Category: Social Emotional Learning

Dear families,

Passion Project presentations are well underway! Addie started us off with her amazing presentation on foxes on Monday. Later that afternoon, we did a directed drawing on foxes that you would have seen come home that day. I loved seeing their creativity!

Here are other projects we enjoyed:

• Ramen by Chloe and Katelyn – Students even got a taste of ramen after their presentation!
• Space is So Cool! by Nassi and Kiran
• Monkeys by Cooper and Jeremy H.
• Axolotls by Lilly and Chiara
• Kangaroos by Alessandra
• Italian by Cristina

Here are a few more to come next:

• Blob fish
• Swans
• French

This is the first year I taught grade 2s (and second time teaching grade 3s) how to use PowerPoint, Word, and email. Honestly, I am extremely impressed with how quickly they learned! The way they put together slides with titles and information, their creativity and choice in images that match the slide topic, and their overall presentation skills will set them up well for future presentations. One thing they are learning to do better is to reference the resources they used.

Students have provided valuable feedback to help presenters know what they did well and how they can improve for next time. It’s impressive what they notice and how well they articulate this to their classmate in a positive and supportive way. Learning how to give feedback and constructive criticism is an important skill! Please feel free to ask your child about what they have enjoyed about the Passion Project presentations so far!

I also appreciate how they apply their new skills and how they support each other. We have little leaders who act as mentors, and it’s so heartwarming to watch how helpful so many are. I really believe that every child has leadership potential in them. They just need the right mix of opportunity, confidence, courage, plus a hint of coaching and maybe some nudging in order to shine. Once we notice and name it, this leadership trait is nurtured. Soon enough, we have more and more learners feeling like they are supportive leaders. I can often be found saying, “Thank you for being a leader by contributing to our classroom environment.”

Story Workshop
Students practiced oral storytelling with Ms. Lee. I reminded them that the tradition of oral storytelling is an important one in Indigenous families as many valuable stories are passed down from generation to generation. Every day, we share a part of our story with each other during our Community Circle to help us connect with one another. On Wednesday, they all had an opportunity to create a story based on their experiences and stories they have in them.

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

Grizzly Games
On Wednesday, we had our first Grizzly Games house meeting to decide on team names. How exciting! Students are encouraged to wear their team colour on Friday. Their colour was written in their planners. We have our next house meeting this Wednesday where we will practice the team cheer!

We are mathematicians.
For grade 3’s, there is a Math test coming up. Please check your child’s planner for more information. Also, continue to practice addition and subtraction with regrouping to 1000. For example: 567 + 255 = ____ and 231 – 188 = _____.

For grade 2’s, continue to review regrouping with subtraction to 100 at home. For example: 67 + 25 = _____ and 31 – 18 = _____. We have also been creating and solving real-world word problems and having fun doing it!

How you can support at home: Have fun coming up with different scenarios for your child to solve! Maybe you can have fun taking turns creating and solving each other’s word problems! For example: There are 65 ice cream cones to sell at the carnival. You sold 47. How many do you have left to sell? Grade 3’s can do this too except your numbers have 3-digits! Enjoy!

What Pride Means to Me
Reflections are a BIG part of our learning and a part of developing our core competencies like critical thinking. Last week, we discussed what “pride” means to us. Our conversation helped us better understand our upcoming Pride day on Wednesday. We reflected on how we can feel proud of who we are, how hard we work, what we have, and how we can feel proud of others. We talked about what we think and how we feel pride, the emotions that come along with it, and how we celebrate this pride with humility.

We followed this up with writing reflections on how we feel proud of our growth this year in various areas of our learning.

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

I also believe that it’s important to regularly celebrate what we feel proud of like our daily small wins. We can often be found giving ourselves a high five and each other high fives. We know that when children are made aware that they are being challenged in their stretch zones and can see their own growth, their level of happiness is increased.

As a result, these increased levels of joy and happiness further activate the learning centres in their brains making it even easier to learn more. We also know that being happy makes an impact on overall well-being and how they interact with others which leads to improved social connections. I do believe that all of these factors play a role in building the positive, safe, and joyful environment we get to enjoy every single day.

“Learning ultimately supports the well-being of the self, the family, the community, the land, the spirits, and the ancestors.” – First Peoples Principles of Learning

It is by intentional design that Mrs. Paulich and I create and cultivate a nurturing, playful, loving, and joyful culture where your children thrive and love to come to school. Being with your children brings us both SO much joy, and it’s evident that your children feel the same way! Of course, we cannot do this without your full support at home. With a few short weeks left, our hearts are truly full of deep gratitude for your continued support all year as our partners in your child’s learning.

As I will be leaving Gilmore at the end of this year and heading to Kitchener as their new Head Teacher, I am savouring and appreciating every last bit with your children and this community. They hold such a special place in my heart. I will share more appreciations in my last post at the end of June but for now, please know how much I have loved and appreciated you and your child in our class. I tell them this every single day! I love them so much! 🙂

With deep sincerity and gratitude, Ms. Chan

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 whole school photo first thing after attendance.
• Wednesday, June 7: Gilmore Pride day. Wear something that makes you feel proud like a Gilmore shirt, rainbow colours, 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. Wear your team colour. Early dismissal at 12:15pm.
• Thursday, June 15: Confederation Park with our pen pals from Brentwood Park.
• Friday, June 23: Science World field trip. We will need 5 parent volunteers wiling to supervise. Notice will come home on Tuesday.

Dear families,

We continue to grow in many ways!

Student Led Conferences 

On Thursday, May 4, we have an early dismissal at 1:45pm for our Student Led Conferences which start at 2:00pm. Please CLICK HERE to read the notice with detailed information on our conferences or view image (click to enlarge).

CLICK HERE to fill out the form to choose your appointment times.

You will find a link in the notice to choose your first and second choice for appointment times. Please fill out as soon as possible. Thank you!

Autism Awareness & Acceptance Month

This week, we continued to read stories that support our Autism Awareness and Acceptance month. We have reflected on our learning through our writing. Please feel free to have conversations around what we’ve been learning about this month.

• All My Stripes by Shaina Rudolph, Danielle Royer, and Jennifer Zivoin 
• Destiny’s Amazingly Different Dreams by Molly Schaefer   
• Don’t Laugh at Me by Steve Seskin and Allen Shamblin 

Read How Full Is Your Bucket? by Tom Rath. This is one of my favourite stories. It teaches us that we all have an invisible bucket above our heads. When we say and do kind things for others, we add drops to our bucket and theirs. This lifts us all up. So, every interaction with others either uplifts and adds to positivity or it does the opposite.

We are passionate.

Since students may not have seen many presentations, I worked on my own Passion Project on capybaras as an example. I demonstrated what their presentations can look like. We talked through having consistent title font sizes, using relevant images that match the information on slides, information you put on slides, and including a Resources slide. I mentioned how we don’t write too many words on a slide. Also, we can share more information on the slide than what we have listed. We talked about criteria but we will co-construct it this week.

Click here to view my Capybara PowerPoint.

Everyone is working hard on their Passion Projects! They really enjoy this time! We learned how to share PowerPoint presentations with our partner and with me. During our demonstration, they learned the power of working on a live document where two people have access.

We are cooperative communicators.

On Friday, we played a Copy Cat cooperative communication game. Students were divided into teams randomly chosen. There were five groups with four on a team.

One person from each group came up to view the hidden design they were to copy. The communicator was only allowed to use words to describe the design and were asked to keep their hands behind their backs when explaining to prevent pointing. Each person on the team had an opportunity to be a communicator.

Each turn, the design got progressively more challenging.

I was impressed with how their communication improved each turn they had. I was proud of how well they worked on each team!

Ask your child about their experience!

Thank you for your continued support at home! We appreciate you!

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.

Dear families,

We had a week full of fun! On Monday, children had fun during our Jump Rope for Heart time. There were 10 stations set up by Division 1 for all classes to enjoy! Click here to see a video of the gym set up.

Black History Month
We learned about the life of Mohammed Ali and Martin Luther King through his “I Have a Dream” speech. We had discussions about colour and how blacks were treated in the past and continue to be marginalized today. We discussed privilege, kindness, what we can do, and then wrote our reflections.

Applied Skills & Technologies
According to our grade 2/3 curriculum, students are expected to be able to do the following:

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

On Valentine’s Day, we thoroughly enjoyed our Friendship Fruit Salad! Thank you to everyone for your contribution! Every student had an opportunity to help prepare the salad by cutting fruit, peeling oranges, or separating grapes from vines. I loved how so many were coming back for seconds! It was so delicious. Why? The secret ingredient: made with love. 🙂

We had an abundance of apples for our fruit salad so we decided to bake apple crumble on Friday. We enjoyed it so much too because of the secret ingredient. I loved how we had 10 cutting boards with partners respectfully taking turns cutting the apples into small pieces.

Here’s the recipe we used:

• Cut 10 apples into small pieces. Mix 75 ml sugar, 15 ml flour, 5 ml cinnamon, 60 ml water and add to the apples.
• Topping: 250 ml oats, 250 ml flour, 175 ml brown sugar, 1 ml baking powder, 1 ml baking soda, 125 ml melted butter, cinnamon, and vanilla.
• Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes in a 9 x 13″ pan.

This week, we continued to use the laptops to practice our communication skills using email. Many students are beginning to understand the parts of an email. On Friday, I introduced them to a new app: Microsoft Word. They played with their names by using the text formatting features like bold, italics, underline, shading, and changing fonts, size, and colour.

Grade 2 Mathematicians
We have been exploring addition. There is more than one way to add. My goal according to the curriculum is to show them different strategies beyond what we typically do, which is to regroup or what some know as “carrying”. I introduced them to decomposing into 10s and 1s and recomposing (e.g., 48 + 37, 40 + 30 = 70, 8 +7 = 15, 70 +15 = 85). If you’d like to support at home, have your child practice both of these ways to add 2 digits plus 2 digits.

We are authors.
I gave students developing/proficient/exceeding samples of stories at their grade level to assess against a single-point rubric. It was amazing to hear them compare and discuss differences and what would make it better. They took new insight to make their OWN stories even better!

We had mini author’s circles to read our stories to each other and receive feedback too. It was great to hear them share ideas to help improve their classmate’s stories.

Upcoming week

Wednesday, February 22nd is Pink Shirt Day. All students are invited to wear a pink shirt.

Friday, February 24 is our District Pro-D day. All staff have been invited to attend sessions at Burnaby Central and Moscrop. I am excited to be presenting two sessions! Click on the images to read the session details. I share this because I believe it helps you better understand my teaching philosophy and beliefs.

Next week, we welcome back our student teacher, Ms. Kim, for five weeks!

Have a wonderful Family Day long weekend!

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

Gratefully, Ms. Chan