Category: Social Emotional Learning

Dear Div. 6 families,

It’s hard to believe we are already into November! Sorry for the late blog post. I was away all weekend for my daughter’s ringette tournament in Vernon.

Click on image to view the video update.

TWO updates not mentioned in the video: Math & Spider Web activity. Please read below.

Thank you for watching the video updates week after week. The hope is that you get to know what we are doing in the class so you can better support your child at home.

We are mathematicians. Last week we continued to work on furthering our understanding of equivalent fractions. We are solidifying this knowledge about fractions as a whole and fractions in a set. Our goal is to be able to explain and teach these concepts to someone else. This demonstrates true proficiency. Students will be bringing home their fractions work this week to review. Please ask them to explain to you different fractions and how they are equivalent. For example, ask them to demonstrate how 1/2 is equivalent to 2/4 or how 1/3 is equivalent to 2/6 – for both fractions of a whole and fractions of a set. If they can explain this simply to you, then you will know they have proficiency. Ask for pictures to help them explain.

Students absolutely loved our very visual Spider Web activity! We tossed white yarn to a classmate sitting across from us on the carpet. Each time sharing one thing they appreciate about each other as classmates. What they shared was heartwarming. Then when our spider web was complete, we talked about how building the community we want to see takes a collection of positive actions and words and it takes time to create.

Next, with just one person adding negativity to our “web” (=classroom community), one person shook the web to show that it affects us all. It was such a visual representation of what I believe in: Every interaction is an opportunity to uplift others through our kindness, empathy, and gratitude. Each one of us plays a part in building a positive and caring community.

Ask your child about the activity. So many of them said it was fun!

Library Research – We are ready for research now! Students were asked to complete their citing of resources due on Monday. This was recorded in their planners. To access, they were to login to O365 > One Drive > their personal folder > Practicing Resources file. If they don’t have access to a printer, that is ok, we can print it out at school.

NOTE: If your child has not memorized their login information, please spend some time this week. Almost every has memorized theirs. Thank you!

We are scientists. We continued to meet in our groups this week to decipher which questions most appealed to us. This week, we are ready to dive into their inquiry questions!

We are passionate about Passion Projects! Students were introduced to a recording sheet to keep them accountable each week we work on them. They will record what they do and reflect on what they worked on and set goals for their next steps.

We also started learning about Remembrance Day. If you’d like to make a donation for the poppy your child will receive on Wednesday, please feel free to have them bring a loonie or toonie. For any larger donations, please go to https://legion.ca/donations.

Please have your child keep an extra mask in their backpack in case they forget or just need a new one during the day. Thank you!

We are so grateful to be your child’s teacher and to have an opportunity to work with you. Thank you for your continued support!

Gratefully, Ms. Chan & Mrs. Paulich

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

Dearest Division 6 families,

Happy Father’s Day! Hope you are enjoying your special day!

Each week I have with your children, I thoroughly enjoy! As I reflect, this has been such a fantastic year of personal growth, building relationships with each other, and stretching ourselves outside of our comfort zone because we know this is where the growth happens.

We started reading a book written by Sean Covey: The 7 Habits of Happy Kids (same author as The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People which some of you may know). It begins with a story about a character who finds himself bored and looks to others to help him find something to do; the character discovers that it is his responsibility to be proactive and not rely on others to “fix” his problem. Here are the first two habits covered so far:

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

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

Public Speaking

For our speeches, we co-constructed our criteria. Click here for the PDF. All students were asked to bring home their copy of the single-point rubric. I have loved guiding their writing each week!

Guest Reader on Zoom

On Thursday, my best friend from Florida, Jillian DuBois read two of her stories to us: Road to Awesome, which was co-authored by the publisher of my book, Darrin Peppard. He wrote a book for educational leaders with the same title and Jillian felt strongly that children needed to hear a similar message so that’s why they wrote a picture book together! Students sketchnoted what resonated with them. Click here to view Sketchnotes for Road to Awesome

Thursday was an exciting day for Jillian because it was the very first day that her 3rd picture book, Look at YOU, Piper Lou! was released on Amazon! We were the very first class she read her new story to! It’s about the puppy she fostered and then adopted. It is such a heartwarming story and I loved how students were able to experience Jillian’s passion for telling her stories, reading them, and illustrating.

Division 6 Authors!

Speaking of authors, we have two newly published authors in our class! The Burnaby School District has a special writing contest every year where they ask for submissions from students from K-12. This year, we had two pieces of writing chosen to be included in the Words anthology! Congratulations to Olivia H. who wrote a story called Stranded in a Snowstorm and to Rasul who wanted to share his One Word writing about Mindset. To learn more about the writing project, click here.

On Friday, we had the privilege of learning from people’s Passion Projects! We learned about rattlesnakes from Ethan, the black panther from Princeton, and all about different species of dogs by Miles and Brodie.

Mathematicians

As Mathematicians, we learned about the difference between prisms and pyramids. We also learned about probability and statistics. We did a cool experiment where each student spun a paper clip and tallied the number of times it landed on a particular number. Then we totalled it all up to discover that the chances that it actually landed matched the probability it landed on. It was so cool to see how it all matched!

We are continually grateful for your support at home. The message for this week until the end will be that we finish off strong. Just like in a marathon, we may be tired but our mindset sets the stage for how we complete the year. They hear this message often. When they have been working away on an assignment, they are pushed to finish off that work time with the mindset that they can finish off strong. We practice perseverance and an “I can” attitude.

Gratefully, Ms. Chan and Mrs. Paulich

Dear Division 6 family,

What a wonderful week! We celebrated more Kindness Projects this week! Ethan, Quinson, Brodie and Miles finished their Kindness tree. See my tweet. Students worked on a Kindness project of their choice. Loved seeing this tree “grow”! Students in the school are invited to help. The note says: Our tree needs love. Write a kind word on a leaf & write your name.

They were so excited when they started to see kind words written by others on the leaves!

We also celebrated the group with Olivia H., Maya, and Iman who organized a Kindness Scavenger Hunt for the class that had them running around outside completing various tasks in hopes of being the first group to finish! This creative project brought so much joy to the class, thank you! See my tweet.

This scavenger hunt was well organized and well thought out. Groups had to write a kind letter to me, decode Morse code message to earn more coins, write a kindness haiku, and pick up garbage to earn coins. They earned more coins if they demonstrated great teamwork. What a great way to celebrate kindness toward others!

In Math, we learned about different attributes of quadrilaterals like parallel, perpendicular, and intersecting lines. Students have some symmetry work to complete for the weekend. Please check their planner. Please have your child return their work on Monday. Thank you for your support!

Students have been diligently working on their speeches. They will be presenting them in the week of June 21st.

We are always appreciative for your support at home.

Gratefully, Ms. Chan and Mrs. Paulich