Category: We are communicators.

Dear Parents,

Your child brought home their report cards today. I thoroughly enjoyed my first time writing report cards like this as it is quite different at other schools because it included their own reflections on how they are doing in the areas of work habits and attitude, personal awareness and responsibility, and social awareness and responsibility. I also thought it was unique approach to write it directly to my students rather than traditionally, about them. It makes it much more of a personal document that focuses on their strengths and ending with next steps. Each of them had an opportunity to read over their report cards and sign them. You may be used to receiving an extra sheet called an Overview. This was a document that outlined what was covered over the course of the term. Since you have been informed frequently each week on our class blog, please refer to our past blog posts for this information and refer to our We Are Learners pages for the curricular competencies that were covered.

On Monday, I introduced the idea of having “focus students” as an opportunity for them to share something about themselves, a chance to formally speak to the class to develop their communication and presentation skills, and to have regularly scheduled individual teacher time. This is not to say that they do not receive teacher time during other days. Here is the schedule:

If your child’s day lands on a holiday or a Pro-D day, their turn will be the next day. For example, Eva and Kiana’s day is supposed to be tomorrow but instead, will be on Monday, November 25. Since we did not begin “Focus Students” until Tuesday, Ana and Alex will also be on Mon. Nov. 25. For our first time, students were asked to bring an artifact to share and talk about. They are to include details including thoughts and feelings. During their teacher time, we have reviewed their progress and set goals for their public speaking skills as well as how they are doing as a listener. I have also listened to them read and provided direct feedback including reading strategies that will help them progress, and we reviewed their goals in reading. As we move along, the focus each week may be different but every other week, your child will have an opportunity to speak in front of classmates. The feedback they receive will inform them of their strengths (so they maintain them) and their areas of opportunity (so they know what to work on to improve).

Also new on Monday, response journals were introduced. A response journal is a type of writing where students make connections to what they read (text to text, text to self, or text to world). Their sheet of paper is divided into half. On the left-side, they record a summary of “What happened” and on the right-side, they record “My thinking”. Here, they not only practice the important skill of summarization, they have an opportunity to respond to text as they are encouraged to question, analyze, relate, respond, and interpret to gain new understandings or at least that is where we are headed!

Starting on Tuesday, we saw our first sets of focus students come up to share. It is not easy to be one of the first but they presented very well. As an audience, we are working on the skill of listening by looking at the speaker, being engaged by absorbing their message in our hearts and minds, and responding by asking pertinent questions afterwards. I have enjoyed learning more about each student already and am looking forward to the rest!

We returned to our book The 7 Habits of Happy Kids to learn about two more concepts. As a review, here are the first three habits covered so far:

1. Be Proactive – Take initiative. You’re in charge!
2. Begin with the End in Mind – Focus on goals and have a plan!
3. Put First Things First – Work first, then play!
4. Think Win-Win – Everyone can win!
5. Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood – Listen before you speak!

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

During our Reading time, students were introduced to a new app called Voice Record Pro [Free app to download]. It’s a basic app that allows them to record their voice. They practiced their reading and then recorded a reading sample and uploaded it to OneDrive. We will be looking for growth over time.

We have been working with Ms. Tas every Wednesday afternoon in our classroom. We noticed that some were overusing apostrophes or placing them incorrectly so based on the common errors we are seeing in student’s writing, we had a couple lessons on the proper use of quotation marks for contractions and possessive nouns. Again, based on the students’ inexperience with using quotation marks, our focus this time was on proper use of quotation marks – why we need them, where they go, and where we place commas and question marks within a quotation. Students were partnered up randomly and worked well with each other as they put the words together with punctuation to form a complete sentence. Once done, they rotated to a different station with a new sentence to put together. They loved the hands-on learning experience! They also enjoyed seeing their own names used in these sentences.

Students had an important lesson on digital citizenship today as we discussed the allure of the internet. Information can be at our fingertips within seconds but we need to learn to exercise our self-control, decision making, and critical thinking skills. With opportunities, these skills can be developed over time as they grow and learn to be discerning critical thinkers who make good decisions about what they search, how to decipher whether it is true, and what sites are trustworthy, for example. It is natural for children this age to be curious about many things. The internet offers many opportunities to learn. However, as much as there is good information, there is also negative, harmful, and false information available. Over time, they will learn that what we see on the internet is not all true. Ultimately, one of our goals is that their integrity will stand up so they will make good decisions about how they access and use the information available at their fingertips.

LOOKING AHEAD

Guest speaker: On Monday, we have arranged for a dental hygienist to come for a classroom visit to teach us about taking care of our teeth.

Thursday: Young People’s Concert & World Ringette Championship game. Thank you to the parents of Kyle, Max, Liliana, Lucas L., and Yunsoo for volunteering to drive! We appreciate you.

Yoga: Next Friday, November 29th, we will begin our first of three yoga sessions with Ms. Gomes. Please have your child wear comfortable clothes and to bring a water bottle. Thank you to Jillian, Brentwood Park PAC and executives in supporting the yoga program. The most important aspect of yoga for children and families are:

• self care
• mindful breathing
• body awareness
• positive thinking
• honour and respect for oneself, others and nature

School Blanket Drive at Brentwood Park: Please support. We are collecting gently used or new blankets or sleeping bags, warm clothing, coats, hats, gloves, scarves, new socks and underwear. Click here for more details.

Report card envelopes: Please sign and return your child’s report card envelope next Monday. Thank you.

Dear families,

Wednesday was World Kindness Day. We talked about the different ways we can choose to be kind – simple things like choosing to say hello with a smile or choosing to hold the door for someone or showing your appreciation to others. In a world where you can be anything, choose to be kind. Feel free to watch and listen to the story we enjoyed:

After the story, Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed, we were inspired to spread our kindness by writing appreciations for at least five people. Many wrote many more! When they were finished, they were like little elves delivering their kindness notes to people all over the school. Some wrote notes to their previous teachers, some to their siblings, big and little buddies, and some to Mr. M, our custodian. You should have seen the big smiles they had on their faces when they returned to the classroom! One student walked back in the door proclaiming, “I feel so happy!” It was a real life lesson to learn that when they spread kindness, they also gain happiness. I don’t think they realized how happy they were going to feel when they started writing these notes. Here are some of their reflections:

• Zia: It warmed my heart because Kiana made one for me and when I read it, it made me feel happy.
• Liliana: I feel so happy because when we went to the custodian to give him the letters, he felt appreciated and the smile on his face made me feel happier.
• Eva: I felt happy because when we went to Ms. Yap’s class, she was so happy and she gave us a hug and that made me feel happy.

THURSDAY: During our regular activity breaks, we have been doing various stationary exercises. To change things up today, I made exercise strips for students to choose a random exercise for the rest of the class to do. They got to choose how many we did too! They loved the choice and the challenge. Their jumping jacks definitely look way better than in the beginning of the year!

We continued to talk about kindness after we watched a video about how sometimes it’s the little things that make a difference in other people’s lives. Sometimes it is a small sacrifice and sometimes it’s a bigger one but it is a choice we make to be kind. The result? It’s varied but one common result is the happiness we gain as we discovered for ourselves or an unexpected effect because of our kindness. We spent some time writing about what kindness means to us. Click here to read reflections by Lauren, Jeyvion, and Yoyo.

FRIDAY: Students are really enjoying using O365 Word for their story writing. One student exclaimed today, “My writing keeps getting better and better!” They really enjoy reading the descriptive feedback on their writing. Students always working so hard during these writing blocks. Loving it!

The kids were introduced to an image that would help them share how they were feeling. This is called the Blob Tree. It was interesting to see who they chose and why to represent their feelings. Our class goal is for everyone to become more comfortable at speaking in front of the class. They each had their turn to go up and share their feelings. Next week, we will start our Focus Students rotation. Stay tuned to learn more!

For our kindness video today, click here.

We currently do not have enough volunteer drivers for our field trip to watch the World Ringette Championships on Thursday, November 28th. We plan to leave the school at around 12:10 pm. If you can help drive us to and from but not stay, we would greatly appreciate it. Thank you very much!

Enjoy your weekend!

Sincerely, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

Welcome back after a long weekend. Our big lesson today was about the word listen. What does it mean when we truly listen? The Chinese character for listen encompasses many small words that make up the written word for listen. We took a careful look at the image. Listening means we use our eyes, ears, mind, heart, and give our undivided attention. When I first learned this about a decade ago, I thought it was so profound how listen is written in Chinese because it acknowledges the different parts of us that we need to use in order to deeply listen to each other. I often say, “listening is the gift of your attention” and that there is a big difference between hearing and listening. There is an active component to listening that goes far beyond just hearing people speak.It is a demonstration of respect and valuing others.

LISTEN and SILENT are spelled with the same letters. Coincidence?

Then we listened to a story about Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns to Listen. To watch again at home together, click on video:

We responded to this text by writing the listening strategies that will work best for us and considered what we need to do most in order to be a better listener.

This afternoon, we set some goals for ourselves: a listening goal, speaking goal, and a reading goal. I was impressed with how accurate and honest they were about setting these goals. As they posted their goals, I found myself nodding my head, one sticky note at a time, in agreeance. During our Reading Groups, we are still working on our Say Something Strategy. Students will be receiving this reference sheet as a visual to help them come up with something to say. Some students were very excited to move on to their new book groups today.

It is World Kindness Week. We had a great class discussion about why we would have a week that celebrates kindness and why it’s important. We then dove into the difference between nice and kind. I loved how people were building on each other’s ideas. Eventually, we discovered that nice is not the same as kind. You can be nice but not kind and kind but not nice. We had to do some deep thinking around this. Being kind [rooted in love and care] may mean being honest so that others can improve. I have been saying for decades that there is more than one way to say the same thing so how do you choose to be honest and kind?

Tomorrow is World Kindness Day. Feel free to do some front loading at home before they come to school tomorrow. I can’t wait to see what ways they can show kindness!

Sincerely, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

I believe it is important for my students to know that their teacher is a lifelong learner – still learning and wanting to learn more so that I can become a more effective teacher. They listen to me share things I learn from my PLN (Professional Learning Network) on Twitter and the books I am reading. One of the books I am reading is called Grand Conversations, Thoughtful Responses: A Unique Approach to Literature Circles. The author, Faye Brownlie, has a second edition just released on October 29, 2019 so I am looking forward to read the updates.

Students have either been reading with me in our Guided Reading group or they have chosen a book to read and meet in their Literature Circles. The book choices at this time are: Crenshaw, Frindle, and Rules. On Tuesday, they started reading and jotting down connections, questions, interesting word choices by the author or unknown words in preparation for the “Say Something” strategy. On Wednesday, they practiced the “Say Something” strategy for the first time. I thought it went well for their first time. Some shared personal connections, some found interesting word choices like “thought-grenade” from Frindle, and some shared a funny part of the story. I enjoyed the natural responses that classmates had when they felt exactly the same way in response to a certain part of the story. I can’t wait to see how their conversations evolve over time.

We learned about Aboriginal Veteran’s Day and appreciated their service contribution. Students practiced writing their own “tweet” around the theme of pride – how soldiers felt a sense of pride to be Canadian and fight for peace. Later, we made poppies to decorate our class poppy that was displayed at the Remembrance Day assembly. On the poppies, we wrote our personal messages of appreciation. We learned about why we wear poppies. During the Remembrance Day assembly, we listened to a number of moving letters as if they were written during the war from the perspective of a father or mother who stayed home and the father or son who went to war. These letters were written by students in Division 2.

We continued to work on our stories in Office 365. If you are looking for “homework”, they can always read for 20 minutes, work on their stories in O365, practice their Math (see our Math page), or go to Tynker to code.

Today, we went into the Library to practice our coding skills using Tynker. I was so impressed with their perseverance skills. Some found parts of it hard but they kept trying. Learning to code develops not only computational thinking skills in ADST (Applied Design, Skills, and Technology) but goes beyond curriculum and into the core competencies of personal awareness: self-determination, self-regulation, perseverance with challenging tasks, and resilience. There is such value in the struggle.

“Enduring and persisting in the face of struggle are crucial to learning, because learning is a hard and messy business. It’s not an easy expedition. Helping children develop the resilience they need to persist when they bump up against intellectual and social challenges is one of most important ways we can help them make the trek successfully.” – ResponsiveClassroom.org – The Value of Struggle

Coding also dives into the other core competencies of critical thinking: analyze, investigate, develop and design. With all the critical thinking they must have done during this time, if their brains made music, the library would have sounded like a loud rock concert! You know they enjoy an activity when I tell them they have one minute left and you hear a chorus of, “No or aww”.

We finished off the week with tracking our core competencies of Personal Awareness and Responsibility as well as Social Responsibility. Where are we at with our self-determination, self-regulation, and well-being? How do we contribute to our community and care for our environment, how do I solve problems in peaceful ways, how do I build relationships, and how do I value diversity? It will be most interesting to see how they move along on the continuum in these areas.

Click on image to learn more

Enjoy your long weekend, everyone!

Sincerely, Ms. Chan