Category: We are artists.

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,

I hope you are having a great weekend so far! Tomorrow, February 13 is Jump Rope for Heart. CLICK HERE to learn more and here to donate. A reminder to wear RED tomorrow and runners. If your child doesn’t have red, then Grizzly gear is great too!

We are authors and storytellers.
I read the story Ralph Tells a Story by Abby Hanlon. He discovered he not only had many stories to tell, but they had value and are worth telling. It taught us that stories are everywhere. We are story. Each day, we have an opportunity to share a part of our story with each other during Community Circle time to develop our connections and understanding of our similarities and differences.

Students have continued to enjoy working on their stories. This week, they had an opportunity to read it to a classmate to receive feedback on how well they described the characters, setting, problem, and solution. Some took their feedback to make improvements in their story right away! We now have some ready to begin publishing!

“All that we are is story. From the moment we are born to the time we continue on our spirit journey, we are involved in the creation of the story of our time here. It is what we arrive with. It is all we leave behind,” 

-Richard Wagamese 
Ojibway author from Kamloops B.C.

Speaking of story, I wrote an article for SFU that was just published recently on their education page – a first for their Share Your Story series. CLICK HERE for the link to the article. I’d love to hear what resonated with you. Please feel free to share in the comments or send me an email. Thank you!

We are mathematicians.
Grade 2s continued to work on our addition and subtraction math facts using our random numbers chart. If your child no longer has theirs at home, simply take an 8.5 x 11″ paper and randomly write 0-9 on one side and 10-20 on the other side. You can choose to have another sheet with all the numbers from 0-20 to practice. Here are the facts we covered thus far:

• Commutative property: a+b=c and b+a=c. You can switch the addends and the sum is the same.
• +0 & – 0
• +1 & – 1
• +2 & – 2
• +10 & – 10
• Making tens (combinations that equal 10 like 0+10, 1+9, 2+8, 3+7, 4+6, 5+5)
• +/- 9 NEW this week! Students loved learning the +9 and -9 strategy for addition/subtraction in math! It was like magic using the power of digital roots! They liked my magic wand I used for the effect. Please add these to your child’s skill practice. Thank you!

Look at the Addition Facts Chart below. If your child memorized the strategies so far (listed above), they would have learned 105 facts with only 45 left because of the commutative property! We still have some strategies up our sleeve, so let’s keep practicing with our random numbers chart at home! Thank you for your support! I practiced these with my kids at home and over the years, they have thanked me to “forcing” them to practice and memorize them. It just gives them more confidence in math overall especially when they move into the intermediate grades. Grade 3’s can  use these strategies to practice this too!

Next up: Doubles and Doubles +1. Then we’ll only have 35 facts left!

We also started learning how to add two-digits together with regrouping through play. Each person had a partner. They rolled two dice to create random numbers to solve the equation together. They were so engaged and worked well with each other!

We are communicators.
We had our second session of emailing on Friday. I am grateful that almost everyone memorized their login credentials to make the login process so smooth for us all. They are definitely reaping the benefits of being able to login efficiently! Thank you for your support! Students also are learning the basic parts of an email and are becoming better communicators by adding:

To: [Email address]
Subject line: [Short description of the email]
Salutation or greeting phrase: [Dear Ms. Chan,]
Body: [Message]
Closing: [Gratefully,]
Signature: [Ms. Chan]

We can reflect. 
It has been a while since we visited our eportfolios in SpacesEDU but last Thursday, we worked on two posts: Art and a reading.

The expectation is they share all of these in their reflection:  

• Describe what we did
• What I am proud of  
• Two “I can” statements  
• What I would do differently next time  
• What I learned about myself

We are artists.
Students thoughtfully considered and wrote what love means to them around Valentine’s Day. They also had fun hiding their name in and amongst all of the words! Here is a sample of a reflection and an image of our bulletin board.

Valentine’s Day
Thank you to parents who already communicated what your child will be contributing to our Friendship Fruit salad on Tuesday. If you wish, they can bring in their fruit on Monday, and I will keep it in the fridge for Tuesday. So far, we have contributions of raspberries, oranges, grapes, apples, kiwi, and a banana. Repeats are ok! Thank you! We will have bowls and spoons for them.

Your child should have brought home a list of classmate names on Thursday. If they are preparing Valentines, we would like all children to be included, please. Thank you for fostering inclusion.

As always, we appreciate your support at home. Should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to ask. Your children are working so hard every day to improve. We are so very proud of them!

Don’t always have time to read our blog posts? Looking for a real reason for your child to read? Here’s a tip: Have them read our weekly blog posts TO you as you cook OR instead of something else they are reading OR read it together so you can talk about what they are learning in school.

Grateful for you all and loving being their teacher because they bring me such joy, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

So many things to celebrate about your children and our class! We hope you thoroughly enjoyed celebrating them and the school at the winter concert. I felt so proud of them as they practiced and and I was watching them perform!

Communicating Student Learning Report
Another celebration for all of their hard work in learning since the beginning of the year! Each child contributes to making our community such a wonderful place to be. Each of them is a leader in their own way. We have had a few teachers work with our class and each one comments on how sweet they are and I agree! We hope you intentionally took the time to celebrate your child’s learning and progress as you read their report with them. Please read last week’s blog post for more details about the Communicating Student Learning report and what to pay attention to.

Please feel free to write a comment on the envelope and sign it before returning on Monday. Thank you for your continued support at home! We appreciate you!

Since it’s a formal way to celebrate your child’s learning, I wanted to make it a special event. It was surprising to me that at the beginning of the week, there were a few groans when I mentioned they will be receiving their progress report at the end of the week. It should be a time to celebrate! Do we all have things to work on and improve? We all do! But let’s recognize the gains they have made so far and continue to INCLUDE them so they take ownership and feel accountable. Learning is a process! This was just a snapshot of their learning journey. We still have six more months of successes to celebrate together!

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

I originally suggested we have cake to celebrate but in discussing this plan with them, they suggested cupcakes would be better. Rather than buying from a store, I thought baking our own cupcakes would be way more fun so we did! We really try to make school an experience every day and offer something they look forward to and get excited about!

Click here for the link to the cake recipe. For the frosting, we melted chocolate chips and added the thick part of a can of coconut milk in a pot on medium heat. That’s it! Add icing sugar and sprinkles and voila!

We are creators.
Thank you to the generosity of Ms. Connell, our EA in the class, students had a wonderful opportunity to decorate their own trees to bring home! They were so engaged in this activity. It was so lovely to see their creativity at work, how they inspired each other with ideas, and to feel the joy of the experience. We appreciate you for this opportunity, Ms. Connell!

Mrs. Paulich did a directed drawing of gingerbread houses. Look at their beautiful creations!

Our Christmas sensory poems are finished too. Click here to read them all!

On Monday, we have a new student and family joining us. Her name is Lisa. Please help us welcome her to our class and Gilmore! The children are excited to meet her!

We hope you have a wonderful weekend ahead! It’s hard to believe we are already nearing the end of the year. Time flies when you’re having fun and feeling joy! And that we do in our class!!

With a heart full of love and appreciation for you and your children, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

I apologize for not having this blog post ready for you to read over the weekend. My Masters ringette team and my daughter’s Open team that I coach was in a tournament. After playing ringette for 15 years, it was my team’s first time winning a gold medal!

We are grateful and at peace.

Last week, we talked about gratitude and what brings us peace. We often share what we are grateful for in our Community Circle.

We watched a part of a Tedx Talk by Louie Schwartzberg on Gratitude. Click here to watch from the part we started watching.

“Nature’s beauty can be easily missed — but not through Louie Schwartzberg’s lens. His stunning time-lapse photography, accompanied by powerful words from Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast, serves as a meditation on being grateful for every day.” READ MORE !