Category: We are critical thinkers.

Hello Division 6 families!

We have had another great week! Our Kindness Projects are coming along well! Please ask your child what they are working on to invite conversation at home.

Speeches

Every year, all grade 7’s in Burnaby have an opportunity to participate in the District’s speech competition. This annual event began in 1983 to provide the opportunity to develop confidence and pursue excellence in public speaking. Students are generally given a sentence starter. While your children have had opportunities to present Science and Passion Projects with PowerPoint, we have not practiced writing and presenting speeches yet so I thought this would be great writing practice. This past year, the grade 7’s were given this sentence starter: The lesson I learned in 2020 was…

Since the grade 7’s wrote their speeches in January and we are now in May, students were given this instead: The lesson I learned in 2020/21 was… This is to be a minimum 3 minute and a maximum 5 minute speech. They will be timed.

We started our brainstorm today as a class. Some themes that came out of our conversation were:

• • • Flexibility/adaptability: go with the flow; things happen, move on
    • Be positive.
    • You can learn anything.
    • You don’t always have to be happy.
    • We have taken things for granted: what we missed the most
    • We are braver than we think: I have courage.
    • We can do hard things. I am a hard worker.

Please have a conversation with your child about what they have chosen to write about. They will be encouraged to choose one central idea and write some paragraphs in support. They will be asked to provide details like examples, reasons, explanations and to dive deeper into their ideas. Having a detailed brainstorm sheet will make the writing process flow better. Click here to print out the graphic organizer if you wish.

Math

As Mathematicians, we had to think critically as we dove further into perimeter and area. Click here to learn more about perimeter. Click here to learn more about area. For grade 5’s, they are expected to be able to measure the area of squares and rectangles (area = length x width), and how they are related to but not dependent on each other. So, this past week, we learned that you can have the same perimeter but different areas. If your child did not complete the homework that was due this week, you should have received an email from me tonight. Click here to view page 129 and 130. Students were asked to complete #1, 2, 3 and 7. If you need grid paper, click here to print.

On Friday, students wrote a division quiz to check their understanding. Your child will come home with their sheet for you to review next Tuesday, May 25. Please take note of the sections your child struggled with, review the concepts, sign, and return the next day on Wednesday, May 26, thank you!

Spelling

Your child brought home their spelling test on Thursday. They were asked to share it with you. If you haven’t done so already, please review, initial, and send back to school. Thank you!

Passion Projects

Click here for the criteria. Here is the presentation schedule. After consultation, your child agreed to the following dates. Please help us support your child to be ready BEFORE their presentation date. We are practicing holding ourselves accountable to deadlines. Thank you!

Library

Next Friday, May 28th, will be their last day to sign out library books. ALL library books will need to be returned the following week on June 4th.

Should you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Thank you for being our partners in your child’s learning. We 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

Dear Division 6 families,

We had another fantastic week together! I feel that I sound like a broken record each week but your children continue to amaze me with how hard they work, how kind they are to each other, and how well they work together so I am thrilled to be a broken record week after week!

Personal Awareness
This past week, we continued to work on our “I am” statements. We pushed ourselves to look for more words we could use to describe our strengths. I discovered that when I did the same thing, half of my final list of 10 words came from diving in further the next day! I am always offering opportunities for them to push them into their stretch zone. This was the perfect real-life example! The list we came up with on Friday was in our comfort zone. The extended list we added on Monday was in our stretch zone. So many students found new words they added as their strengths on Monday just like I did! If we had stopped on Friday, they wouldn’t have grown their vocabulary of strengths or found words that better described themselves! Take a look at Nicholas’! On Friday, they typed up their “I am” poetry so we are now ready for the next part. Stay tuned! It’s NOT what they will expect!

We are scientists.
This week, we had an opportunity to form groups to review the three body systems we covered so far: circulatory, respiratory, and digestive systems. Groups were given choice as to which one they wanted to create and present a skit. They had so much fun working together. So far, we had one group present: Olivia, Maya, Rachel, and Vienna had a clever and entertaining skit where they were in a restaurant ordering food. When the food arrived, they explained what happens and what would happen to the orange that was actually ingested by Maya!

We watched a very interesting video from Mystery Doug on Which animal has the biggest heart. Click here to view. The heart was gigantic!

We are mathematicians.
We continued to work on our addition videos. All students should have them completed by the end of this week and uploaded to their digital portfolios with their reflection. They reviewed subtraction with regrouping this week. Please feel free to check that your child understands how to subtract with regrouping. You can have fun challenging each other with big numbers!

We are readers.
We had a successful Book Club meeting with our group members. During the debriefing, we talked about what went well, what they found challenging, and what they would do differently. I am so looking forward to watching them grow in their conversations about what they read! How you can support at home: Have conversations about what your child reads. The connections they make, for example, are an important part to help them understand. Ask them about a favourite part or what they think will happen next and why. Ask them about a part in the story that surprised them, why, and how they might change that part of the story. Ask them about the characters and perhaps which character they align with. Lastly, model reading at home. Children who see their parents read are more likely to read as well.

Virtual Celebration of Learning
Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, we were not able to watch the Celebration of Learning on Friday. It will be available for viewing on Tuesday, February 16. Look out for the email with the link. Our class will be presenting their One Word.

 Celebrating Friendships
Valentine’s day celebrations looked a little different this year. There was no food shared but they brought their own snacks. They had a wonderful afternoon playing and socializing with our cohort class, Division 5.

We talked about creating Valentine’s for each other digitally. Please enjoy the kind messages they sent to each other! Click on the image to view or click here.

My heart always feels so happy when I get to spend time with your children. The sense of family is strong and I feel so blessed every day to be their teacher. Thank you for your continued support at home. Report cards will be going home before spring break but at any time, if you wish to have an update, always feel free to reach out. I am grateful for our connection.

Our sincerest appreciation, Ms. Chan & Ms. Paulich

Dear Division 6 family,

Whenever I sit down to write these blog posts, I often feel like the week flew by. Time flies when we are having fun! Every week, there are many things that I really look forward to. I thought this week’s blog post could be a reflection on my favourite things that warm my heart as we also review the happenings from this week. Happy reading!

I thoroughly enjoy Monday, Thursday, and Friday mornings because I have the blessing to begin my days with them. I love going outside to greet them and later saying hello to each one by name at the top of the stairs. Then, I love watching them interact with each other during their morning flex time. This special time allows me to make deeper connections through casual conversations, work with some students who need that extra check-in, and conference with students, for example.

On these same mornings, I thoroughly enjoy our Community Circle time. It is such a sacred time for us to connect with each other, share how we are feeling, say highlights from our weekend, what we are grateful for on Thankful Thursdays, and share our celebrations on Fridays. I absolutely love it when most of them share that they are feeling fantastic, awesome, very happy, or amazing. It truly fills my heart and warms it at the same time because it lifts our spirits up knowing that so many of us feel so positive about being at school. The celebrations we do often include how proud they feel for having worked so hard throughout the week, or they celebrate being a part of a great family, or one of my favourites, is when they celebrate something that makes them special like their kindness, how much they care, or how helpful they are. These are all strengths and recognizing these as part of their identity is learning to understand themselves better. This is one of our core competencies: positive personal identity.

• • This is taken from our ministry document about core competencies: “They exhibit a sense of self-worth, self-awareness, and positive identity to become confident individuals who take satisfaction in who they are and what they can do.”
  • I just attended an EdCamp this morning where we talked all about core competencies. It was such a fabulous morning of connecting with educators all over BC and learning with and from each other.

I so love Passion Project time. They are all so focussed and engaged in their personal learning time. We had a few more second presentations this week. We learned about ice hockey and medicinal plants! My plan for these next Passion Projects are to push them further, from simply information gathering and information presenting, to answer the questions, “So what?” and “Why is this important?” or “What do I learn about myself or the world?” It’s the making meaning of their learning that I’m more interested in now. This is the next level up from their first Passion Project so as you are engaging in conversations at home about your child’s work on this, please help me push their thinking and ask them the same questions: So now that you have these facts, now what? So what? Why is this important? What are you going to DO about what you learned? How does this new learning change you?

Click on image to go to PDF (enlarged).

One of my passions is to teach writing. In my previous role on the Staff Development Team, I loved to share the different ways to help students develop their communication skills through writing. This past week, we practiced our personal journal writing by sharing about our weekend. We reviewed the grade 5 performance standards and showed them written examples of writing that was emerging, developing, applying (proficient), and extending. They received a single-point rubric as a reference for what writing should include. What I love most about writing is our conference time. I really enjoy that one-on-one time with students to read over their writing, discuss their strengths (so important so they know exactly what to keep doing!), and then walk through their areas of opportunity for growth. With the descriptive and actionable feedback received to improve their writing, they are strongly encouraged to challenge themselves in their stretch zone to make their writing even better. What to do next? It’s clear. It’s attainable. It’s an opportunity to take action on “next steps”.  I wish I can bottle up their sense of pride when they come back to me after challenging themselves!

This past week’s weather was absolutely beautiful. I was on recess supervision all week so they were given some extra time outside after recess on my days with mornings. On Friday, they asked for some more time but they had already gone to line up at the front. When they were informed, they came running back to the playground. The big smiles on their faces as they ran past me was simply priceless!

I can’t help but love so many things that I have the privilege to teach. Math is most definitely another one! I love making Math fun and engaging. This week, we practiced addition with regrouping and decimals. I gave them graph paper to create and challenge themselves with as many digits they wanted to add. They had a lot of fun! Some challenged themselves to add over 30 digits and one even created a question that was 88 digits long!

I was feeling that we hadn’t done a team-building activity in a while so we did a Lego Challenge! Students were divided into groups of four. I had a structure hidden from sight. One designated person from each group came up to take a look at what they had to use communication skills and teamwork to recreate. This person could only use their words to describe to their teammates what the final structure looked like. I was so impressed with their communication, listening, perseverance, and teamwork skills. I loved seeing their excitement and celebrations when they figured it out!

Next week is Literacy Week! On Tuesday, a Family Bingo card will go home with various literacy activities to complete. Return no later than Monday, February 1st to have a chance to win prizes! Excitedly, we will also have Mrs. Ballarin join us on Zoom as a guest reader! On Thursday, it’s dress as a book character day. I am looking forward to seeing their creativity!

We have some new Grizzly Gear! Go to School Cash Online to purchase. Get a pink shirt so your child has one to wear on Pink Shirt Day, if you wish. The water bottles are metal and not plastic. I believe they are only $10! The Grizzly masks were so popular, we now have two you can choose from! These items are at cost and are not meant to be a fundraiser.

We are always appreciative for your support at home. I would love to hear what resonated most with you in this blog post. Please let me know what type of information you enjoy reading. These posts are for you so if there is something you’d like to hear more about, then please let us know. Please leave a comment or send me an email. Our preference is that you read these posts with your child as it will give you a great opportunity to further engage in your child’s learning. Enjoy your conversations together!

We both feel very blessed every day that I have the opportunity to spend time with your children. Please know they are very well loved every day they come to school. We are a family!

With hearts full of gratefulness, Ms. Chan and Ms. Paulich