Category: We are authors.

Dear Parents of Division 6,

On Wednesday, we honoured those who served in the war at our Remembrance Day assembly. Here is a short video of our Poppy Art for you to enjoy.

We are writers.

We returned to our book on the 7 Healthy Habits of Happy Kids and learned about the benefits of thinking win-win. Students responded to the chapter by writing a personal response or a story that involved a win-win situation. As a follow-up, please feel free to have a further discussion at home.

We are researchers.

This past week, students finished their practice of recording Resources for citations in Word. Whew! It was a process! Students learned about perseverance and the pursuit of accuracy and excellence. It was a great lesson that sometimes in life, it takes many tries before something is just perfect. Each comma, period, and space mattered. Each capital mattered. Each indent mattered. While some began to express some frustration, we were proud to see that many people’s growth mindset kicked in and they began to see it as a challenge! Great appreciation goes to Mrs. Papapanagiotou for working with us for the past few weeks to teach us how to do research effectively. Last week, we also learned how to navigate in PowerPoint. Students really enjoyed learning how to add slides, text, and images! We are now ready to research our inquiry question for learning more about rocks in Science and our Passion Projects!

We are scientists.

Here are some of the questions groups felt they were most interested in learning more about. Students chose from here or one of their own on a list gathered from their own group.

We are mathematicians.

The grade 5’s were given their Fractions pre-test and test. The main goal was to see how well they understood equivalent fractions. We had a number of students away last Friday so they will write in on Monday. Everyone will have their tests returned on Wednesday. Those who are not yet proficient in certain concepts, they will have an opportunity for a re-test on the specific concepts. Details on re-testing will come later. I believe in helping students gain mastery of the concepts because math is so foundational. Your support at home will be greatly appreciated!

World Kindness Day

On Saturday, it was World Kindness Day. We read a story called Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed by Emily Pearson. Click the link to watch the story read by the author herself! As a response, students wrote kindness notes to at least five people. They had so much fun running (well, walking hopefully!) around the school delivering their kindness notes! They learned that it brought them so much joy to bring other people joy! I firmly believe that when we give the gift of words, we experience more joy than those who receive them. I know that this is how I feel. Showing kindness and gratitude is a great form of self-care! If you’re interested, click here to read more about a popular happiness course offered at Yale University. They blessed me with so many kindness notes! Every day, your children make me feel so very loved and appreciated for being their teacher. I truly am the most fortunate and feel so grateful to be their teacher. Thank YOU for having such wonderful children to share our lives with. We have a great community of learners!

We are leaders.

We really believe in developing leadership skills. I believe every child has leadership qualities. Last month, I published a blog post on the Gift of Leadership as part of my monthly blog series on the Teach Better Team. I talk about the five aspects of leadership and how it is a skill, just like other skills, that need opportunities to develop. If you are interested to read about how we develop leadership qualities in your children on a daily basis, click the image to go to the post.

Appreciation

We are grateful for your support at home. As parents ourselves, we understand how the evenings and weekends fly by. Please be reminded that we are partners in your child’s education. Please feel free to reach out to us should you have any questions or concerns. We know it takes time to either watch our videos or read our weekly blog posts and we appreciate you for keeping up to date. I can see how many views and how many click to open the notifications so thank you for honouring our time to keep you posted. Our goal is to share information with you so that you can have a deeper dive into what they learn and extend their learning should they have the time and interest. All learning at school can be extended at home if you wish.

With a heart full of gratitude, Ms. Chan and Mrs. Paulich

Dear Division 6 families,

We accomplished a lot this week!

Click on image to view the video update.

SPECIAL REQUEST: Please limit the number of sweet treats your child brings to school for a snack. We prefer they bring healthier snacks to school that will help them learn and focus better. We appreciate your cooperation.

HOMEWORK: Library Research Skills – Complete the sheet and put the cited sources in alphabetical order. On Monday, they will be working in a Word document to record these resources in alphabetical order. Please ensure all papers are returned to school on Monday. Thank you! This resource may help!

Gr. 5 MATH HOMEWORK: Complete work on equivalent fractions. Due Monday.

REVIEW: Please have your child memorize their email address and password if they have not done so yet. Thank you! We will be logging into O365 on Monday.

E-Portfolios

On Thursday, we started adding posts to our e-Portfolios. We use the same email and password to log in. We are using FreshGrade Connect to upload and reflect on our learning. Here are the reflection questions they will need to answer for each post this year:

1. What was the task? Explain. Provide enough details so your parents can understand what you did.
2. What are you proud of? What are your strengths shown through this work?
   • I can…
   • I can…
3. What are 1-2 things you can improve for next time?
4. What did you learn about yourself?

So far, they have just added artwork. They felt so proud! In the future, they will be adding their writing and other projects too. Soon, I will be adding your emails to your child’s accounts so that you will receive notifications when they publish a new post.

We are readers and writers.

The whole school Dropped Everything And Read on Wednesday. Everyone in this class looks like they love to just read. While finding joy in reading for a sustained period of time is important, just as important is having the opportunity to speak to others about what they just read. We had an opportunity to do just that this week as we practiced our Say Something strategy to make connections or share personal stories as it relates to what they read. They practiced taking a deeper dive into what they shared by thinking about looking through a magnifying glass, going deeper when partners asked them more clarifying questions.

After that, they took their ideas, thoughts, and feelings and wrote a response to what they just read in a paragraph. Based on the last couple of writing pieces, each child was given a personal goal to meet for this writing. I believe personalized and timely feedback is so important to their continued growth along with an attainable “next steps” goal.

We are scientists. We were encouraged to be curious! Students were grouped to dive into various books on rocks and minerals. Their job was to come up with many questions.

All students went home with their Passion Project proposal sheets. Please feel free to do the proposal with your child. Once you have reviewed it, please initial the top of the page. Click on Passion Project Proposal to see the sheet. This is due on Wednesday, November 3rd.

Friday was a lot of fun with the parades in the morning and some fun social time with classmates in the afternoon. Have a safe and fun rest of your weekend!

Always grateful for your support at home,

Ms. Chan and Mrs. Paulich

Dear Division 6 parents,

We had a productive week with lots of learning and connection! Your child’s personal information sheet (from the office) went home on Friday. Please review and return as soon as possible. Thank you!

Almost all students are arriving at school on time. Thank you for respecting our start time of arriving before our first bell at 8:50am. We appreciate it!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO UPDATE

Here are some updates from Mrs. Paulich on the subjects she teaches:

Social Studies

We spent much of September getting ready for the year, organizing our binders, and developing a growth mindset. Each student created their own motto to turn to when they need that extra push and support. We spent time discussing and reflecting on Truth and Reconciliation and what that means to Indigenous and Non Indigenous Canadians. Most recently, we have been digging deep into our roots and origins with a look at Canadian Immigration.

Physical and Health Education

Students have most recently begun developing their Volleyball skills.

French

We have been looking at simple conversation and greetings.  Students are encouraged to practice this simple conversation at home!

We are writers.

This week we dove further into paragraph writing. We learned about opening and closing sentences along with adding details, reasons, and explanations that include our thoughts and feelings too. They were introduced to a single-point rubric for personal writing. This helps them truly see what areas they need to improve, where they are proficient, and strong aspects of their writing (which are strengths and they should keep doing these things!).

Grade 4 – click image to view PDF

Grade 5 – click image to view PDF

We are mathematicians (Grade 5).

I am SO enjoying teaching math this year! They keep me hopping but it’s so much fun teaching math! I was very happy with how they did on their pre-tests because of how proficient they showed themselves to be. I am so very proud of how hard they are working and learning.

This week, we continued to learn about expanded notation and counting up and down by 10s, 100, 1000, and 10 000. HOMEWORK: Finish page 43 & 44. Review Pre-test and worksheets. Test on Monday, October 18. It will look similar to the pre-test. Continue to practice Math facts +1 -1 +2 -2 strategies.

We practiced our math addition facts and comparing numbers by practicing on a new website: 99Math. They absolutely LOVED it! They are enjoying Math Tappers: Finding Sums too. If you have an iPad, please download this FREE app and have your child practice regularly to improve speed and accuracy. We started a tracking sheet this week. You can do the same at home. Thank you!

Career Education

One of the things I really believe in is that every child can develop leadership skills. On Friday, there were a few examples of how people stepped up on their own volition to demonstrate caring behaviours toward others and our classroom. Feel free to ask your child how they have contributed positively to our classroom community and space.

This week, we came back to the 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). The lesson focused on planning and setting goals. Here are the first two habits covered so far:

1. Be Proactive – take initiative
2. Begin with the End in Mind – focus on goals

They wrote three goals plus small action steps and chose one to record in their planner for next week. Please have a conversation about the goals they set and in particular, the one they chose to record in their planner. Next week, ask them to reflect daily on their goals.

I love the image I showed them. It’s about making seemingly small steps that amount to a big change over time! They can get 1% better every day! We are building healthy and effective habits.

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

Personal Information Test

Thank you for taking the time to help your child study. We had 6 students get all of their information correct! Please continue to have your child memorize their O365 email address (login) and password. We will start using the laptops next week! The true test will be whether they can successfully log in.

As for memorizing their address and your cell numbers for safety reasons, we will leave that for you to decide the importance of keeping that by memory. Students will not be tested on this again in class.

Passion Projects

After having three opportunities to share what topic they chose as they went milling to music (ask them what that is!), they had an opportunity to share their 30 second elevator pitch about what they want to learn about. If you are not sure, please ask them what topic they decided. Hopefully it’s something you would LOVE to see them explore too!

Masks – Please have your child keep an extra mask in their backpack plus wear one to school. Thank you!

We appreciate your continued support at home!

Gratefully, Ms. Chan and Mrs. Paulich

Happy Thanksgiving, Division 6 families! This is a great time to reflect on what we are grateful for. We are so grateful to have your child in our class and your support! Thank you for taking the time to watch the video, read the blog post, or both! Your time and investment in your child’s education is very much appreciated.

CLICK HERE to watch the video update for last week.

Sorry, I forgot to mention in the video that students are encouraged to memorize some personal information. Their “test” will be on Wed. October 13. We will be using O365 regularly so it is most efficient with their time to memorize their email address (which is also their login ID) and password. It is also important at this age to know their address and parents’ phone numbers. The other piece of information to memorize is our class code for Epic Books. On this website, they will have access to thousands of high-quality books from 7am to 3pm.  Please help them practice and memorize. Thank you!

We are writers.

This week, we learned about our Writing Thought Process. This is something I created and have presented on a number of times. Click on the image to view the PDF. Writing is a process that takes time and effort. I wanted them to understand that actual writing time is likely only 20% of the time they spend. The other time is on pre-writing (like talking or brainstorming ideas), re-reading and reflecting what they wrote and carefully considering what they should write next (helps with the flow of ideas), and regularly revising as they continue writing. This is a constant cycle of thinking, writing, reading what’s written already, reflecting on clarity and what to say next and how to make writing better, and then thinking some more before writing more. It is in this process they can dive deeper and deeper into thoughts and ideas. I call it “magnifying glass” writing to add details, explanations, and reasons to support what they are expressing in writing.

Here are a couple of heart maps we started our first week together! Thank you to Pilar and Ellis who were willing to share! These are things that are near and dear to our hearts that we can write about because we know a lot about it!

We are Mathematicians in Grade 5 but Grade 4’s are more than welcome to use these strategies too!

This past week, we furthered our understanding of place value: every place has a value, comparing and ordering numbers to the hundred thousands place, and expanded notation.

For increasing our math facts fluency, we continued to practice using our random numbers sheet. Please create one at home to use as practice. The strategy introduced this past week was +2 and -2. Rather than have our minds calculate +2 and -2, I want them seeing this addition strategy as counting up by 2’s (+2) and counting down by 2’s (-2). This makes their calculations much quicker and with greater accuracy. Please CLICK HERE to watch the video on this strategy and check out the Mathematicians Play page for last week’s +1 and -1 strategy along with other games to play at home. Make it fun! Have a friendly competition with your child!

This week, I was introduced to a fun way to practice our math facts. I am SO excited to play with them this week!

We are passionate about Passion Projects!

Students were so looking forward to learning more about passion projects. Click here to watch our introductory video. They brought home an information sheet along with their brainstorm sheet. This week, please spend some time talking through different possibilities. Click here to view the information that was sent home.

Sorry, the information below was not mentioned in the video:

Digital Forms

You should have received an email last week from the office informing you that all beginning of the year information and permission forms are now completed online. On Wednesday, your child’s Personal Education Number (PEN) was sent home. You will need this to complete the forms. If you did not receive the email, did not receive the PEN, or are having any issues, please contact the office.

FSAs – Grade 4s only

Next week, we will be starting the Foundation Skills Assessments with the Grade 4s in Mr. Anchor’s class. Your child will participate in the FSAs unless you send back the opt-out form from the BCTF sent home Wednesday. If you do wish to opt your child out, please return the form on Tuesday, October 12. Thank you.

Looking ahead

Picture Day will be on Thursday, October 14.

We will be learning more about Digital Citizenship. These lessons are very important to develop an understanding of our digital presence, footprint, and how we navigate in any digital space that allows us to stay safe and be true to ourselves.

We will be using FreshGrade Connect as our e-Portfolio. After we have a couple of entries, you will be invited to view your child’s work including reflections and have the ability to comment. More information will be shared at a later date that will guide you in providing positive and effective feedback for your child’s continual growth.

I added all parent emails to receive notification when there is a new post. Should it be sufficient for your family for one parent to receive, please feel free to unsubscribe. If in the future you do not receive weekly notification of blog posts, please check your Junk folder or reach out. In the past, sometimes parents have accidentally unsubcribed. I can quickly add you back!

It always makes us feel extra happy when we see a comment from parents on any of our posts! Thank you!

We are grateful for your continued support at home!

Sincerely, Ms. Chan and Mrs. Paulich