Category: We are athletes.

Dear families,

On Friday, we celebrated Grandparents Day by inviting them into our classroom to join in the fun. We started our morning with our usual Flex time where they got to enjoy various activities. Some unstructured activities included playing cards, reading, building using KEVA blocks, or showing off some of the work we are proud of on our iPads. Then we gathered in our Community Circle, as we do each day, to share a memory or what makes our grandparents special. After that, we had a movement break by doing 75 jumping jacks. It was great to see some grandparents join in our physical activity! Next, students interviewed their grandparents to learn more about them before they dove into an app called ChatterPix to shared their life tip: the one lesson you wish to share with our youth. This app allowed them to take a picture of an inanimate object (a puppet in this case) and draw a mouth so it looked like a speaking animal. We had an opportunity to share all of their work before grandparents left us. There were some great tips so I hope they will take some to heart! Students also had an opportunity for Ms. Lewis to take a special picture of grandparents with grandchildren. Soon, there will be a display of these images on the bulletin board across from the Library. Thank you to all of the grandparents who joined us! What a special event to celebrate a special bond. If you received an update on how their morning went with us, please feel free to post a comment on our blog. I would love to hear what they thought!

Last Thursday, Jocelyn, a special guest speaker from Vancity, visited to help us develop our financial literacy by teaching us about the history of money. She defined what money is, the evolution from barter and trade to modern currency, Canada’s different forms of currency, what money is made of and the features included to prevent counterfeiting, and some fun facts regarding Canadian currency. Jocelyn ended with a story called One Cent Two Cent Old Cent New Cent by Dr. Seuss. They each received a tin can to take home to save money.

For PE, we have been learning basketball skills. We started with ball handling skills to get to know the ball and the feeling of it in our hands. Then we learned how to dribble. Last class, we learned and practiced the different kinds of passing. I used to play basketball in high school so it’s been fun to practice my skills again. There is something to be said for muscle memory!

We have seen our little buddies more often lately because we have been creating samples of kind acts using a new app called Sock Puppets [FREE to purchase on an iPad]. They worked on their storyboards together and then recorded their projects. These will be showcased at our Pink Shirt Day assembly next Wednesday afternoon! I have so loved watching them be such patient leaders when working with their little buddy and I have enjoyed witnessing the fun they are having together.

On Monday, we welcome back Ms. Grewal, our student teacher. She will be with us for the next four weeks. During her absence, she has been attending classes at SFU where she has been learning and working hard on her lesson plans. She will begin to teach some lessons next week.

Things to look forward to next week:

• Mon. Feb. 24: A new student joins our class, Brentwood Park Talent Show, and Ms. Grewal returns
• Tues. Feb. 25: Ice skating at Burnaby Lake Arena – Thank you to our volunteer drivers!
• Wed. Feb. 26: Pink Shirt Day and assembly – Wear pink!
• Fri. Feb. 28: District Pro-D day – School not in session

Things to return:

• For Mr. Maroney (Music) – recorder form
• Science World field trip form

Dear families,

All week, we have focussed on kindness. Well, we have talked about kindness often since the beginning of the year. On Valentine’s day, we shared our friendship fruit salad. Thank you to all of the families who generously contributed fruit. There was a lot of fruit (two large mixing bowls) but surprisingly, we finished just about all of it! The kids thought it was delicious. 

We read a story about how to handle teasing and put-downs called Simon’s Hook. It is about a boy who was teased about a bad haircut by some friends. Then he runs into Grandma Rose who compares teasing to fishing hooks and tells him a story about how fish learn not to bite, which is an analogy to not reacting to teasing and he learns some strategies on how to deal with teasing and put-downs. 

We also read Have You Filled a Bucket Today? It’s a story that encourages kindness by using the idea that we fill other’s buckets when we do or say kind things. We learned that it could be the little things we do that either fills or empties someone’s imaginary bucket. When my kids were younger, I would use this language at home about filling and emptying people’s buckets. Sometimes it really helped them understand that their actions and words had both a positive and negative effect on others. Give it a try at home!

In Math, we continued to review our “new way” of adding. This is called decomposing using friendly numbers where we take one of the addends to make it a friendly number like 10, 20, 30, etc. to help us mentally add more efficiently. 

We are becoming more fluent in our addition of numbers to 20. Knowing our doubles is an important one: 2+2=4, 5+5=10, 7+7=14, etc. So, when you become fluent with all of your doubles, this new strategy will help:

2+4=6  If you can see that the one number between 2 and 4 is 3, then simply double the middle number (3) to find the sum. Here is another example: 6+8=14   The middle number is 7. Double the 7 and your sum is 14.

If your child is having trouble remembering their doubles, pull out a deck of cards from A to 10. Randomly flip over the cards and have your child call out the number doubled. 

All students brought home their report cards last Friday. I reviewed it with each student and discussed in detail the proficiency scale along with their strengths and next steps. They all appeared to be happy about their report cards. Please sign the envelope and have your child return it tomorrow or at least by the end of the week. Thank you.

We start our day tomorrow skating at Burnaby Lake Arena. Please arrive to school on time. Bring necessary items to school. Grade 3’s, please bring your booster seat too. Thank you so much to all of our parent volunteer drivers! 

Dear families,

Wow! What a show! We are Hip Hop stars! The kids have worked hard during their Hip Hop lessons with Flo Jo for the last two weeks, learning their dance moves and the routine. They enjoyed transforming their black shirts into skeletons! They had opportunities to watch themselves so they could self-reflect, receive feedback, and make changes to improve their personal performance. The Hip Hop Show is truly a memorable one year after year.

We have continued to learn about early contact between First Peoples and European peoples through visual imagery. Then students were split up into small groups to practice some perspective taking. Each table had a question about different stakeholders and how they may have felt during that time. For example, “Discuss how you think the families of the explorers/sailors felt before they embarked on a long voyage with the possibility of no return?” I am looking forward to further discussions and learning here.

In Math, the grade 3’s continued to learn about linear measurement (mm, cm, m, km) and measuring capacity (mL, L). Next is measuring mass. Please feel free to review these concepts at home to reinforce learning. The grade 4’s reviewed polygons before learning about measuring the perimeter of polygons. They quickly created a new book using the Book Creator app to capture their understanding. Those that completed their books uploaded it to OneDrive so feel free to ask your child to login to view.

In Science, we have continued to learn about landforms. They seemed to really enjoy learning about glaciers and icebergs this week. Some asked if we will continue to learn about more landforms because they are really enjoying it! They have become more confident using the Explain Everything app too. I just love their enthusiasm and have enjoyed learning alongside them as I am creating my very own landforms project on my iPad too; I have learned so much about these landforms that I never knew before! In particular, I love it when someone has researched and found a unique fact and shared it with the class as they look for answers to their own inquiry questions. They certainly are getting better at asking and recording questions on their “I wonder” slide.

In Art, Mr. Baumann has continued to do guided drawings. They have worked on drawing a dog. See some of our examples from Ana, Anna, Tyson, and Yoyo. I love how even though Mr. Baumann walks them through, they all look creatively different!

We have some exciting news to share. Next Monday, we have a student teacher from SFU that will be spending time with us. Her name is Ms. Grewal. The main purpose of the week is to observe, get to know the students, and to learn about the daily operations of the school beyond the classroom. After the week, Ms. Grewal will return to SFU for three weeks and then come back for another four weeks total before and after spring break. Please feel free to ask should you have any questions.

Brentwood Park’s Talent Show will be on February 24. Anyone interested needs to sign up for auditions. This is a great opportunity to showcase creativity! 

Sincerely, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

I apologize for no post last week so this post will cover the last two weeks. I was in a ringette tournament last weekend. My own team lost in the semi-finals and my daughter’s team, who I coach, won gold in their division! It was a very exciting fun-filled weekend.

We welcomed our two new students: Anna and Yoo Joon. I am happy to say that students have been very warm and welcoming.

We listened to a story about making New Year’s resolutions, Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolution. Click on image to watch:

Rather than usual New Year’s resolutions, students chose #OneWord2020 and shared on @padlet. Then we dove into our “magnifying glass” writing to record details on why we chose our word, how we are going to remind ourselves, and to come up with strategies when we know we will be challenged. Check out our “one word” resolutions! 

For writing, we have listened to a number of stories about snow since we have seen a lot of it lately! Sneezy the Snowman by Maureen Wright, Deep Snow and So Much Snow by Robert Munsch, The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett, and The First Sign of Snow (animated video). After listening to these stories, students were encouraged to use their creativity and were offered a choice in their writing. They could take any part of the story to change what happens next (almost like a build your own adventure) or they could write a continuation (like Part 2) of the story, or like The Three Snow Bears (which is a variation of Goldilocks and the Three Bears), they were given the option to write their own variation with different characters and different things these characters try before they fall asleep somewhere. I so enjoyed reading these stories because their creativity really shine through and I it makes me feel excited to see examples of how they are taking risks to incorporate new techniques in their writing! Click here to read stories written by Ana and Anna. Happy reading!

The class was introduced to a new app called Explain Everything. It’s one of the most downloaded educational apps and is similar to PowerPoint where they create slides, can add images, videos, audio, and record like an interactive whiteboard. Students are using this app to record their learning about landforms in Science. This unit is like a multi-mini inquiry project. First, we recorded what we think we know about mountains. Some students said they learned about landforms last year but when it was time to record what they think, they did not remember many facts. The next step was to be curious about mountains. Students were encouraged to record what they wonder about mountains. Then after some shared reading and a video, we recorded our new learning on a new Now I Know slide. Any questions that are not answered by our whole class learning then, students researched. This makes their learning personalized as they are able to make new discoveries based on their own curiosities. They have really enjoyed this kind of learning, finding images, and being able to show what they learned in this way! This past week, we learned about deserts. Next week, glaciers! Feel free to discuss what you wonder about glaciers. This thinking will help them with their work tomorrow.

We watched a short video on Wonderopolis on how mountains are formed. Click here to watch or click here for deserts.

In Math, the grade 3’s learned about linear measurement (mm, cm, dm, m, km) and practiced our measuring skills while the grade 4’s learned about regular and irregular polygons. As a class, we explored using our creativity and practiced the concept of symmetry and the line of symmetry. Then we examined how First People’s art often has symmetry and balance with various patterns.

As an introduction to early settlers in Canada, we borrowed Ms. Willis’ classroom and proceeded to use and take their things without the class knowing. (Well, actually, Ms. Willis did inform them we would be using their class for this purpose.) My goal was to help them experience something somewhat relatable so that they can empathize what it may have felt like for the First Peoples when the first settlers came to Canada. Looking forward to diving into further discussions and deeper thinking on this topic in Social Studies.

We watched a whole school performance, Hip Hop Hoop Dance. It is a story between two people from different cultures who teach each other about their people, culture, and dance as they develop a friendship. From Artstarts website:

Our collaborative Hip Hop Hoop Dance tells a story, exploring the topic of truth and reconciliation through the art of live theatre. It’s a sharing of cultures, both between the performer and with the audience. With both of us being people of colour, we realized we had both experienced aspects of colonization and assimilation. We quickly recognized the similarities between our respective cultures’ art forms, traditions and beliefs. We thought, we should celebrate this and build a performative piece that would recognize not only the celebration of similarities between cultures, but to celebrate the differences that are so unique. Terrance says, “… part of reconciliation is educating non-native people about Indigenous history. This show provides that information, to better understand the way of life of my people.”

Young People’s Concert on Monday, January 20: We will be leaving the classroom at 9:00 AM sharp to go to the bus. Please plan to arrive early! The bus will not wait for latecomers. This will be our final show in the Concert series.

Hip Hop: Students have been working hard to practice their dancing. It’s remarkable how quickly they learn. This year, students are to wear all black. If your child does not have a plain black top, feel free to take a shirt and flip it inside out or wear navy blue. Please feel free to bring in a black short or long sleeve shirt starting next Monday so we can add “bones” by using masking tape. The performance will be on Friday, January 24 in the afternoon. 

Family Literacy Day and Readathon on Monday, January 27:  Envelopes went home on Friday, January 17. They are due on Thursday, January 23rd. Regardless of whether you receive any pledges (collect money), your child is expected to return the envelope as this is their ticket in the gym door. This year, the school will be tallying fundraising pledges by division. The division with the most pledges will win a pizza party. Please have your child practice reading for up to 45 minutes so that they can read, uninterrupted for 45-60 minutes. They are to bring or have enough reading material for 45-60 minues and wear pyjamas and bring stuffies and a pillow if they wish. 

Save the date and time! Our time in the Family Literacy Day and Readathon in the gym will be at 1:00 to 2:00pm. Families, please join us in the gym during this time. Parents, siblings, and grandparents are welcome!

Ice skating: We still need parent drivers for skating, please. If you have already volunteered, thank you so much. You should find the Volunteer Driver Authorization form in your child’s planner.