Category: We are communicators.

Dear Division 6 families,

I sincerely apologize for missing the last two weeks of updates. A lot of exciting things have been happening since the last update!

First of all, congratulations to all of our doctors for presenting at our successful Medical Conference! A special thank you to our two keynote speakers, Mrs. Helland and Ms. Jiwa. We so appreciate your time with us to inspire us!

All of the presentations were uploaded to FreshGrade. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, please do! All students received small sheets with Two Stars and Wish from all of their classmates too!

I felt so proud of them for all of their hard work! Their presentation skills continue to improve each time they present!

We hope you enjoyed your Student Led Conferences at home! If you have any feedback, please send me an email. Thank you so very much for taking the time to fill out the Two Stars and a Wish for your child. We appreciate you!

This past Friday, it was I Care About You! day. Our class created a collective PowerPoint project where each student was assigned one slide to write a message to their classmates. Click here to view the project!

In Math, we started our unit on division. We are learning how to do long division and dividing in different ways. This weekend, please review this concept with your child. Help check they understand the basic steps. This will go a long way as we move forward next week. You can watch this video by Math Antics on long division or choose a different one on YouTube. You can start with the video on basic division. Another way to help your child is to practice their multiplication facts too. Then they won’t have to rely on the multiplication chart to calculate every question. This will help them in grade 6 and beyond too!

Last week, we started a Kindness Project. Students are working in groups to come up with a project that shows kindness. They are so motivated to work on their ideas and I am so proud of them! You know they are engaged when they ask if they can work on it and they bring it outside at lunch to work on it! Yesterday, they presented their proposals. They received compliments and suggestions on how to make their project even better. I loved the collaborative mindset!

Last week, we also started an Ignite your SHINE course by LaVonna Roth. She encourages us to be SHINEtastic.

Students are learning about themselves through the acronym SHINE.

Self – Know your strengths

Heart – What are you passionate about

Inspire – How to inspire myself when things aren’t going well

Navigate – Take action towards a goal, find a way to make it happen

Exceptional – What makes you exceptional

This coming week is Emergency Response week. Every day, we will focus on one type of emergency response and practice the procedures.

On Monday, May 10, Mrs. Paulich and I will have a parent meeting at 7:15pm on Zoom. The link was sent to you via email last week. We hope you can join us!

Thank you for your continued support at home. We really appreciate it!

Sincerely, Ms. Chan and Mrs. Paulich

Dear Division 6 families,

Tomorrow is the long-awaited day! Our Gilmore Medical Conference where doctors from around the world will present! Here is the criteria [PDF] we co-constructed for presentations. All students are asked to dress up as an official speaker for our conference.

We are so very blessed to have two amazing people in our very own community who will be presenting our keynote presentations! Thank you so very much to Mrs. Helland who will be joining us for our morning keynote presentation and to Dr. Jiwa who will be presenting our closing keynote. We are so looking forward to having you join us for our special day!

Your children have worked so hard on these presentations. Even before they present tomorrow, I am already so proud of them for their perseverance, dedication, and time not only at school but at home. I am SO looking forward to tomorrow!

For the past couple of weeks, students have been working hard on their poetry. This Thursday, they will be coming home with their collection and seeking your feedback. Thank you, in advance, for your time to celebrate your child’s success!

Thank you so very much for your continued support at home. Please continue to have your child practice their math facts! thank you!

With great appreciation, Ms. Chan and Mrs. Paulich

Monday, April 26 – Pro-D day; school is not in session
Friday, April 30 – Beach Day (dress up day)

Dear Division 6 family,

What a week! It flew by! I did not receive any suggestions on how this blog space can better serve you so if you have any recommendations, please feel free to share anytime. You can finish this sentence starter:

• On this blog, what I like is _________.
• I wish _________ .

Please share it as a comment on this blog or send me an email. Thank you for your input!

For Math, we started our unit on multiplication. At first, students were given a blank sheet of paper to see what they know already. This was used as a pre-assessment and will be used to compare what they know at the end of the unit to show growth. Next, we did a Number Talk (in the curriculum) with the number 10 together. The next day, they tried doing a Number Talk with the number 12 on their own. A number talk is a brief discussion that focuses on student solutions for a chosen math concept. Students are asked to share their math processes while I record their thinking visually.

Please continue to have your child diligently review (memorization would be so helpful!) their multiplication math facts to increase their computational fluency and accuracy. Many students struggle with computations when we multiply larger numbers so becoming familiar with the facts is a huge advantage to gaining confidence much quicker!

As scientists, we started our next body system: the muscular-skeletal system. We watched this video to help us understand better. Click here to watch at home.

As scientists, some students started researching their disease. As mentioned before, we are one step closer to our Gilmore Medical Conference where our expert doctors in their field will present on a disease of interest. Any students who are finished early will help with the organization of our event like creating the conference tags, signs or posters, the schedule and program for the day, etc. If any of you are in the medical field and would like to be a guest speaker on our conference day, please let me know! We will need a keynote speaker to begin our morning! More details to come in the following weeks!

On Friday, we co-constructed our criteria for our presentation. Click here to view the PDF and make a copy if you wish.

The opening slide should introduce themselves as Dr. _____ so if I was researching heart attacks, I would be Dr. Chan from Cardiology.

Please review the criteria with your child. Thank you!

The class has been visiting the library to work with Mrs. Papapanagiotou on learning how to properly cite the resources we use. This project is a fantastic way of practicing our new knowledge as responsible digital citizens who properly acknowledge the work of others. If you have any questions at all, please reach out to ask for clarification.

Report cards will be going home at the end of this week.

When we think about parents at home and the support you give to your child, we deeply appreciate you!

Gratefully, Ms. Chan and Mrs. Paulich

Dearest Division 6 family,

I so appreciate you for your time to read my blog posts every week and your interest to stay informed. It is hard to believe we are finished another month and more than halfway through the year! These updates are for you so I’m looking for feedback on these weekly posts. What is something you really enjoy? What would you like to see more of? What suggestions do you have to make this space more beneficial to you? Thank you for your feedback! Please comment on the blog or send me an email at Livia.Chan@burnabyshcools.ca. Thank you for your time!

Last week, students worked hard on their self-assessments and reflected on what they are proud of. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading all of their responses. I felt so proud to read their thoughts. Reflection is such an important part of learning.

“We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” – John Dewey

To understand the importance of reflection, it was ADDED to our revised curriculum in our Core Competencies under Thinking – Critical and Reflective Thinking. I recently found an article on FreshGrade’s website about reflection. You will see some of their reflections in their report cards in the Student Voice section. They were so honest and open!

I also took this opportunity to have my students write a “report card” for me! I asked them for feedback on what I am doing well and what I could be doing better. Their honest feedback was so appreciated. I firmly believe in the power of reflection, the power of voice, and self-advocacy. If there is something I can change to make their school experience a better one, I am open to listening and we can co-create the curriculum in response!

This past week, we continued to work on our stories that Ms. Lee, Oscar’s mom, encouraged us to write. On Thursday, we were on Zoom with Ms. Lee again! She taught us some valuable tips on overcoming the fear of sharing our writing and speaking. Thank you to Olivia H., Quinson, and Rasul who pushed themselves outside of their comfort zone to read their stories. They were so SO good! I would have loved to see more students dive into their stretch zone to read their stories. Please encourage your child to find the courage to share, thank you! We SO appreciate her time and for sharing her expertise with us! Ms. Lee also wrote and shared her own story based on the collective brainstorming they did last week. The story was so engaging! We were SO blessed to have her teach our class! Thank you so much, Ms. Lee!

Students finished some window art and thank you to Ms. Paulich, it beautifies our windows! I loved seeing the different designs and colours. It’s always so amazing to me that students are given the same instructions but the final results are so varied because of the creativity in their brains!

Coming up, we will begin to learn about multiplication so if your child does not know their multiplication facts, please have them practice at home. We will learn some games they can play at home to review too so get a deck of cards ready to have some fun and you practice your math facts with them!

As always, we really appreciate your continued support at home. At any time, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. Thank you for being partners in your child’s learning.

Remember, I’m looking for feedback on what you like and what you’d like to see more of in these blog posts, so please share!

We also have some exciting news! We have a new student named Dante who will be joining our class in the morning! He comes from a nearby Vancouver school. Welcome, Dante, and your family! We are thrilled you will be joining our school family!

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