Category: We are authors.

Dear Div. 6 families,

What a fantastic first week! We are having fun getting to know each other’s names and learning more about each other.

Please feel free to watch the video for a run-down of our week and what’s upcoming. If you don’t have time, simply read the blog post as it is a summary of what I shared in the video.

Why do we share weekly blog posts?

The purpose of our weekly blog posts is so that it connects school to home and us to you. Our hope is that the information shared will give you greater opportunities to have conversations about school, what they are learning about, and to take a concept and dive deeper.

How you can support at home:

Be curious. Ask questions that may spark more conversation. Instead of asking, “How was school?” try asking more targeted questions:

• What are you most proud of today?
• What did you do to help others today?
• What is one thing you learned that you can teach me? This question reinforces their learning.
• What made you smile or laugh today?
• What’s one thing that made today fun?
• What’s something you are grateful for that you experienced today?
• What’s one thing you learned that you’d love to know more about? Let’s do some research together!

We push ourselves to grow.

We are learning about growth mindset. The thoughts and language we use determine the outlook we have. The power of yet.

We learned about comfort zones. We want students to be challenged in their stretch/growth zone. I was interviewed about this last spring. Read the post here on the Teacher2Teacher blog to learn more.

Healthy Habits

This week, we started reading a 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). 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. Be Proactive – take initiative.

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

As we are practicing classroom expectations, students are encouraged to build the healthy habits of attentive listening and strong work habits. They are regularly asked to self-reflect and to do better next time.

We are readers and writers.

For our first introduction lesson to writing, we read a story called “I Am Story” by Dan Yaccarino and then we started working on our heart maps. They also shared how they feel about writing. Learning about their mindset about writing and setting a goal for themselves helps inform me of how I can better support them.

Please encourage your child to read at least 20-30 minutes every night. This is their homework. They will have library orientation next week and library book exchange begins on Wednesday.

We are athletes.

We started our Running Club this week.

We will go to the gym every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Please ensure your child wears appropriate clothing and runners.

We are scientists.

Students were introduced to Mystery Doug. We watched a video on pizza. Click here to watch at home.

West Coast weather

Please have your child dress appropriately for the weather. They will go outside even in the rain unless it is raining very hard. Read West Coast Recess & Lunch to learn more.

Looking ahead!

On Monday, September 20, we will begin our “Me in a Bag” presentations. Please help your child decide on 4-5 items to place in the paper bag provided and practice what they will say about each item so they will feel more confident. They will tell us about each item and share a story about why they chose it and/or what it represents and why it is important to them. Be creative! For example, I cannot bring our guinea pig, Hazelnut, to school but I can brought some hay to represent her. I also brought a picture of me in my ringette gear when I talked about being a coach, player, and ref.

Next week, we will start Math on Monday! The grade 4s will go to Mr. Anchor. They will need a 1″ binder.

Monday is a big day! They will also have an online learning module for the Learn2Ride program.

We are so excited to see you on Tuesday, September 21 at 7:00pm for our Meet the Teachers night! A Zoom link will be shared the day before in the reminder email.

On Wednesday, your child should bring their bike helmet (even if they don’t bring a bike) and are encouraged to bring their bikes too. Starting at 8:40am, they can bring their bikes into the school for storage. Our bike session will be between recess and lunch out on the field.

We are equally excited to meet you during our Parents and Partners Conferences! The purpose of these will be to learn more about your child. If you have not signed up to book an appointment, please do so before the deadline: Sept 21 at 3:00pm. The link to the conferences will be shared via email after our Meet the Teachers night so as not to confuse anyone. Our meetings are set for 10 minutes so please arrive on time. You will be placed in the lobby and we will let you in when it is your time. Thank you SO much for your time and interest to meet with us!

Reminder: Early dismissal on Thursday, September 23 at 1:45pm.

Friday will be our first school Pro-D day. Students do not attend.

If you’d like to learn a little more about me, feel free to visit my website: livchan.com.

For the school supplies list, click here. Please send items as soon as you can. Key items to get first if you don’t have time to get the rest yet: 1.5″ binder and dividers. Grade 4’s: an extra 1″ binder for Math. Thank you!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Sincerely, Ms. Chan & 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 families,

What a wonderful week of learning! Students have been investigating whether chocolate is a natural resource. Yes, you read it correctly chocolate! Students began their inquiry with background knowledge and understanding the importance of referencing and citations when researching. We took a closer look at cocoa beans as a natural resource. Students participated in guided group work that investigated how the production of cocoa beans contributed to the economy. Students learned about working conditions in first and third world countries, fair trade, and direct trade. They particularly enjoyed their taste testing homework. Completion of this activity allowed them to participate in an interactive zoom call with the owner of Truffle Pig. This was such a powerful activity that had students asking thoughtful questions. Over the past few weeks with the support of Mrs. Papapanagioutou and myself, the inquiry process led them to the question: What are the pros and cons of cocoa beans as a natural resource? I am so proud of the research that has taken place thus far and there is more to come! Next, we look at how media is connected to our findings. – Mrs. Paulich

To echo Mrs. Paulich, it has been a great week of learning! I feel like I say this every week but as I reflect at the end of every week, I can’t help but feel proud of their accomplishments and learning!

This week, we had a deep conversation about the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Kamloops Indian Band Residential School where they detected the remains of 215 children. We also read the book Race Cars. From Amazon:

Race Cars is a children’s book about white privilege created to help parents and educators facilitate tough conversations about race, privilege, and oppression.

Written by a clinical social worker and child therapist with experience in anti-bias training and edited by a diversity expert, Race Cars tells the story of 2 best friends, a white car and a black car, that have different experiences and face different rules while entering the same race.

Students then had an opportunity to do a free-write to unpack their thoughts and feelings about the news. Journalling is a great form of writing to sort through emotions and events that are hard for us to understand.

Speeches

This week, we continued working on our speeches. Click here for the single-point rubric we have been using all year for personal writing. The lessons and tips to help improve our writing:

• One thing I noticed was that some students started to write one very long paragraph with many different ideas. Instead, break down ideas into separate paragraphs. One paragraph = one idea to dive into. Then dive into “magnifying glass” writing where you lean into the details by adding reasons, explanations, and examples. Here, you may also include a story. See next tip.
• Tell your story: It’s important to add personal stories to help your audience make connections. Add stories that evoke emotions or helps them understand your point better.
• Your opening sentence should introduce the audience to the topic of the paragraph. End your paragraph by restating your opening sentence. We will dive further into closing sentences next week.
• Know your central theme. Aim for paragraphs to point back to your central theme. It’s like a flagpole or target that you want to make sure you’re always headed towards. Your paragraphs should help your audience better understand your main author’s message.
• To spark your audience to think. Feel free to insert a question here and there to inspire critical thinking or reflection but don’t overuse it!
• Every time you sit down to write again, re-read everything you wrote first before you continue writing. This refreshes your memory as to what you already wrote. Read it over for different purposes. They were reminded of DYRIO (click image to view PDF):

As you support your child at home with their speeches, please review these tips. At any point, should you have any questions, please email me! I am happy to help!

Speeches are to be a minimum of 3 minutes and a maximum of 5 minutes. Next week, we will co-construct our criteria that will be specific to the delivery of these speeches. It will be similar to but not exactly the same as the single point rubric for our Passion Projects.

Passion Project presentations

We celebrated many things this week during our Passion Projects! Oscar and Kingston collaboratively presented on the video game named Battle Cats and Quinson talked about the history of video games. Both created a Kahoot game that all enjoyed! Vienna worked hard on her presentation about Italy. Gabriella and Iman came all the way from Australia to teach us about Quokkas; they had a creative idea to have me introduce them as experts from Australia and had the kids play a quiz game as review of the facts. Olivia H. enthusiastically shared How to Read the Body Language of a Dog. Maya presented an informative on Snow Leopards. Dante shared so many facts about Minecraft.

NOTE: All presenters brought home their single-point rubric assessments. Please sign and return to school. Thank you!

Oscar’s book was officially released! It is titled Fate’s Mirage, The Ultra Blade. Oscar has worked on his story since the beginning of the year. Great tenacity and perseverance. He wrote a five chapter story that classmates excitedly took turns reading to the class! I am so grateful to Oscar and his mom, Jen, who made a copy for me to keep and included me in his Acknowledgements, thank you! One thing I complimented him on what his ability to effectively use dialogue to move the story along and help us get to know the characters better. Oscar had a great blend of dialogue between characters and then a paragraph that explained what was happening. He did this throughout the story so I wanted to point out the effectiveness of this. Then Oscar shared that this was something his mom taught him! Jen is a talented writer who has published many of her own books so I thought it was so cool that we were learning how to become better writers through Oscar’s work with the support of his mom. Thank you, Jen!

Speaking of Passion Projects, one of my passion projects is writing just like Oscar and his mom! I am now a contributing author to a book called 100 No-Nonsense Things that Teachers Should STOP Doing. It was released three weeks ago. I wrote a chapter called Stop Boredom at All Costs and had the great privilege to talk about it on the Pushing Boundaries podcast. This is the second time my writing has been featured in a book. I am currently working on writing my own book with a couple of principals in the US. We signed a book contract a few months ago! It’ll be my summer passion project!

Mathematicians

This past week, students finished their patterns book using Book Creator, an app on the iPad. They had fun testing out whether they wrote their pattern description correctly. They had to describe it to a partner using only words to see if their partner can replicate it without seeing the pattern. Next week, we will begin learning about quadrilaterals.

Anyone who still needs extra review and explanations about long division, please reach out. I am happy to set up a Zoom call to work with your child.

Self-assessment for the year

Students were assigned a self-assessment to complete in Teams. If your child did not finish, it was assigned for homework to be completed this weekend. Sorry, it was not recorded in their planners. Please remind them to work on it. Thank you!

We are always so grateful for your continued support at home. We are nearing the end but not slowing down. As I preach to the kids often, I equate the end of work time and learning time to the same feelings as the end of a marathon. While I’ve never run one, I can imagine how exhausted people may feel or at least how I would feel! It is in these moments that I push them outside of their comfort zone to challenge themselves to push on and to finish off strong. We will continue to do that until the end.

Gratefully, Ms. Chan and Mrs. Paulich

Dear Division 6 families,

I always feel sad when we have a holiday or Pro-D day that lands on a Monday or Friday because those are the days that I am in the class all day so it’s a lot of time missed with them. Regardless of having a shorter week, we’ve had a great one!

Math

On Tuesday, we reviewed the Math quiz on division in detail discussing common errors. Thank you for reviewing and signing it! As you saw, each child had an encouraging note written on their page with some extra notes specific to the sections that they found challenging. Any student who would like to be retested to demonstrate their understanding is welcome to rewrite.

We continued to dive deeper into the relationship between perimeter and area. We learned that we can have the same perimeter with different areas AND the same area with different perimeter. Last week, they were given a quiz to show what they know and it was great to see how many understood it! The only thing many were forgetting was to include the unit of measure, even though this was emphasized as an important part each time.

We started our review of patterns and are using Book Creator to create our own digital book to demonstrate our understanding of increasing/decreasing patterns using words, numbers, and symbols. They also need to be able to describe the pattern. I’m loving the creativity I’m seeing so far!

Speeches

On Tuesday, students started writing their speeches on what lesson they learned since the pandemic in Word. Here are some of the central themes: gratefulness and having taken things for granted, flexibility, I am braver than I think, to never give up, I can work hard, I can do anything I put my mind to, loyalty, and if I work hard, I can find success.

Kindness Projects

Groups are continuing to work on their kindness projects. They all did a self-assessment on how well they took turns, worked collaboratively, how focussed and how hard they worked.

To the left is a sneak peek into one of the Kindness projects (Ethan, Quinson, Miles, and Brodie). Since I took this image, they have added bees and a bird and nest. It was so exciting for them this week when they saw that some people had written kind words on some of their leaves!!

We have another group that has written over a hundred messages of kindness on sticky notes and put them all over the school! This past week, their group (Gabriella, Shayla, Hailey, and Vienna) went on the PA system to explain to the rest of the school what to do with them. They also created a fun video about kindness that was shared with the class. Loved their creativity and bravery!

We’re looking forward to spending a full week with the kids!

Thank you for your continued support at home,

Ms. Chan and Mrs. Paulich