Category: We are critical thinkers.

Dear Division 11 Families,

We hope you enjoyed the beautiful weather this weekend!

Here’s a look at the fun learning happening in our class:

Team-Building Activities

Mr. Evoy planned engaging collaborative activities to help our students develop their group work skills, such as taking turns, making decisions as a team, and resolving conflicts when disagreements arise.

One of the activities was building a marshmallow tower. Many groups asked for a piece of paper to sketch their ideas before starting. They persevered through challenges and demonstrated great sportsmanship—even when their towers fell over!

Another challenge was the human knot. We started with groups of 3–4 students and gradually increased to around 10 students per group. They learned the importance of communication and how calmly taking turns to share and listen to each other’s thoughts helped them succeed.

Pink Shirt Day

For Pink Shirt Day on Wednesday, our students brainstormed ways to show kindness. Each student decorated a puzzle piece with words or drawings that reminded them of kindness. We are putting the pieces together to create a large pink shirt in our classroom as a daily reminder to spread kindness. A photo of the completed shirt is coming soon!

We also met with our kindergarten buddies and helped them deliver ‘You’re Amazing’ keychains to every staff member in the school. Our students loved guiding their little buddies around our school.

Math

In math, we continued working on the decomposing strategy, focusing on subtraction when the minuend (the larger number) has a 0 in the ones or tens place. We also introduced the compensation strategy this week. To learn more about this strategy, please refer to the following website: Compensation Strategy.

Social Studies

In social studies, our students explored architectural innovations and inventions. As a class, we examined the Haudenosaunee longhouse, identifying its purpose and key characteristics. Students then split into expert groups to study one of the following innovations: Inuit igloos, Egyptian pyramids, and Roman aqueducts. Afterward, they shared their knowledge with classmates from other groups to deepen their understanding.

Language Arts

Our students learned about contractions by becoming contraction surgeons. They started with two words like ‘can not’ and ‘you are,’ writing them on a prescription pad. Then, they performed ‘surgery’ by carefully cutting between the words and adding an apostrophe bandaid to connect them into contractions like ‘can’t’ and ‘you’re.’

Primary Days of Music

Our students did a fantastic job at rehearsal on Thursday—they are looking and sounding great! We will be traveling to Marlborough Elementary for Primary Days of Music on March 13th. We will be departing at 12:25 by bus and will be returning to school at around 2:30.

Please join us for family reading tomorrow and reminder that we have Vancouver Warriors joining us tomorrow for gym.

Thank you for your continued support!

Warm regards,

Cailyn

Dear Division 11 Families,

We hope you had a restful weekend.

The final theme of the Month of Love was “Love the Land.” During our community circle, students shared what they are grateful for about our land. They then created a fun writing piece, choosing symbols from nature and writing along the outline of each symbol. They were also challenged to complete various random acts of kindness for the land.

Math

We continued exploring different ways to show our learning, with a focus this week on the decomposing strategy. With this strategy, students break apart the numbers they are adding based on place value, then add or subtract each individual place to find the answer.

Below are videos if you’d like to learn more about this strategy. Please keep in mind that since our focus is on showing our thinking in different ways, your child’s approach may look a bit different from the methods shown in the videos!

Adding using decomposing strategy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdMEDX4ra4o

Subtracting using decomposing strategy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVbSJWO8ExI

Social Studies

This week, we explored two different agricultural innovations. First, we examined The Three Sisters, a Haudenosaunee farming method. It is called The Three Sisters because corn, beans, and squash support each other like family when planted together.

We also studied chinampas (floating gardens) used by the Ancient Aztecs. As a check-in activity, students created a Venn diagram to demonstrate their understanding of the four groups we have studied so far. They were able to choose two groups and make connections between them.

This week, we will be exploring architectural innovations. As always, please support your child at home by having conversations about what they learned and making connections to the topics discussed in class.

Typing

Last week, our students practiced to improve their efficiency when using laptops.

If they would like to continue practicing at home, please click on the link below!

https://kitchenerdiv11.edclub.com/

ADST: We Need Your Help!

Our students don’t know it yet, but we will be working on an exciting project during ADST (Applied Design, Skills, and Technology)! The building stage won’t start for another couple of weeks, but we need your help collecting recyclable materials that students can use for their projects.

Some examples include:

• Cardboard (boxes, cereal boxes, snack boxes)
• Egg cartons
• Toilet paper rolls or paper towel rolls
• Packaging materials (bubble wrap)
• Plastic containers (including takeout food containers)

Additionally, we would love your help in collecting Styrofoam trays, plates, or takeout containers for an upcoming printmaking art project.

Thank you in advance for your support! We look forward to sharing more about these exciting projects soon.

We truly appreciate your continued support!

Warm regards,
Cailyn, Livia, and Jake

Dear Division 11 Families,

We hope everyone is having a wonderful Family Day long weekend!

Week 2: Love Others

This week, we read If You Plant a Seed and discussed how even one small act of kindness can create a ripple effect, inspiring others to spread kindness as well. Our students were encouraged to perform random acts of kindness throughout the week and add a heart to our “Kindness Tree” whenever they did something kind or received a random act of kindness from someone else. It was wonderful to see so many hearts added in just one week! We hope our students always remember how one small act of kindness can have a big impact.

We continued our theme of Friendship and “Love for Self”. Every Thursday is “Thankful Thursday” where they share something they are grateful for during Community Circle. This past week, we shared what we are grateful for about ourselves. We started by giving ourselves a hug to love ourselves. We talked about how the relationship we have with ourselves is the foundation for all other relationships so it is important to be kind to ourselves. What we say to choose to say to ourselves helps us anchor into our own strengths and believe in ourselves too. Last week, we continued to work on our affirmation statements. We are looking forward to sharing them with you!

It is also important to take such great care of the person we spend the most time with. That’s themselves! It’s the most important job they have in their life…to make good choices about eating well, getting enough sleep, staying positive and grateful which leads to happiness.

We Are Mathematicians!

This week, we continued practicing our addition and subtraction skills, focusing on using open number lines. With this strategy, students decide where to start their number line and how to decompose, or break down, a number to add or subtract. There are multiple ways to solve problems using open number lines, allowing students to approach problems in a way that makes sense to them. (As shown in the picture, three different students each found their own way to solve 56 + 37.)

We encouraged our students to use friendly numbers—numbers that are easy to work with when adding or subtracting, such as 20, 50, or 100. For example, in the problem 27 + 9, the student broke 9 into 3 and 6, adding 3 to 27 first to make 30, which made it easier to add the remaining 6.

This strategy connects to the next one we will be focusing on, so our students will have more time to practice and strengthen their understanding.

Here’s a helpful resource for you to learn more about this strategy and support your child at home.

Shelly Gray – Friendly Numbers: Addition Strategy

Social Studies

Our students have been exploring how humans have created inventions and innovations to meet their needs throughout history. This week, our focus was on agriculture, specifically in Ancient Egypt. Students learned about the different ways ancient Egyptians controlled water, then compared these methods to those used in ancient Mesopotamia. To deepen their understanding, they created Venn diagrams to identify connections between the two civilizations.

Writing
On Wednesday, we did a writing snapshot, and we were so impressed with the progress our students have made since the beginning of the year! We’ve been focusing on making writing more engaging, and we encourage students to use the following strategies:

• Triple scoop words – Choosing more interesting words (e.g., instead of good, using fabulous or fantastic).
• Similes – Comparing things using like or as (e.g., My brother is as loud as a fire truck. He is wise like an owl).
• Adding dialogue – Making conversations more dynamic (e.g., instead of writing “How are you?” said Ms. Kim, students learn to write “How are you?” Ms. Kim called out, waving cheerfully).

When you are reading with your child at home and come across examples of these writing techniques, please take a moment to point them out and discuss how they make the writing more engaging. This will help reinforce what they are learning in class and encourage them to apply these strategies in their own writing.

Reading Groups

Students really look forward to our Reading Groups time. Last week, each group performed a script for Reader’s Theatre based on stories that focused on conflict resolution and showing kindness. They learned the importance of reading with expression and performed very well! This week, we continued to read books at our reading levels.

We love seeing how they support each other when they come across words they struggle with. We also appreciate their patience, collaboration, and kindness shown each time they read together. It’s always a great sign when they ASK when we are going to have Reading Groups again!

Friendship Fruit Salad on Valentine’s Day

We are grateful to all families for contributing fruit and to our families who came to support in the classroom.

Students were so diligent to cut the fruit. They were all so keen and worked so hard as they chopped fruit for a solid 45 minutes! No one asked for or took a break!

So what this tells us is that they can help you prepare dinner by chopping vegetables or their own fruit for recess snacks or lunch.

We love it when we hear comments like, “This is the best day ever! Can we make fruit salad every Friday? It can be Fruit Fridays! I wish this day won’t end.”

Welcome, Mr. Evoy!

On this day, we also welcomed our SFU student teacher, Mr. Evoy, to our class. He will be with us until the end of April. He dove right in and got to know the kids. Mr. Evoy is a welcome addition! Please help us welcome him to our warm classroom community.

As always, we appreciate your time and support at home. Thank you for being our partners in your child’s learning.

With much gratitude,

Ms. Kim and Ms. Chan

Dear Division 11 Families,

Happy Monday! We hope you had a wonderful weekend enjoying the beautiful weather we’ve been having.

Our students did an AMAZING job presenting at the assembly on Friday. Despite having only their first rehearsal in class on Wednesday, they delivered their lines with confidence and poise. Many staff members stopped by our classroom at the end of the day to praise the incredible speakers in our class and admire the amazing artwork they created.

We are so proud to have had the opportunity to showcase the great learning happening in our class. The assembly presentation was entirely their work—from choosing their word for 2025 and brainstorming its significance and action steps to creating Basquiat-inspired artwork. They carefully researched and selected words and symbols to include in their art, and we couldn’t be prouder of their hard work.

If you couldn’t join us in person, we have a recording of the assembly. Please email us to request the link to the video.

Our students are also very excited about our bowling field trip tomorrow! Here are a few important details:

• Family Reading: We will host Family Reading in our classroom from 9:00–9:40. Please join us, even if you’re unable to come on the field trip. We’ll depart at 9:45.
• Footwear: Please ensure your child wears runners (no boots), as they will stay in their runners.
• Booster Seats: Please send your child with a booster seat if required. If you have a spare, we’d appreciate it if you could send it along, just in case.
• Snacks and Drinks: Students should bring their water bottles and a snack. Please do not send money, as they are not allowed to purchase food or use vending machines during the trip.

Feel free to email us if you have any questions about the field trip.

Thank you for your continued support!

Warm regards,
Cailyn and Livia