Category: We are communicators.

Dear families,

We had a fun week returning from spring break! We hope you all had a lovely time off with your family! This past week, students started learning their Hip Hop routine. Please have your child wear black and/or white on Tuesday, April 4th. Entrance to the performance will be through the Dundas/Gilmore door to the gymnasium. The doors will open at 1:00 p.m. and seating will be first-come, first-served. We are looking forward to showing you our dance moves!

We are story creators.

Students listened to the story A Salmon for Simon but first, they had an opportunity to work in small groups to collaborate on creating their own story based on 6 images from the book. They put the pictures in the order that made sense to them. Then they wrote sentences to tell their story. It was great fun to have each group go up to read their version!

We received our pen pal letters!

It was exciting to receive our pen pal letters from our buddy class at Brentwood Park! We are in the process of brainstorming ideas with details to write back to them this week.

We are scientists.

Thank you to Ms. Kim, we continue to be immersed in our learning about life cycles. We had a special guest speaker, Ms. Barndt, share her knowledge about salmon in BC.

Students created a lilypad filled with the 4 stages of the frog’s life cycle based on their research. They also researched the life cycle of humans.

Web of Life activity

Ms. Kim showed them a video called “Everything is Connected” as an introduction to the Indigenous Peoples’ perspectives on nature. Each student had a role. As they listened to the story, when they heard their role mentioned, they received the ball of yarn. At the end, this created a beautiful web so students got to see that every action no matter how small is connected to others and causes a ripple effect on the whole ecosystem. This was a powerful way for students to learn about environmental stewardship to help them understand the interconnectedness of all living things and the importance of taking care of our planet.

This is Ms. Kim’s last week with us. We are so grateful for her dedication to planning engaging lessons for us! We wish you all the best in your teacher education!

ADST

We continued to develop our skills in O365 using Word. We learned how to create text boxes. This practice prepares us for learning how to add text boxes in PowerPoint. Very soon, I am SO excited that we will be diving in to Passion Projects! Please begin to have conversations with your child about what interests them most. What would they LOVE to learn more about? They will be doing research and then preparing a PowerPoint presentation. I believe that communication and presentation skills are important skills to develop plus a passion for learning!

Here’s what we learned so far in Word:

• bold, italicize, underline
• changing fonts, sizes and colour
• alignment: left, center, right
• adding images and text boxes

Please feel free to have your child login to O365 at home to practice using these tools. If you wish, you can introduce them to PowerPoint to get a head start! I’m sure some of them would love to become mentors when we start using PowerPoint!

Spring is almost here!

We practiced drawing tulips and then created our own with white pencil crayon. We traced over our image with white liquid glue and made them come alive with chalk pastels. I hope you enjoy what you see! Students added a new post to their SpaceEDU account. Please login to view their reflection on learning and feel free to leave a comment for your child to enjoy!

April is Autism Acceptance Month (also shared from the Community Office email shared on Friday)

April is Autism Acceptance Month and Gilmore will be celebrating and recognizing this important topic all month long! Students will be provided with facts about autism and other disabilities in the morning announcements and with a variety of in-class and school-wide activities throughout the month. For example, all classes will be participating in a sensory day so students can experience the feelings of challenge that individuals with a disability may feel on an everyday basis. Students will also be doing pointillism art using their non-dominant hand. It is our hope that these activities will help our students to gain valuable perspective taking, understanding and empathy!

As a way of giving back to the community, we will also be raising money for the Canucks Autism Network through an ice-cream sandwich sale on April 14 ($2 each at recess and lunch) and by selling paper fan hands on School Cash Online throughout April. For every $5 paper hand purchased, your name will go into a draw for some prizes at the end of the month. (Prize winners will be announced on Monday, May 1). Prizes will include Canucks memorabilia, 3 EA Sports video games of your choice and a FIFA 23 ultimate team jersey.

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

With a heart full of gratitude, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

We had a week full of fun! On Monday, children had fun during our Jump Rope for Heart time. There were 10 stations set up by Division 1 for all classes to enjoy! Click here to see a video of the gym set up.

Black History Month
We learned about the life of Mohammed Ali and Martin Luther King through his “I Have a Dream” speech. We had discussions about colour and how blacks were treated in the past and continue to be marginalized today. We discussed privilege, kindness, what we can do, and then wrote our reflections.

Applied Skills & Technologies
According to our grade 2/3 curriculum, students are expected to be able to do the following:

• Use materials, tools, and technologies in a safe manner in both physical and digital environments
• Develop their skills and add new ones through play and collaborative work
• Explore the use of simple, available tools and technologies things that extend human capabilities to extend their capabilities 

On Valentine’s Day, we thoroughly enjoyed our Friendship Fruit Salad! Thank you to everyone for your contribution! Every student had an opportunity to help prepare the salad by cutting fruit, peeling oranges, or separating grapes from vines. I loved how so many were coming back for seconds! It was so delicious. Why? The secret ingredient: made with love. 🙂

We had an abundance of apples for our fruit salad so we decided to bake apple crumble on Friday. We enjoyed it so much too because of the secret ingredient. I loved how we had 10 cutting boards with partners respectfully taking turns cutting the apples into small pieces.

Here’s the recipe we used:

• Cut 10 apples into small pieces. Mix 75 ml sugar, 15 ml flour, 5 ml cinnamon, 60 ml water and add to the apples.
• Topping: 250 ml oats, 250 ml flour, 175 ml brown sugar, 1 ml baking powder, 1 ml baking soda, 125 ml melted butter, cinnamon, and vanilla.
• Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes in a 9 x 13″ pan.

This week, we continued to use the laptops to practice our communication skills using email. Many students are beginning to understand the parts of an email. On Friday, I introduced them to a new app: Microsoft Word. They played with their names by using the text formatting features like bold, italics, underline, shading, and changing fonts, size, and colour.

Grade 2 Mathematicians
We have been exploring addition. There is more than one way to add. My goal according to the curriculum is to show them different strategies beyond what we typically do, which is to regroup or what some know as “carrying”. I introduced them to decomposing into 10s and 1s and recomposing (e.g., 48 + 37, 40 + 30 = 70, 8 +7 = 15, 70 +15 = 85). If you’d like to support at home, have your child practice both of these ways to add 2 digits plus 2 digits.

We are authors.
I gave students developing/proficient/exceeding samples of stories at their grade level to assess against a single-point rubric. It was amazing to hear them compare and discuss differences and what would make it better. They took new insight to make their OWN stories even better!

We had mini author’s circles to read our stories to each other and receive feedback too. It was great to hear them share ideas to help improve their classmate’s stories.

Upcoming week

Wednesday, February 22nd is Pink Shirt Day. All students are invited to wear a pink shirt.

Friday, February 24 is our District Pro-D day. All staff have been invited to attend sessions at Burnaby Central and Moscrop. I am excited to be presenting two sessions! Click on the images to read the session details. I share this because I believe it helps you better understand my teaching philosophy and beliefs.

Next week, we welcome back our student teacher, Ms. Kim, for five weeks!

Have a wonderful Family Day long weekend!

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

Gratefully, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

I hope you are having a great weekend so far! Tomorrow, February 13 is Jump Rope for Heart. CLICK HERE to learn more and here to donate. A reminder to wear RED tomorrow and runners. If your child doesn’t have red, then Grizzly gear is great too!

We are authors and storytellers.
I read the story Ralph Tells a Story by Abby Hanlon. He discovered he not only had many stories to tell, but they had value and are worth telling. It taught us that stories are everywhere. We are story. Each day, we have an opportunity to share a part of our story with each other during Community Circle time to develop our connections and understanding of our similarities and differences.

Students have continued to enjoy working on their stories. This week, they had an opportunity to read it to a classmate to receive feedback on how well they described the characters, setting, problem, and solution. Some took their feedback to make improvements in their story right away! We now have some ready to begin publishing!

“All that we are is story. From the moment we are born to the time we continue on our spirit journey, we are involved in the creation of the story of our time here. It is what we arrive with. It is all we leave behind,” 

-Richard Wagamese 
Ojibway author from Kamloops B.C.

Speaking of story, I wrote an article for SFU that was just published recently on their education page – a first for their Share Your Story series. CLICK HERE for the link to the article. I’d love to hear what resonated with you. Please feel free to share in the comments or send me an email. Thank you!

We are mathematicians.
Grade 2s continued to work on our addition and subtraction math facts using our random numbers chart. If your child no longer has theirs at home, simply take an 8.5 x 11″ paper and randomly write 0-9 on one side and 10-20 on the other side. You can choose to have another sheet with all the numbers from 0-20 to practice. Here are the facts we covered thus far:

• Commutative property: a+b=c and b+a=c. You can switch the addends and the sum is the same.
• +0 & – 0
• +1 & – 1
• +2 & – 2
• +10 & – 10
• Making tens (combinations that equal 10 like 0+10, 1+9, 2+8, 3+7, 4+6, 5+5)
• +/- 9 NEW this week! Students loved learning the +9 and -9 strategy for addition/subtraction in math! It was like magic using the power of digital roots! They liked my magic wand I used for the effect. Please add these to your child’s skill practice. Thank you!

Look at the Addition Facts Chart below. If your child memorized the strategies so far (listed above), they would have learned 105 facts with only 45 left because of the commutative property! We still have some strategies up our sleeve, so let’s keep practicing with our random numbers chart at home! Thank you for your support! I practiced these with my kids at home and over the years, they have thanked me to “forcing” them to practice and memorize them. It just gives them more confidence in math overall especially when they move into the intermediate grades. Grade 3’s can  use these strategies to practice this too!

Next up: Doubles and Doubles +1. Then we’ll only have 35 facts left!

We also started learning how to add two-digits together with regrouping through play. Each person had a partner. They rolled two dice to create random numbers to solve the equation together. They were so engaged and worked well with each other!

We are communicators.
We had our second session of emailing on Friday. I am grateful that almost everyone memorized their login credentials to make the login process so smooth for us all. They are definitely reaping the benefits of being able to login efficiently! Thank you for your support! Students also are learning the basic parts of an email and are becoming better communicators by adding:

To: [Email address]
Subject line: [Short description of the email]
Salutation or greeting phrase: [Dear Ms. Chan,]
Body: [Message]
Closing: [Gratefully,]
Signature: [Ms. Chan]

We can reflect. 
It has been a while since we visited our eportfolios in SpacesEDU but last Thursday, we worked on two posts: Art and a reading.

The expectation is they share all of these in their reflection:  

• Describe what we did
• What I am proud of  
• Two “I can” statements  
• What I would do differently next time  
• What I learned about myself

We are artists.
Students thoughtfully considered and wrote what love means to them around Valentine’s Day. They also had fun hiding their name in and amongst all of the words! Here is a sample of a reflection and an image of our bulletin board.

Valentine’s Day
Thank you to parents who already communicated what your child will be contributing to our Friendship Fruit salad on Tuesday. If you wish, they can bring in their fruit on Monday, and I will keep it in the fridge for Tuesday. So far, we have contributions of raspberries, oranges, grapes, apples, kiwi, and a banana. Repeats are ok! Thank you! We will have bowls and spoons for them.

Your child should have brought home a list of classmate names on Thursday. If they are preparing Valentines, we would like all children to be included, please. Thank you for fostering inclusion.

As always, we appreciate your support at home. Should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to ask. Your children are working so hard every day to improve. We are so very proud of them!

Don’t always have time to read our blog posts? Looking for a real reason for your child to read? Here’s a tip: Have them read our weekly blog posts TO you as you cook OR instead of something else they are reading OR read it together so you can talk about what they are learning in school.

Grateful for you all and loving being their teacher because they bring me such joy, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

What a productive week of learning! Each day this week, I felt an incredible sense of pride for how hard your child and our class as a whole worked. Each child is taking their learning so seriously. Don’t get me wrong. I feel this way every week but this one in particular felt a higher level of focus and dedication. So whatever you are feeding your children, keep feeding them, please! 😉

We had the great pleasure of having Ms. Kim join us this past week to get to know your children and to learn all about our classroom.

Here is a special message from our student teacher

Dear Families of Division 11,

I am greatly pleased to say hello to all of you. I am Grace Kim, a student teacher from Simon Fraser University. I have been an EA (Education Assistant) in the Burnaby School District for the last 4 years. I am also a mom of 4 children ranging from Grades 5 to 11.

Yesterday, I completed a full week of in-class observations. I often had eye-opening moments, witnessing the ideal classroom environment that I have ever imagined. I gratefully embarked on learning how to build a welcoming and inclusive classroom community not only from Ms. Chan, Mrs. Paulich, and Ms. Connell but also from 21 students in Division 11.

As I return to SFU for the next 2 weeks, I am very excited to be back on February 21st to start teaching and continue learning how to set up core values and beliefs in education as well. I hope all of the families in this warm community are well. See you soon.

With gratitude and warmth, Grace

We are authors.
We really dug into our writing! After developing our characters, planning our storyboard, learning about what makes a great story, we started writing! We call this time Writer’s Workshop. I wish you could be there in the room to see how focused and engaged they are in writing their stories.

My goal for each time we work on our stories is to teach something new they can bring into their writing to make it even better. They are asked to read over their writing before they start writing again with the purpose to self-assess for improvement. Students were encouraged to

• review their opening sentence. Is it interesting? Does it hook your reader in to want to read more?
• introduce their character. When we describe our character and their core values or what they believe in, it is easier for your audience to make a connection to your character. Did you include some details about your character?
• describe the setting. Do you describe where the story takes place so that your reader can paint a picture of where they are?
• include quotation marks for dialogue between characters. This lesson was SO much FUN! It was the first time I introduced quotation marks. We used “bunny ears” to represent quotation marks (because they look like beginning and ending quotation marks). This was to show someone is speaking. So to practice, we all got up to talk to classmates. Anytime we talked, we had to put up “bunny ears”. Wish you saw the big smiles on everyone’s faces! I just love to make learning feel like an experience!
• add adverbial phrases. As an extension to dialogue, we learned how to describe how someone said something. For example: “I just can’t believe it,” said Julie with her head hung low. Add this extra phrase really helps to paint a more descriptive picture to enhance the dialogue.
• review the number of times they used the word: said. Many children this age overuse “said” so they we learned there are other ways like: replied, shouted, cried.

I read The Best Story by Eileen Spinelli. Feel free to watch it read to you with your child. I absolutely love this story. I use it when I do presentations on the writing process. What I love about it the message: Write the story that is in your heart. Students were encouraged to write the story that is in their heart. Interesting enough, one student asked if he could start over. Of course, I said yes. At the end of the writing time, he came to me to tell me that his ideas flowed so much faster! That’s a win!

We are communicators.
On Wednesday, we MCed the Celebration of Learning for Literacy Week. Again, this was one of those moments where I beamed with pride because of their courage to speak in front of the school. An extra high five to Chloe, Katelyn, Cristina, and Addie for reading their letter to Mother Earth at the assembly! So proud of you all!

We are readers.
Reading groups are going so well now! We have six groups to better match our varying reading levels. All groups meet at the same time. We built in a system that works beautifully. Each group receives their book bag for the session. One person in the group goes to get a white board, marker, and eraser. They use this board to write down words they are unsure of. Students were taught not to just tell the person struggling with sounding out a word. Instead, collectively, they try to attack the word with their understanding of how to break up the word, phonics, letter sounds, syllables, and overall knowledge of words. I love how they help each other! During this time, I have the freedom to move from table to table listening in and supporting as each person takes a turn reading a page. Again, I wish you could see how well our reading groups run. You would feel so proud of how well your child works in their group, respectfully taking turns, and supporting each other’s reading development.

New learning this week was to spend some time talking about the connections they are making to what they read.

We are scientists.
After having some practice last week with researching oceans as a class, we thought we’d try our hand at doing our own research on lakes. I vetted five websites to learn more. We found some very interesting facts like not all lakes are freshwater! They started by recording what they know about lakes and then adding what they wonder about lakes before discovering facts. We learned that we cannot just copy word for word what we find. We need to

We are athletes.
So far, we had two tennis lessons. They already showed improvement the second session! Thank you for ensuring your child has runners on Tuesday and Thursday. They have two more sessions next week!

We are mathematicians. [Repeated from last week’s post.]
As you may or may not know, our school growth plan has a numeracy focus now (new this year). So, if I hosted a Math Literacy Fun Night for you and your child to attend, would you be interested? The purpose of this would be to teach you some fun games you can play to help your child improve their number sense, number concepts, and learning of math facts. I understand that it’s one thing to ask you to help your child practice their math facts, but it’s so much better if I show you how and have you practice and play with them at school so you can replicate the fun at home! 🙂 Please CLICK HERE to fill out this quick questionnaire to share your interest and availability. Thank you!

We celebrate!
One of my beliefs is that we need to recognize how hard we work, our learning and growth, and to celebrate it! I’m a firm believer that children don’t do things to please me. It’s important they work hard at all aspects of their learning because it builds on their personal strengths, recognition of their accomplishments, and self-regulation (core competencies). Students are provided with frequent opportunities and guided to celebrate small wins especially when they are so invested in their learning. We foster a sense of pride by giving ourselves a high five and sometimes giving each other high fives. It has been scientifically proven that when we high-five, it improves our mood. How? When we high-five, our brain releases dopamine which increases happiness! When people are happy, this activates all areas of the learning centre in your brain so we learn better!

As always, my heart is full of gratitude for being your child’s teacher. They truly bring me so much joy every day I get to spend with them! Even if I don’t tell them, I am hopeful they know I love them because they see it on my face and feel it in their heart. On Friday, we learned how to send an email using Outlook mail in O365! They made me feel so loved in their email messages…truly heartwarming!

If your child has not memorized their login ID and password, please continue to work on this. Those who have it memorized are feeling very efficient and are able to step up to be leaders to help others who need support. Thank you for supporting them to memorize it at home!

For extra practice logging in while at home, feel free to go to the Gilmore website. Click on

Then login with pupilnumber@edu.burnabyschools.ca. It would look something like this with their personal number: 4561237@edu.burnabyschools.ca and their password would be the same. All Burnaby students can download O365 on devices at home.

For extra practice communicating, go to Outlook Mail. I responded to all emails so there should be an unread mail from me. If your child wishes, have them reply back to me. Feel free to review with them why we type a few words in the subject line and then our message below. The next lesson will be about how we typically form an email with a greeting, message, and signature while also paying attention to complete sentences that begin with a capital letter and end with proper punctuation.

I am grateful for you and your continued support. Have a most wonderful weekend!

Gratefully, Ms. Chan