Category: Indigenous Education

Dear families,

It has been such a fun-filled delightful last two weeks of school!

Thank you to everyone’s support and donations for our annual Jingle Bell Walk yesterday! We appreciate Charlotte’s mom and Jeremy H.’s mom for joining us on our walk. We are also grateful to Xavier’s dad for being our driver to help us bring the items back to the school. Your time and help is very much appreciated! There were over 80 parent volunteers who helped on our walk, collection, and serving of hot chocolate! We are so blessed to live in such a generous and caring community!

We are readers.
We were the very first class to visit the Scholastic Book Fair almost a couple of weeks ago. What an exciting time to shop and get excited about books! Thank you for all of your support! If you ordered books, they have arrived. You will receive them this week.

We are continuing with our daily silent reading and reading groups. Here, children are put into groups to read with others who are at similar levels. We talk about effective strategies I see them using (I notice, name, and nurture.) and what other things great readers do. Letter sound combinations are reviewed and we practice breaking up unfamiliar words with decoding strategies. We listen to and support each other as we read out loud to practice our fluency and expression. We talk about our background knowledge and make predictions before and while we read. Students make connections to their experiences, other books/movies, and encouraged to wonder by asking questions about what is happening in the story. Many of these strategies are to help children gain a better understanding of what they read and engage with the text on a deeper level.

Ways to support at home: As you read with your child, we encourage you to follow the same strategies for pushing their critical thinking and reflection skills as they read. One of the most important ways to supporting your reader at home is to talk about what they are reading before, during, and after to help them make sense of what they read. Comprehension and connection is key! Another important piece is to help them recognize what their strengths are as a reader so they know what to continue doing. When you notice them using a reading skill or strategy, be specific to name it so you can nurture it. We need to make it explicit what “good” reading looks like, sounds like, and feels like so they understand what they are working towards. Nurture the joy of reading!

If you have any questions and would appreciate a 1:1 conversation about how to better support your child specifically with reading or writing, please let me know and let’s make it happen! I am happy to support you and your child! 🙂

Communicating our Learning in Science
Your child should have come home with the Matter booklet and a letter with how they were to communicate their learning. They had fun pretending to be a parent as they listened to their partner practice explaining all of the concepts page by page as review. To see the concepts taught, click here to go to our We Are Scientists page. We hope you had fun doing the matter exercise around the house with the sticky notes!

We have an exciting in-class “field trip” on Mon. Dec. 12: Metro Vancouver Watershed Water Cycle. Here are the details on the workshop:

For over a decade, Skye Consulting and Metro Vancouver have provided watershed education to grade 4/5 classrooms across the region but NOW we are extending that to grade 2 classrooms. Metro Vancouver provides clean, safe drinking water to 2.7 million residents everyday, all thanks to our amazing water cycle. They are pleased to offer to your classrooms a fun and hands-on classroom workshop that brings the watershed to you! This is free of charge.

Discover the treasures of Metro Vancouver’s watersheds through an engaging, curriculum connected, in class workshop where our facilitator visits your school with a series of activities and videos to bring the watersheds alive in your classroom. We will explore how the water cycle provides our drinking water, what makes watershed ecosystems important, and concepts of water use and sustainability. Once you’ve experienced this workshop, you’ll be reminded every time you turn on the tap!

We are communicators.
I wish you could have been there to witness their sheer delight and excitement when we received letters from our pen pals from Brentwood Park’s Division 12!! Each one came in their own decorated envelope addressed to them! This past week, we focused on communication through letter writing. We learned the standard form of letters and how to add details about a personal fact that we really wanted our pen pal to know. I am so proud of their overall writing development since the beginning of the year! Our reflective journal writing is progressing well too!

As a class, one area that needed review was: What makes up a sentence? Some students are still learning and some are working on their consistency.

Teaming with Ms. Kapusta, our ELL teacher, we brainstormed what all sentences have. Then we taught them that every sentence has two parts besides it starting with a capital letter and ending with proper punctuation. It has also a subject and predicate.

We had a super fun activity where they each received a subject and a predicate on separate slips of paper. Then they went around the room choosing different partners to make silly sentences. Big smiles and laughter all around! 🙂 We ended the lesson by playing charades. Students chose a predicate and the rest of the class had to make up a complete sentence after it was acted out!

Ways to support at home: Encourage your child to write for real reasons and to cultivate the joy of writing. Keep a journal to record what they did each day. A gratitude journal is a great way to count our blessings! Write a letter or list. Many students love to write stories. Have them create a book!

Illnesses
Last week, we had a number of students away due to illness. We dearly miss your child when they are away. Thank you so much for keeping your child at home when they are sick. Our wish is that they feel better very soon so they can return. When they do feel better at home but aren’t well enough to come back to school just yet, here are some suggestions for what to do, if you wish, and of course, only if they are up to it:

• Snuggle up and read together on EPIC. Your child has access from 7am to 3pm. Use the suggestions mentioned above to talk about the book.
• Wonder together. Think of things they are curious about. Do some research together!
• Practice writing by finding a real reason to write. Perhaps write a note or letter to someone like a grandparent or me! I LOVE receiving letters from students!
• Make something together! Be creative. Use random materials to see what you can come up with!
• If you work from home while your child is recovering, these are all things they can do on their own too!

Always such a joy to see your child’s face and smile when they do return feeling better! 🙂

Winter Concert
We have been working hard to prepare for a delightful winter concert next week! Here are some details you will need to know:

• You will receive TWO tickets on Monday. There are two tickets per child. Please bring your tickets with you to the performance.
• What to wear: a light blue, silver or grey top with dark pants, black socks, and black shoes
• Dress rehearsal on Wed. Dec. 7 at 1:00pm. If you have other family members or younger children, this is the best time to watch! No tickets necessary.
• Please have your child wear their outfit for the dress rehearsal too.
• Wed. Dec. 7 – Arrive at 6:15pm. Report to our classroom. Please not earlier than 6:15pm. Thank you.
• Parents will leave the gym through the outside doors.
• After the concert, please meet your child OUTSIDE at the doors they always line up and leave from. This is where they will be dismissed.

Communicating Student Learning
We are excited to provide you with your child’s learning update on Friday, December 9th! As you read through their progress report, please understand that this is a strength-based document. There are many areas of learning to celebrate. Focus on and recognize their strengths as you sit side by side to read it with them. They are written with a lot of care, love, encouragement, and a supportive heart. I really do enjoy working on these because it gives me dedicated time to deeply reflect and think about your child, their strengths, goals, and next steps in all areas of their learning and development. What a joy and a blessing it is to be your child’s teacher this year! I feel so much gratitude in my heart every day that I get to spend time with your precious children. What a gift they are to each other and our community.

These are written to your child because I believe it helps them take ownership over their learning AND with their voice included, they can see themselves as a big part of their goal setting and progress.

Just like in reading as mentioned above, they need to know what they are doing well so they know what to continue doing. This is a snapshot of how they are doing at this time.

Please refer to this as you look through the different subject areas:

Proficiency Scale   

You will not be receiving a written overview of what we covered in the first term from me. The purpose of the overview is to inform you as to what we learned. Instead, please review the blog posts since the beginning of the year and the We Are Learners pages on our blog to learn more about what we covered since September. Thank you!

We look forward to seeing continued growth as we all work together in their learning! Please know that we recognize that their development doesn’t happen without your valued support at home. We deeply and sincerely are grateful for your time and effort. Please review the “Goals” and “Next Steps” section to specifically learn how to best support your child at home too. Let’s continue to work together to support your child in the joy of learning! As always, please reach out if you have any questions or would like further details. We’re partners!

Invitation
We appreciate all feedback we receive from you and your child as to how much they enjoy coming to school. We do make an effort to making it a fun, engaging, meaningful, and novel experience for them! If you would like to be more involved in our class, please let me know what area of expertise or interest you have and let’s make it happen! We’d LOVE to have you come into our class to teach them something new! It doesn’t have to be something new either. Your presence and your story will enrich our lives and it would be such a gift to learn from you. If you’d like to share something from your culture, for example, or come in to read a book as a guest reader, we welcome that too! Share your ideas with us! If you feel that this is in your stretch zone, what better way to model how you find courage to overcome discomfort and expand your comfort zone! Nudge nudge. 😉

Have a most delightful rest of your weekend! I love and appreciate you and your children!

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

Dear Division 11 families,

Although it was a short school week, we still fit in a LOT of learning and we had a FANTASTIC week! One of the sweetest comments from one of your children this past week really touched my heart. She said, “We have the sweetest class.” Every time I think of her comment, my heart was tickled with warmth and love. This lovely thought has visited numerous times since she said it! We DO have the sweetest class! 🙂

Names are important.

Our names are a very important and significant part of who we are. They have power. They can have deep personal, cultural, and historical connections too. It is a part of our identity, may be a part of the communities we belong, and our place in the world. 

We learned that many Indigenous peoples are gifted a traditional name or names that carry deep cultural meaning. We listened to a story called Thunder Boy Jr. Feel free to listen to the story again at home by clicking the image below. Then we did some writing about our own names and will be doing more activities with our names. These activities are meant to help each child learn more about themselves, their family, and each other as we share.

Because names are a person’s greatest connection to their own identity and individuality, it might be the most important word to them. This is one way that children are seen as a part of our  classroom community. This is the reason why your child is greeted by name each and every morning when I pick them up outside. Then during Community Circle, they are greeted by the person to their right so before recess, they would have heard their sweet name at least twice already!  READ MORE !

Dear Division 6 parents,

We had a productive week with lots of learning and connection! Your child’s personal information sheet (from the office) went home on Friday. Please review and return as soon as possible. Thank you!

Almost all students are arriving at school on time. Thank you for respecting our start time of arriving before our first bell at 8:50am. We appreciate it!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO UPDATE

Here are some updates from Mrs. Paulich on the subjects she teaches:

Social Studies

We spent much of September getting ready for the year, organizing our binders, and developing a growth mindset. Each student created their own motto to turn to when they need that extra push and support. We spent time discussing and reflecting on Truth and Reconciliation and what that means to Indigenous and Non Indigenous Canadians. Most recently, we have been digging deep into our roots and origins with a look at Canadian Immigration.

Physical and Health Education

Students have most recently begun developing their Volleyball skills.

French

We have been looking at simple conversation and greetings.  Students are encouraged to practice this simple conversation at home!

We are writers.

This week we dove further into paragraph writing. We learned about opening and closing sentences along with adding details, reasons, and explanations that include our thoughts and feelings too. They were introduced to a single-point rubric for personal writing. This helps them truly see what areas they need to improve, where they are proficient, and strong aspects of their writing (which are strengths and they should keep doing these things!).

Grade 4 – click image to view PDF

Grade 5 – click image to view PDF

We are mathematicians (Grade 5).

I am SO enjoying teaching math this year! They keep me hopping but it’s so much fun teaching math! I was very happy with how they did on their pre-tests because of how proficient they showed themselves to be. I am so very proud of how hard they are working and learning.

This week, we continued to learn about expanded notation and counting up and down by 10s, 100, 1000, and 10 000. HOMEWORK: Finish page 43 & 44. Review Pre-test and worksheets. Test on Monday, October 18. It will look similar to the pre-test. Continue to practice Math facts +1 -1 +2 -2 strategies.

We practiced our math addition facts and comparing numbers by practicing on a new website: 99Math. They absolutely LOVED it! They are enjoying Math Tappers: Finding Sums too. If you have an iPad, please download this FREE app and have your child practice regularly to improve speed and accuracy. We started a tracking sheet this week. You can do the same at home. Thank you!

Career Education

One of the things I really believe in is that every child can develop leadership skills. On Friday, there were a few examples of how people stepped up on their own volition to demonstrate caring behaviours toward others and our classroom. Feel free to ask your child how they have contributed positively to our classroom community and space.

This week, we came back to the book written by Steven Covey: The 7 Habits of Happy Kids (same author as The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People which some of you may know). The lesson focused on planning and setting goals. Here are the first two habits covered so far:

1. Be Proactive – take initiative
2. Begin with the End in Mind – focus on goals

They wrote three goals plus small action steps and chose one to record in their planner for next week. Please have a conversation about the goals they set and in particular, the one they chose to record in their planner. Next week, ask them to reflect daily on their goals.

I love the image I showed them. It’s about making seemingly small steps that amount to a big change over time! They can get 1% better every day! We are building healthy and effective habits.

Click here to learn more about the 7 habits we will be learning about.

Personal Information Test

Thank you for taking the time to help your child study. We had 6 students get all of their information correct! Please continue to have your child memorize their O365 email address (login) and password. We will start using the laptops next week! The true test will be whether they can successfully log in.

As for memorizing their address and your cell numbers for safety reasons, we will leave that for you to decide the importance of keeping that by memory. Students will not be tested on this again in class.

Passion Projects

After having three opportunities to share what topic they chose as they went milling to music (ask them what that is!), they had an opportunity to share their 30 second elevator pitch about what they want to learn about. If you are not sure, please ask them what topic they decided. Hopefully it’s something you would LOVE to see them explore too!

Masks – Please have your child keep an extra mask in their backpack plus wear one to school. Thank you!

We appreciate your continued support at home!

Gratefully, Ms. Chan and Mrs. Paulich

Dear Div. 6 families,

Wow, has it already been 3 weeks? I thoroughly enjoyed my full days with them on Wednesday and Friday. Being with them brings me such joy!

CLICK HERE to watch the video recap about our week!

This week we learned more about Truth and Reconciliation by reading a book and watching a video. We had deep conversations about residential schools too.

We also learned about Terry Fox and had a fabulous sunny afternoon for the run. Click here to make a donation. To learn more, click here.

Gr. 5 Math

We started the week by sharing how they feel about math. I was thrilled to see so many of them have positive attitudes and quite enjoy math! Math is one of my favourite things to teach because it is so much fun! I will have a series of math videos teaching you and your child some activities you can do at home to practice math facts, strategies, and various concepts. I recognize it does take time to practice and memorize them but learning them makes ALL calculations quicker with greater accuracy in their years ahead even into high school. It’s worth the time spent so your child isn’t struggling with newer concepts AND calculating facts at the same time.

We learn through play. Click here to visit our Mathematicians Play page. The strategy we learned this week:

• +1 and -1 strategy (click to watch video) – Take a piece of paper. Write numbers 1-20 randomly on the page. Point to different random numbers and say the answer out loud. Example: Point to 15. Think 15 + 1. Say 16. Repeat and watch them become quicker and quicker! Make it fun! Take turns or do it together!

If your child builds a habit of practicing 2-5 minutes every day, imagine how much quicker they can add, subtract, multiply, and divide by the end of the year! We are working on speed and accuracy for automaticity!

Looking Ahead

We will begin learning research skills with Mrs. Papapanagiotou, our Teacher-Librarian, on Mondays and Wednesdays. We will learn how to become a more effective researcher, about plagiarism, and how to cite resources properly.

We will begin to talk about Passion Projects this week. Excited to start thinking about possibilities! Feel free to start talking about possibilities at home too!

Reminders

Masks – Please pack an extra 1-2 masks in your child’s backpack. Thank you.

Planners – Please help your child take ownership and build independence by bringing their planner to school every day. Tip: Have all materials packed in backpack the night before.

Snacks & Lunch – Please send enough food to keep your child nourished throughout the day. Especially with warmer weather outside, they are more active and get hungry in the afternoon. We prefer they bring healthier choices to school. Thank you.

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

Sincerely, Ms. Chan and Mrs. Paulich