, and Alex.

Last Wednesday, we are so very grateful for Nassi’s family’s generosity. They invited us to their restaurant, Sfinaki, for a most delicious lunch! This has been my family’s favourite Greek Restaurant for a very long time! We appreciate you, Denny and Crystal!

Grade 2 and 3 Math

Mrs. Pears would like all grade 3s to practice regrouping with addition and subtraction to 3-digits at home, please. For grade 2’s, they can also practice to 2-digits.

Passion Projects (ADST)

We will begin our Passion Project presentations this week! Here is a copy of the rubric we will be using to assess. Click on the image to view the PDF.

Science

We have been doing some inquiry learning about landforms. So far, we have learned about mountains, glaciers, and valleys. How you can support at home: Ask your child what they have learned and then ask them what else they wonder. Model curiosity by sharing some questions you might have. Then enjoy researching together!

Thank you for your generous donations for the Walkathon! It’s hard to believe that we are nearing the end of May. We still have lots of fun learning to do as we look forward to finishing off the year strong! As always, my heart is full of appreciation for your support at home.

Sincerely, Ms. Chan and Mrs. Paulich

Upcoming dates:

• Monday, June 5: Pro-D Day; school not in session
• Tuesday, June 6: Wear one colour day of the rainbow. We will be taking a school photo.
• Wednesday, June 7: Gilmore Pride day. Wear something that makes you feel proud like a Gilmore shirt or team jersey, for example.
• Thursday, June 8: Business Fair. If you wish, bring money to buy items made by our grade 6/7’s.
• Friday, June 9: Grizzly Games. Early dismissal at 12:15pm.
• Thursday, June 15: Confederation Park with our pen pals from Brentwood Park.

Dear families,

What a wonderful week of celebration! This week, students spent time preparing for our Student Led Conferences. Every day, we meet in our Community Circle where we share our feelings and answer a question of the day. On Wednesday, their question was: What are you most excited to share with your parents? Everyone except for one said they were excited to share their Passion Projects! I do believe they weren’t just copying each other but they truly WERE excited to share! This affirmed the reason why I love offering an opportunity to explore something of great interest.

The collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity I am a witness to is truly joyfilling! When they arrive in the morning to check out our shape of the day, I love seeing their sheer excitement when they see “Passion Projects” on the board. It puts a smile on my face every time! I am impressed with how quickly they learn the tools and develop their thinking and skills.

Here are the curricular competencies for Applied Design at this age level:

Ideating

• • Identify needs and opportunities for designing, through exploration
  • Generate ideas from their experiences and interests
  • Add to others’ ideas
  • Choose an idea to pursue

Making

• • Choose tools and materials
  • Make a product using known procedures or through modelling of others
  • Use trial and error to make changes, solve problems, or incorporate new ideas from self or others

Sharing

• • Decide on how and with whom to share their product
  • Demonstrate their product, tell the story of designing and making their product
  • Use personal preferences to evaluate the success of their design solutions
  • Reflect on their ability to work effectively both as individuals and collaboratively in a group

Applied Skills

• • 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

Applied Technologies

• • Explore the use of simple, available tools and technologies to extend their capabilities

Both Mrs. Paulich and I felt so proud of all students for how well they led their conference with you. They communicated their learning so well! We are so grateful for your time to attend to celebrate your child’s learning. We hope you got a good sense of some activities we enjoy in our class!

Enjoy some reflections students wrote today as we reflected on our core competency of communication:

“Yesterday, my parents came to my Student Led Conference. I can communicate by telling them about my Passion Project. I can beat my mom at Math Tappers. It felt good. I can read fluently. I thought I did a good job of reading. I can do a good job at my art. My parents enjoyed the Math Tappers. I like how I shared my Student Led Conference.” – AP

“This is the Student Led Conference from AK’s perspective. This year’s Student Led Conference was amazing! My dad got 18.1 SECONDS on Math Tappers! He’s amazing! I can communicate with people about my learning. I can show off (in a good way) my work confidently. I can share my thoughts and be happy. Lots of things happened this year. I hope next year will be just as fun!” – AK

“Yesterday, we had Student Led Conferences. Student Led Conferences is a place in school where our parents come to school and we show our work like math and art. It was very fun. I can communicate the work that I did in 2023. I can feel happy about my work. I can add more detail in my Passion Project. Other than that, it was fun.” – CS

“Yesterday, the school had Student Led Conferences. I am proud of my Passion Project and I really enjoyed playing Finding Sums. It’s a game that makes you do math. I appreciate my parents looking at my hard work. I can communicate with others and my family. I can be excited by waiting for my parents to come in the classroom. I thoughts that each parent would go one by one. What my parents enjoyed was my Passion Project. I had a great Thursday.” – VRN

“Yesterday, I had a Student Led Conference. My core competencies: talking confidently and I can also talk loudly. I can communicate my learning by explaining. I show things and say details about it. I can show things confidently. It was exciting. I thought it was enjoyable. My parent enjoyed looking at my math. I enjoyed it too.” – KS

“Yesterday, we had Student Led Conferences. It was long, but fun. I can communicate properly. I can use expression. I can read loudly. I think my parents like Add Sums. it was fun. I gave Ms. Chan a green apple (not a real one). – CP

“Yesterday was Student Led Conferences where my parents came to school. I can communicate by learning and explaining what I did. I can also teach my parents my work and I can speak confidently. I felt so happy when I shared my work. My parents were really proud of the Passion project. I enjoyed sharing my math, morning, message, and doing the movement break! I think his was the best Student Led ever!” – CW

More ADST

Today, we enjoyed a creative design challenge! Students were randomly chosen to be in a group of 4 students. Every group was given the same materials: 2 cardstock papers, string, 4 pipe cleaners, 6 straws, tape, and 4 twist ties. Their mission: create an extension to their table. Unfortunately, I forgot to take final pictures except for one because it wasn’t dismantled until the end of the day.

I loved seeing their collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity. The longest extension was approximately 60 cm! There was a creative table extension that was very sturdy and can hold two pairs of scissors plus other things! Ask your child about this challenge and celebrate how they contributed to their team! Click on image to enlarge.

We are storytellers.

For the past few weeks, students have enjoyed creating stories with our story workshop kits with Ms. Lee. I feel like a broken record but your children really work hard at their collaboration, communication, and creativity! It is a reflection of their core values! Click on image to enlarge.

Field Trips

A notice about our Wednesday, May 17 field trip to Granville Island went home this week. If you did not receive one, click here to download a copy. If you would like a paper copy, please send me an email or write a note in the planner.

In-school Field Trip

On Wednesday, May 10, we have a wonderful opportunity to have an in-school field trip! Since 1988, The Van Go workshops have provided free visual arts workshops to Metro Vancouver elementary schools. Arts Umbrella artist-instructors take creativity-inspiring activities and  arts supplies into local elementary schools.

The theme: Underwater Seascapes and Animals

Students will be creating their own mixed media underwater seascape composition utilizing paper, oil pastel and watercolour paint. Students choose what the focus of the piece can be; on the underwater environment of an ocean, lake or river, or of marine life. Students will experiment with different artistic techniques such as oil resist, colour mixing, materials layering and blending, relief painting, and different brush techniques such as dry-brushing, wet on wet, and stippling. Children have the chance to embrace diversity, explore artistic expression and nurture community spirit – all while having fun! Our time will be from 9 to 10:20 am. Please have your child dress in appropriate clothing where they can explore art materials comfortably.

Save the dates

• Thursday, June 15 – Confederation Park to meet our pen pals from Brentwood Park
• Friday, June 23 – Science World field trip with Division 12 (Mrs. Pears). We will need parent volunteers, please.

Deep Gratitude

Our hearts are always so full of gratitude for your continued support at home. Thank you for being our special partners in your child’s learning this year. It is with great sadness that I inform you that I will be leaving the Gilmore community at the end of June. My three years here have been a true blessing and has felt like a home away from home. The connections I have built with staff, families, and children will have a special place in my heart forever. I will surely miss seeing your children in the hallways and classrooms next year.

One quote that has helped me with this news: “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” – Dr. Seuss

There are still a several more weeks to savour! So many more smiles and laughs to share with so much learning more to happen! Your children fill my heart with such joy! 🙂

With appreciation, 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,

We would love to wish you a joy-filled spring break! During our Community Circle today, we shared one thing that brings us joy at school. So many of them mentioned that seeing their friends and being at school bring them joy. I am blessed to witness their joy every day when I am in the classroom AND to experience the joy myself every time I am there with them. At the end of the day, one of the students said to his friend, “I never want to leave this class.” That warmed my heart. We work hard at fostering a safe and secure space where students feel supported, loved, valued, and appreciated as they learn together. While I will enjoy my spring break, I will also miss your children!

We are scientists.
We have been blessed to have Ms. Kim, our student teacher, here with us for the past three weeks. She has been doing some teaching every day in the past couple of weeks. Students are really enjoying the creative and thoughtful lessons she taught in Science and Math. We have been learning about different life cycles: salmon, frog, chicken, butterfly, and humans through expert groups, research, and observations of salmon eggs, fry, and alevin so far. After spring break, Ms. Kim will be with us for two more weeks. Her last day will be on Thursday, April 6 and we will be sad to see her leave.

We have continued to learn about the importance of water conservation and discussed small changes they can do at home to take care of our earth.

We are so grateful for Ms. Kapusta who came into our classroom as our TOC. She said they enjoyed themselves with making ocean art! Check out their creativity!

We are readers and communicators.
We are so proud to say that we have had an incredible term of reading growth as a result of our regular reading groups! As a result, we have shifted our groups a bit. Students now meet in their groups to not just read together, they meet to discuss connections to what they read, ask questions and wonder, and to talk about anything they notice the author does in their writing (like word choice or the way they keep the reader interested). I have loved sitting in to listen to the conversations. In one group, the character talked about being at a beach. The personal stories that followed about their trips to a Mexican beach enhanced our connection to the character and built our connection to each other. These conversations are like when adults get together for their Book Club meetings – to share our stories.

“Learning is embedded in memory, history, and story.” – First Peoples Principles of Learning

We are authors.
We continued to work on our stories during Writer’s Workshop times. Today, students uploaded an image of their stories on SpacesEDU and shared their reflections:

• What I’m proud of (2 things)
• What I’m working on
• What I’d do differently
• I can… statements (2)

“Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective…” – First Peoples Principles of Learning

I love how they are becoming much better at reflecting on their learning! All parents were invited to be a part of their learning through SpacesEDU. During spring break, we encourage you to look at your child’s posts, write an encouraging comment, and celebrate their learning. We have four families that have accepted their email invite already. It would be wonderful if you would consider accepting the invite so you can celebrate your child’s learning and reflections. I think they would love to show and tell you about their posts! Please email if you need me to resend the link. Thank you for your support at home!

Recently, we had fun learning about adjectives that describe nouns and adverbs that describe verbs. We put this learning into practice in our stories.

We are becoming tech savvy.
Using Office365, we are becoming more proficient at logging in and using Word. Today, we practiced writing in a new document, renamed the document, and we learned how to add an image! I encouraged them to login to O365 at home over spring break to either send me an email to let me know how their spring break is going or to open their “Practice writing” or “Playing with Names” document to practice using the tools learned already: changing font, size, colour, bold, italics, underline, alignment, and adding images.

We are mathematicians.
It would be great if your child continues to practice their addition and subtraction math facts to 20. Feel free to use the strategies found here.

We appreciate you.
As always, we are so grateful for your support at home. As you read your child’s report card, please understand that this is a snapshot of their learning. Learning is a journey.

“Learning involves patience and time.” – First Peoples Principles of Learning.

Please celebrate your child’s growth, discuss how they can hold themselves accountable for their own learning and reflection, and talk about how you will continue to support them. We look forward to further growth in the next few months! Have a most wonderful and memorable spring break!

Grateful for you, Ms. Chan

Reminders:

• Please sign and return report card envelopes on Mon. March 27 when school re-opens after spring break.
• Hip Hop lessons start on Mon. March 27 for us! Thank you to the Parent Council who is supporting a part of this dance program. A gentle reminder to please pay $6 on School Cash Online. Thank you!
• We are running low on pencils. If you have a stash at home, even if they are gently used, please feel free to have your child bring it to school. Thank you!
• Fri. April 7 & Mon. April 10 – Good Friday & Easter Monday
• Thur. April 13 – Microplastics in-class workshop by Institute of Urban Ecology
• We. May 17 @ 1:15 pm – Arts Umbrella Theatre Troupe performance (Granville Island). We will need parent volunteer drivers for this day, please. More details to come.