Category: We are athletes.

Dear Division 11 Families,

We hope you had a wonderful weekend! It’s hard to believe we’re already nearing the end of Term 2 and that this is the last week before Spring Break. It feels like we just met the students, but as they say, time flies when you’re having fun!

Vancouver Warriors
Our class had an incredible opportunity to learn from the pros; the Vancouver Warriors came to our school! We participated in a session where we learned about the history and fundamentals of lacrosse. Students learned the basics of passing, catching, and shooting, while also gaining insight into the sport’s connection to Indigenous history and culture.

Kindness Rocks!
This week, our class took part in a simple but meaningful project; Kindness Rocks! Each student painted a rock with inspiring words and creative designs. We talked about how small acts of kindness can make a big difference, whether it’s a kind word, a smile, or even a painted rock left for someone to find!

Science 
Exploring Ecosystems: Everything is Connected!
This week in science, we learned how everything in an ecosystem is connected! We explored what organisms look like, where they live, and the roles they play. We had the opportunity to observe them up close.

Language Arts

Our students worked on the introductions of their stories. We explored what makes an introduction engaging and focused on three key techniques:

• Sparking curiosity to make readers want to keep reading.
• Creating a vivid picture in the reader’s mind.
• Evoking emotions by incorporating sensory details.

After learning about these techniques, students applied them to their own writing. They also dedicated a day to editing and refining their introductions.

Math

We are wrapping up our unit on addition and subtraction. As a class, we reviewed the three strategies together before going on a scavenger hunt around the classroom to find math problems. Students had to solve each addition or subtraction question using a specific strategy based on the color of the paper. For example, if the problem was on pink paper, they used the compensation strategy.

To conclude, we reflected on which strategies they preferred. Many students chose multiple strategies, demonstrating their flexible thinking and problem-solving skills!

Social Studies

Our students participated in an invention scavenger hunt! Working with a partner, they read about different inventions and identified the need each invention addressed. They were excited to recognize some familiar inventions and discover new ones they had never heard of before.

Primary Days of Music Field Trip – This Thursday!

Thank you for submitting your forms!

Families, we are so grateful for your support! Thank you for being a part of our learning journey.

Warm regards,

Cailyn, Livia, and Jake

Dear Division 11 Families,

We hope you are enjoying the beautiful snow outside! My son was so excited that we built a family of snowmen even before breakfast. I can’t wait to hear about all the fun the students had in the snow.

Bowling

We had so much fun bowling on Tuesday! A huge thank you to our family volunteers for driving our students and supporting them during the field trip. Our students were so supportive of one another, cheering each other on. Even those who were brand new to bowling said they can’t wait to do it again!

Social Studies: Lunar New Year

We wish everyone a happy Lunar New Year and good luck in the Year of the Snake! In Social Studies, our students have been learning about New Year traditions around the world. On Wednesday, our students had the opportunity to learn more about Lunar New Year. They rotated through various stations, participating in fun activities such as using chopsticks to pick up small objects, learning to write Chinese characters, and playing a Korean game. Thank you to all our students for sharing their experiences and knowledge with us, and a special thank you to Mrs. W.R. for planning such a fun afternoon!

Math

Our students have been working on double-digit addition and subtraction. We’ve been focusing on understanding the concepts rather than just memorizing the algorithm. This week, they’ve been using counters to show subtraction with regrouping. I’ve attached a video that explains this process so you can support them at home as well. Developing a strong understanding of this concept is crucial, as it lays a solid foundation for future number concepts and helps them apply their knowledge to more complex math problems later on.

At the end of the week, we moved into 3-digit subtraction too and subtraction across zeros!

How to support at home: Practice subtraction with regrouping together. Ask your child to explain their understanding. In math, one of the curricular competencies is to:

• Communicate mathematical thinking in many ways
• Explain and justify mathematical ideas and decisions

Affirmations

We talk to ourselves. Learning to have positive self-talk is an important part of developing our core competencies of positive, personal self identity. This is especially important when we face challenges or when we are working through hard things in life.

An affirmation is similar to a pep talk you give to yourself. It’s a short, positive sentence that you say to yourself to help you feel more confident, strong, and happy. Saying affirmations can help us all believe in ourselves and remind us of our personal strengths, identity, core values, and what makes us who we are.

On Friday, we started writing our own affirmations on Word in Office 365. We also listened to this affirmations song by Snoop Dog. Our buddy class performed this song with actions at our  last assembly.

How to support at home: Talk to your child about how we can be a good friend to ourselves. There are things we would not say to a friend. We shouldn’t speak to ourselves like that either. Share about how you talk to yourself using positive and encouraging language. If you have affirmations you use often, share those with your child.

One thing Ms. Chan shares often is this: Learn to be your own biggest cheerleader. We have one important job in life. We need to take the best care of our own human: ourselves. Our mental and emotional health is key to taking good care of ourselves!

Thank you for your continued support. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend—wishing you a restful evening and a great start to the week ahead!

Gratefully,
Cailyn and Livia

Dear Division 11 Families, 

I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend and enjoyed some Halloween festivities! We’ve been getting into the Halloween spirit in class with creative activities and spooky decorations. 

Our students explored positive and negative space in art, creating pumpkin designs that creatively incorporate both. They were so creative with their designs, and now their pumpkins are hanging on our wall, making the classroom wonderfully spooky! 

The students were thrilled to learn that our next unit in math is fractions! We practiced writing fractions on the whiteboards, and they created their own fractions using coloured strips. Some even managed to divide their strips into 32 equal parts! 

I am incredibly proud of the progress our students have made in showing their thinking with Venn diagrams. In small groups, they matched cultures with similar wedding traditions and chose a pair to show what they have in common and some unique things about each culture. 

Sincerely, Ms. Kim

We are writers.

On Monday, both Ms. Kim and Ms. Chan had an opportunity to team teach! As you may recall, students were working on their I Am Thankful poems modeled after the book by Todd Parr (shared in Week 5’s blog post.) They were encouraged to take only one of the things they feel very grateful for to develop their ideas into a paragraph.

One of the things that students in grade 3 need to be able to do by the end of the year is to write a paragraph that contains opening and closing sentences with ideas that are clear, organized, and developed. They should include details, reasons, or explanations that show some critical thinking about the topic. We can’t wait for you to read their paragraphs! We will continue to work on improving our paragraph this week.

This term, we are working on our personal, impromptu writing. This week, they will be introduced to a rubric as part of assessment so they can see how they are doing, to set some goals, and next steps.

Ways to support at home: Practice writing paragraphs together with your child modeling opening and closing sentences along with supporting statements that develop your idea.

Learning About Diversity

On Thursday, my friend, Ms. Woelders, visited our class. She is the Outreach Coordinator working at the B. C. Accessible Resource Centre. 

We learned about celebrating diversity, disabilities, and the new law: Accessible BC Act. She highlighted the importance of lowering barriers so everyone can learn. They got to see and touch a picture book with braille which is meant for people who are visually impaired or blind. She told us that the book costs $300!

She read us a story called “Ish” by Peter Reynolds and did a 4 square activity with them. This is actually one of my favourite books.

Check out some of our work!

 Digital Literacy and Digital Citizenship

Last week was our District’s Digital Literacy and Digital Citizenship week. We learned about what digital literacy means and what is a good digital citizen.

This video (The Power of Words) is designed to help students build empathy by teaching them that the words they use on the Internet can be powerful. It also covers what to do if they encounter cyberbullying.

Some of your children are playing on websites (like Roblox) where they can communicate with others. We talked about ways we can keep ourselves and our personal information safe and private. We do not share our full names, birthdays, where we live or go to school, etc. We also discussed how we can be HAWKS (Helpful Accepting Welcoming Kind and Safe) online with people we don’t know. What we shouldn’t say to someone face-to-face, we shouldn’t say to someone behind our screens. We can be great digital citizens.

Ways to support at home: Click on the video image to visit the page and watch the video at home with your children. Have regular conversations about how they treat others online and how they want to be treated online. If anything ever feels uncomfortable, leave that online space and tell a trusted adult right away. Take time to regularly check their communication with others online. They are or will be learning to navigate this online space and will need your guidance and coaching. Teach them how to be a kind and responsible digital citizen.

Hallowe’en

On Thursday, children are welcome to come to school wearing a costume. We are learning to be culturally responsive, inclusive, and respectful. Please review the poster shared by our District office.

Also, please let us know if your child and family do not partake in Hallowe’en activities so we can find alternate activities. We will be integrating other cultural festivities around this time like Diwali. Please feel free to send me an email so you can share with us so we can learn from you too! Thank you!

There will be a parade and short assembly in the morning on Thursday, October 30.

In the afternoon, we will have a class autumn party. Children are welcome to bring healthy treats to share. They will have more than enough sweets afterwards so I would like to encourage healthier snacks, please. They can also bring a simple board game they may want to play with their classmates. Thank you!

PJ Day

Friday, November 1 is PJ Day! Students are welcome to wear pajamas and bring a stuffed animal and blanket (or bed sheet). We will turn our classroom into forts to read with each other and our furry friends.

Field Trips

We are planning for three morning sessions of ice skating this term. If we get the dates and times we requested, these skating sessions will be on Tuesday mornings. We will leave right after the morning bell. We will need parent volunteer drivers, please. Stay tuned! We will share the dates as soon as they are confirmed by the City of Burnaby! So excited!

We are grateful for your support at home. I would like to suggest that you read these weekly blog posts WITH your child or have them read it TO you as practice. This way, you can ask direct questions about what they learned and then ask lots of questions to model curiosity (and in so doing, you model lifelong learning). Look up the answers online as part of your learning together! Ask them to explain their understanding. If they can teach you and explain it simply, then you know they comprehend it.

Looking forward to another fantastic week full of joy and learning!

With great appreciation, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

Every time I sit down to reflect on the past week, I can’t help but have a heart full of gratitude for the blessing to be your child’s teacher. The love and joy we share along with the enjoyable time we have as we learn together is truly priceless.

Sports Day

Friday was a fun day of teamwork and cooperation through physical activities. For those who were able to see some of the fun, thank you for joining us. We hope your child went home talking about how much they enjoyed their day!

We are readers.

Students have been enjoying reading books on our iPads using EPIC. This is a website that has over 40,000 high interest books to read. Just a reminder that if your child is sick or at home, they can access their account anytime from 7AM to 3PM. Our class code is ycr9510 and their passcode is the first four digits of their pupil number. That’s the same number they use to login to laptops.

We are mathematicians.

We continued to solidify our understanding of perimeter. This week, we were introduced to the concept of how to measure area and how it differs from perimeter.

How to support at home if your child needs extra support for perimeter. Watch this video together and measure the perimeter of some items around the house.

We are researchers.

We started our research on an animal we saw at the Vancouver Aquarium. We were given a partner and everyone worked so hard during their first work period!

We are artists.

From Ms. Kapusta: This week, we finished our Norval Morrisseau art. We painted our copper thunderbirds (last week we learned that Norval’s artwork always involved animals and nature and his Indigenous name, which he received during a healing ceremony, was “copper thunderbird”). We painted with tempura paint and used bright, bold colours, thick black lines, and left no white space – just like Norval’s style. As we painted small details and focused on doing our best job, the class was reminded that learning involves patience and time. No one was born painting like Norval Morrisseau or Pablo Picasso. I’m proud of how they all turned out and the passion the kids bring into making their art continues to bring me joy!

Sorry, with all of the Sports Day fun, we forgot to take a picture of the new bulletin board but we can share next week!

Last Field Trip 

We will have our last field trip on Friday, June 21. We will be going bowling at Revs (5502 Lougheed Highway by Holdom skytrain station) at 10 AM. We will leave the school at 9:40 AM.

After bowling, we will be heading to Burnaby Lake Park (behind Bill Copeland Sports Complex) for lunch and until the end of the day. We will return to school before 3 PM.

We will need parent drivers to bowling, to the park, and back to school, please. All families are welcome to join us for the day to watch them bowl and socialize at the park! We will be joined by Ms. Tai’s and Ms. Santorelli’s class. More details will be listed on the field trip notice when it is sent home.

This Weekend! Family Opportunities at Rosemary Brown Recreation Centre (7789 18th Street, Burnaby)

The City of Burnaby is offering some programming this weekend! Rosemary Brown Drop-in Schedules

Toonie Skate

• • Monday, May 20th at 11:45 AM to 1:15 PM

Family Ringette & Hockey Drop-in (4 – 12 years + adult)

Families can enjoy the sport of ringette together! Space is provided for shoot & score and participants are welcome to play small area games. The maximum ratio of children to adults (16rs+) is 3:1.  All participants must wear a helmet with a face cage and protective gloves. Additional safety equipment is encouraged. Hockey helmets with cages are available to borrow at no cost from our skate shop. Participants may wear hockey face masks to this program.

• • Sunday, May 19th at 3:00-4:00pm
  • Monday, May 20^th at 9:15-10:15am

Family Lacrosse (4-12 years with adult)

• • Monday, May 20^th at 9:45-10:45 am

Family Ball Hockey (4-12 years with adult)

• • Monday, May 20^th at 11 am-12 pm

Community Events

• Wed. May 22 at 6 PM – Kitchener Community Dinner (potluck). All families are welcome! Please RSVP using this link. I am looking forward to seeing you and your family there! The intermediate choir will be performing and we have an art activity for children to enjoy.
• Fri. May 24 from 4:30 to 7:30 PM – Burnaby North Secondary. Free carnival games, face painting, etc. Click here to learn more.
• Sat. June 1 from 9:30 AM to 4 PM – Hats Off Day. Click here to learn more about this great annual event that happens along Hastings street.

I am savouring all the moments with your children. They make me smile and fill my heart with so much joy. I appreciate how each one contributes their gifts and their heart to our community. I can’t help but light up when I see them or share with others about how much I love them anytime I have an opportunity. Thank you for sharing your beautiful children with me this year.

Grateful to be a part of your child’s learning and development at school, Ms. Chan