Category: We are critical thinkers.

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

Dear families,

It’s only been two days this week but we’ve already done so much that I wanted to share!

MONDAY: Students completed a self-reflection on their attitude about school, work habits, social awareness and social responsibility. This exercise reinforces the importance and value of regular self-reflections; how they feel about their own learning and self-development. Many heartwarming thoughts were shared about how much they enjoy school.

In Math, we practiced our fractions with a new app named Fractions. Click here for the link to download (free app). Students were able to quickly create examples of various fractions of a whole. They took a screen shot of their pages and used it in their Fractions book using Book Creator to prove they understand fractions. To learn more about what we are learning about, go to our We Are Mathematicians page. Grade 4’s are diving back in to decimals now. For students who wanted to extend their learning, they tried Math Tappers: Equivalents (free app). It was certainly a good challenge!

TUESDAY: Fun with LEGO challenge: Sneak Peek team building activity. Built a structure for students to replicate. One from each group looked at model to memorize and returned to team to instruct without touching. After one minute, sent next person from group to see model and repeat until team succeeds. Students wrote “I can” statements.

• Tyson: I can work well with others.
• Alex: I can help my group.
• Kiana: I can communicate well with others.
• Lucas L: I can work with people.

Dear Parents,

MONDAY: As part of our reflection on learning, students used the SMART goals framework to set a personal writing goal and recorded it on a Post-it note. We will be supporting each other in reaching our goal in writing. Anxiously excited about seeing their progress in the next few weeks! 

TUESDAY: We often hear children state, “I’m bored!” or “That’s boring!” When my own kids were young, I would never allow them to use the “B” word. They grew up thinking it was like a bad word. One day, while driving my daughter and her friend to ringette practice, they started talking about this topic. I thought it was hilarious when my daughter didn’t dare say the “B” word and instead spelled it out for her friend! Anyhow, I always believed with all of the books and toys in the house, how can they possibly be bored? So when I heard students in our class bring up this word now and again, I did my own inquiry into what boredom is because it is something I don’t quite understand as I always am doing something or my mind is always thinking about something. I originally believed that there was a solution to the problem of being bored: what children needed to do is simply change their mindset in thinking, so rather than feel bored, they reframe to feel content. I shared my ponderings and findings with the class. What surprised me most was that boredom is not all bad. There were a number of sources that stated benefits to boredom like creativity, problem-solving, becoming more goal-oriented or a better, more altruistic, and happy person to name a few. While I still think that kids can work towards having a feeling of content over boredom, I have encouraged your child to see it as an opportunity. Boredom is an opportunity to:

• contemplate and dream: have time to think about things they don’t normally think about, self-reflect, make plans, discover new hobbies or interests, set new goals, or add ideas to bucket list
• cultivate mindfulness: to be calm, to quiet the mind and the body, replenish energy
• be altruistic: consider what you can do to make someone’s day a little better
• be grateful: count your blessings

So if I were to have one wish, it would be that children stop seeing boredom as a negative state; instead, see it as an opportunity to better themselves, others, or the world around us. We do not need to fill our time with one thing after another to fill up our day. It is okay to feel bored! Please feel free to share your thoughts on this by writing a comment to this post.

This week, we started reading a book written by Steven Covey: The 7 Habits of Happy Kids (same author as The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People which some of you may know). It begins with a story about a character who finds himself bored and looks to others to help him find something to do; the character discovers that it is his responsibility to be proactive and not rely on others to “fix” his problem. Here are the first two habits covered so far:

1. Be Proactive – take initiative
2. Begin with the End in Mind – focus on goals

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

WEDNESDAY: As part of our inquiry into what makes a good story, we dove into story beginnings. First, each student pulled out a couple books from our classroom library. Some of us shared the first sentence with the rest of the class. Then, we all judged that sentence by our criteria: How engaging is the first sentence of the story? Does it entice or hook me in to want to read more? Next, each student had an opportunity to practice writing a few different story beginnings; many great examples were shared with the rest of the class. This exercise made it very clear to them that we, as authors, write for an audience. Looking forward to see how they revise their own stories to make their beginning sentences more engaging – to hook the reader into wanting to read on to find out more!

Continue to bring in non-perishable food for our We Scare Hunger campaign. Thank you!

Brentwood Park has a pumpkin carving contest. Click here to learn more. Grade 3’s will join the primaries in the gym after recess on Hallowe’en Day for the primary costume parade and dance party.