Category: Indigenous Education

Dear Division 11 Families,

Hello from Ms. Kim!

We had a fantastic first week getting to know each other and building our classroom community through collaborative art and teamwork challenges. I can already tell we’re going to have a great year together!

In Social Studies, we are diving into learning about our identity by exploring self, family, community, and the land, as well as how they are all connected. This week, the students will focus on themselves, and we will be exploring the story behind their names. On Tuesday, they will be bringing home a handout with a few questions about their names. Please help them by answering these questions and talking to them about where their name comes from, who chose it, and any special meanings or stories behind it. Thank you in advance for your support with this activity.

• Learning requires exploration of one‘s identity. (First Peoples Principles of Learning)

In Math, we will be diving into data analysis. We’ve already been learning a lot about each other through surveys and data collection, and I’m excited to continue.

I look forward to seeing all the students again on Tuesday. Thank you!

Greetings from Ms. Chan!

We start every morning with a soft start which we call Heart time because they get to fill their heart with things that bring them joy. I love seeing new friendships begin!  I remind them to thank the people who brought them joy as they clean up before our morning message and community connection circle time. This is our regular daily routine to start us off just right!

During community circle time, we typically share how we are feeling plus a question or statement for the day.

• On Mondays, it will typically be sharing about something they feel grateful for experienced on the weekend.
• On Thursdays, it will always be “Thankful Thursday” where they share gratitude. Sometimes this will be specific and sometimes it will be more open to share about what they feel grateful for in the moment.
• On Fridays, it will usually be sharing about something they are looking forward to that they are also grateful for.

How you can support at home: Knowing that these are regular things we will be sharing during our connection circle time, please feel free to have a conversation with your child about what they may want to share. This gives them an opportunity to think about and perhaps rehearse what they would like to share. This also gives you a glimpse into what they are feeling grateful for! 🙂

Gratitude

If you haven’t noticed already, one of my core values is gratitude. There is much research that says there is a link between gratitude and happiness.

We also know that happy kids get along better with others and those that get along better with others have better a social-emotional well-being because they feel more connected. We are all hardwired for connection so in everything we do, we aim for students to be self-regulated learners who work and learn well with others.

Relationships

Another one of my core values is relationships. I see every relationship as a gift. The relationship I have with your child and your family is a precious gift to me and one that I already treasure from the moment I met them (and you)! It is very important to me that every interaction is grounded in love, kindness, and gratitude with the goal of uplifting them and making them feel seen, heard, valued, respected, and loved.

• Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place). – First Peoples Principles of Learning

All About Me Bag

One of the most effective ways we can have strong relationships is by first getting to know each other better. So this is one reason why your child was asked to bring a bag with three items that help us get to know them better. Another reason is so they can practice overcoming nervousness about speaking to their classmates early in the year. Effective communication is one of the core competencies I value deeply and encourage regularly.

How to support at home: Help your child create a script for each item. Practice, practice, practice reading it so when they present, they can fluently read what is written.

I will be assessing them on their presentation using a single point rubric. This is a starting point and an opportunity to receive constructive feedback.

Math Thoughts

The very first thing we do in math is to talk about our mindset and attitude towards math. Even at this young age, many students already have certain ideas and feelings about their identity as a mathematician. Here are some of my goals by the end of the year:

• Help them see that productive struggle is a good thing. This is where we grow the most!
• We get to practice our growth mindset (and the power of YET!).
• Develop our critical thinking skills through determination and perseverance with a positive attitude
• Take initiative to try more challenging questions.
• Learn how to collaborate and communicate with our partners on questions and to explain our thinking, including justifying our answers.
• Feel pride as we celebrate small wins!

Our first lesson involved writing a letter to me. They were asked to share how they feel about math, what parts of math they like/dislike, what they want to learn, and end with drawing an emoji that reflects their thoughts.

Thank you for joining us on our journey together as we support your child’s learning at home and school. I truly believe we are partners. Anytime you have questions or concerns, please bring it to our attention. We are better together and stronger together!

Your children bring me so much joy and I feel so very blessed! I am looking forward to another week with them!

With a heart full of kindness and gratitude, Ms. Chan

Reminders & Notes

• Please go to School Cash Online to pay $8 for planners and $30 for our shared school supplies.
• Please return the Families as Partners Information Form. Thank you to families who already completed and returned!
• Wed, Sept 18 at 7 PM: Meet Your Teachers Night! You will receive a link in your email after school. We hope to see you all there! 🙂
• Thur, Sept 19: Terry Fox Run will begin with a kickoff assembly at 1 PM. The school will be walking to Willingdon Park to run on the grass field.
• Fri, Sept 20: The school will have our first Pro-D day so students do not attend. Enjoy your long weekend!
• Wed, Sept 25 & Thur, Sept 26: Families as Partners Conferences (Come meet us in person!)
• Feel free to bring an extra change of clothes to keep at school (sometimes they just fall and get wet!) and an extra pair of shoes especially on rainy days. It is harder to wear heavy boots all day.
• We have gym on Tuesdays and Wednesdays so please ensure they are wearing comfortable clothing and appropriate shoes for fun physical activity with Mr. Ho. Thank you!
• We have Library Book Exchange on Tuesdays with Ms. Solomon.
• We are already planning our field trips! Here’s a hint for one: It’s something I love to do on frozen water. We hope to do three sessions!

Dear families,

I could use this blog title every week because every week feels like a fond week! 🙂

I am so grateful to end a lovely week at the Vancouver Aquarium on a beautiful day on our field trip. Deep gratitude to our parents who generously offered their gift of time and effort to supervise a group. We are grateful to Maissa’s mom, Enma’s mom, James L.’s dad, and Senara’s dad for your help! Check out the images of some of the animals and creatures we saw there!

Thank you to the fundraising efforts of our PAC Executive, more than half of the cost of this field trip was covered.

Our next steps will be choosing an animal or creature we would like to learn more about through research.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of our lovely mothers!

We hope you enjoyed your special day!

From Ms. Kapusta: This week, we worked on a special art project: cards for Mother’s Day! We challenged ourselves by making 3D pop up cards using paper, recycled scraps, cardboard, and sharpie. We also challenged ourselves to draw different kinds of flowers. We ended off by writing a special message to our mothers. We also talked about the importance of all caregivers in our lives, including fathers, grandparents, aunts and uncles, siblings, etc. as every family is different and unique. We couldn’t be happier with how our cards turned out! You can tell that students put a lot of time and effort into their work and wanted to their best jobs. I hope you all have had a happy Mother’s Day this weekend! Mothers and caregivers, thank you for all that you do for your children.

We are artists. From Ms. Kapusta

April 30:

The students learned about a new Canadian Indigenous artist this week: Norval Morisseau! Norval was also called “Copper Thunderbird” and he was part of the Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation. We observed some of his different artworks and discussed what we noticed, like his depiction of nature and animals and use of thick black outlines and abstract style. We also compared and contrasted this contemporary Canadian Indigenous artist’s work to some of the Coast Salish art we looked at last week. You can look at some of his work here and ask your child what they learned. We then began our very own Norval Morisseau art! We drew a copper thunderbird in sharpie and tried to emulate Norval’s abstract style through the use of soft shapes, curved lines, and symbols of nature. Next week we will be painting our work! The students were really excited about their copper thunderbirds and we can’t wait to see how they turn out once we add some bright, solid colours!

Butterflies are free!

We had a great opportunity to join Ms. Rinaldo’s class on their butterfly release at Willingdon Park on Wednesday. These were painted lady butterflies.

One of the butterflies was not able to survive because the wings did not expand to dry properly so their wings did not develop the way they should have. We did a farewell to honour its life.

On the Trapline

We read a picture book that celebrate Indigenous culture and traditions. Then we had an opportunity to write our own connections to the story.

This is taken from Amazon: The Governor General Award shares a story that honors our connections to our past and our grandfathers and fathers.

A boy and Moshom, his grandpa, take a trip together to visit a place of great meaning to Moshom. A trapline is where people hunt and live off the land, and it was where Moshom grew up. As they embark on their northern journey, the child repeatedly asks his grandfather, “Is this your trapline?” Along the way, the boy finds himself imagining what life was like two generations ago — a life that appears to be both different from and similar to his life now. This is a heartfelt story about memory, imagination and intergenerational connection that perfectly captures the experience of a young child’s wonder as he is introduced to places and stories that hold meaning for his family.

How to support at home: What were some of your stories of spending time with your grandfather or grandmother? Share some fond memories with your child.

“Fond” was one of our new words this week. Many didn’t know what the adjective meant so using this word in your vocabulary this week can help solidify their understanding of the word fond.

We are mathematicians.

This week, we learned about measurement and the relation between centimetres and millimetres. They learned how to convert a measurement from cm to mm.

Then we extended this by learning about perimeter and how to measure it. Please feel free to review perimeter with your child at home. We will continue this week and move into learning about area as well. You are welcome to look for videos on YouTube that can help your child review this new concept.

Word Work

For our work work last week, we practiced past tense and learned that with regular past tense verbs, they ALL end with “ed” even though they have the /d/, /id/, or /t/ sounds.

Wondering Wednesday

We joined Ms. Santorelli’s class and Ms. Tai’s class on our shape search walk. They had so much fun looking and tallying all sorts of shapes in our environment.

This upcoming week

We have Sports Day on Friday! We will be telling students more about what to expect this week. There will be an early dismissal at 12:30 pm. Students on the hot lunch program will receive their hot lunch on this day. Your child is welcome to bring a lunch as well or eat at home after sports day is over. Families are welcome to attend and cheer students on!

Thank you so much for your continued support at home. You are an essential part of our learning and we appreciate you!

With much gratitude, Ms. Chan