Category: We are mathematicians.

Dear families,

We are so proud of all the kids for their performance at our spring concert presentation of Let’s Eat! They did so well singing their two songs with all the actions: It’s Raining Tacos and My Ooey Gooey Cinnamon Bun. 

We hope you enjoyed the show!

Alliteration

After reading Sylvie by Jennifer Sattler, we talked about how author’s usually have a message they tell through their story.

Here’s a synopsis from Amazon: Meet a flamingo of a different stripe. When all-too-curious Sylvie learns that the reason she is pink is because of her diet, she decides to do a little experimenting! At first, Sylvie likes trying out different colors and patterns, but ultimately she learns the valuable lesson that sometimes it’s best to just be yourself.

In the story, some examples of alliteration was pointed out so after the story, we tried our hand at it. They were give some to try and then to come up with their own. Ziya and Juliette challenged themselves to come up with one for each letter of the alphabet!

We are mathematicians.

We solidified our understanding of division by sharing at the beginning of the week and then learned about division by grouping at the end of the week.

Ways to support at home: Watch this video to help you understand the difference. This wasn’t shown in class yet but feel free to use it as review. Take out some toys to practice. Ask your child to communicate the two different ways to show division: by sharing and grouping.

One of the ways we know makes an impact in how well children learn is through discovery play so they were given opportunities to make meaning and learn with partners so they can communicate their understanding.

We are scientists.

On Friday, we walked to Willingdon Park to release our beautiful butterflies. They loved how it landed on some of them – like Eloa’s wrist, and Alicia and Oliver’s shirt!

Passion Projects (ADST)

Students were excited to continue our projects. The next steps were to plan and use their critical thinking brains to come up with questions to research. Take a look at our planning sheet.

Passion Project Planning

Ways to support at home: Have a conversation with your child about what they are passionate about learning. See if they need support with coming up with questions that demonstrate deeper level thinking. Go to the public library to take out books on what they will be researching.

Here are some examples of the experts who will be teaching us what they learn: sea turtles, bunnies, hamsters, photography of dogs, Steph Curry, hedgehogs, cricket (sport), hedgehogs, sea lions, and marine invertebrates.

We are so excited to see them work hard on their projects!

Community Dinner

All families are invited to join us for our second Community Dinner this year! To learn more, click here to go to our school website. CLICK HERE to RSVP to let us know you will join us.

Volunteer Tea

Thank you for your continued support and time at home. You should have received a Volunteer Tea invitation already. This year we are recognizing all families for their support in their child’s learning on Thursday, May 29 in the afternoon (in the gym). We work as partners! Please return the card or click here to RSVP and join us.

Tennis Workshop

From May 12 to May 30, our students will be participating in a tennis program. Unfortunately, the form arrived late and wasn’t able to be sent home on Friday due to a busy afternoon. If you would like to complete this paperwork this weekend, please find the form attached below. We will also be sending home the paper copy of this form on Monday. We would greatly appreciate your support in returning the signed form before our gym class on Tuesday.

Tennis Permission Form – 2025

To all of our lovely mothers, we wish you a wonderful happy Mother’s Day this weekend!

As always, we are grateful for your time and effort at home,

Ms. Kim and Ms. Chan

Dear families,

As we said good-bye to Mr. Evoy, there were mixed emotions of celebrating a successful practicum of teaching and learning together for all of us and knowing we will miss his warm and kind presence. It wasn’t just students who learned from him but both Ms. Kim and I learned about our own philosophy and practices affirming why we do what we do as we supported Mr. Evoy so it makes us better teachers in the process too!

We are so grateful for Mr. Evoy’s dedication, hard work, and connection with us. We wish him continued success in his teaching journey! We hope to see him back as a Teacher on Call at Kitchener!

I, Ms. Chan, thoroughly enjoyed being back in the classroom on Thursday and Friday. What a blessing to spend time with your beautiful children. I am so grateful! It truly is incredible how much learning happens in one day, let alone a week, a month, and a year!

Student Led Conferences

We are grateful for your time to listen attentively to your child show you their learning across the curriculum. Thank you for being active participants and big supporters of their learning all year! We hope you enjoyed celebrating their successes. They worked so hard to prepare for these conferences and have continued to work hard since September. We are so proud of them and their perseverance!

If you haven’t done so yet, please fill out the Two Stars and a Wish sheet and return it to school tomorrow, thank you!

We are mathematicians.

Over the weekend, students were encouraged to teach you about division as we enjoyed our first lesson on Friday. If they haven’t yet, ask them to share what they learned. Pull out some candy, chocolates, or cookies with plates for each person in your family. Ask them to divide by sharing to practice what they learned. Reinforcing new concepts helps to solidify learning and builds a strong initial foundation for learning division.

Here’s what we learned so you can support at home:

Each lesson, it is important for us to post our learning intention so it is clear what they are to learn by the end of the lesson.

Two of the big curricular competencies for math is to communicate mathematical thinking in many ways and to represent ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms.

The learning intention for our first lesson in division: I can understand equal groups in division. This concept involved the idea of sharing.

We had plates with our fake gummy bears and went, “one for you, one for you, and one for you” until they were all passed out equally among everyone holding a plate. They enjoyed the real life examples to experience the why and how of division. Then students were given questions to try with partners.

This learning through “play” is one of the most impactful ways for children to learn through discovery. It is one of our favourite types of hands-on and engaging learning where students learn together and practice communicating mathematical thinking with each other. Opportunities like these also help them develop their core competencies of communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and social awareness and responsibility. This also aligns with Indigenous ways of learning by de-centering the room with less teacher time talking and more student time exploring the new concepts.

Passion Projects

On Friday, we started talking about Passion Projects. We watched this video by John Spencer that introduced them to what it is although he calls it Genius Hour.

So I asked them to finish this sentence:

I have always wanted to learn more about…

We are at the beginning stages. During this week, please have a conversation about what they would love to learn more about.

Think about what you would really like to spend your time learning about. It should be a topic big enough that you can spend about six weeks on it. Here are some ideas and it’s okay to come up with their own:  

• Learn a new language
• Learn how to  do something  
  • Make a stop motion movie 
  • Photography  
  • Knitting/sewing  
• Learn about something  
  • Architecture  
  • A country or culture – design your dream trip!  
  • The Science of flight  
  • An animal or creature
• Learn about your family history 
• Learn about someone: an artist, athlete, scientist, activist, author , singer

What do you care about in this world? What can you do about “fixing” an existing problem? Think of something you can do that will make this world a better place.  

Next, we will begin to narrow it down . The idea is that they will become an expert and teach the class what they learned.

ADST

Students were introduced to PowerPoint. They learned how to create a new document, rename it, add a new title to the first slide, add an image, choose a design idea, and add a new slide.

How to support at home: Have your child login to O365, open their new PowerPoint project and add more slides. This was good practice to create slides and images. This was to prepare them for learning how to develop presentation slides for their Passion Projects. They loved it and were so excited!

Spring Concert

Our class along with our buddy class look and sound great! We are so excited for you to see them perform on Wednesday!

• Wed. May 7 @ 1:30pm – Afternoon dress rehearsal
  • Have your child wear yellow, orange, or brown tops and black or dark bottoms
• Wed. May 7 @ 6:00pm
  • Have your child wear yellow, orange, or brown tops and black or dark bottoms
  • Bring your child to the Annex, Room A6 (at the far north side of the Annex)
  • Doors to the gym open at 6pm
  • PAC will have cash only concession
• Wed. May 7 @ 6:30pm – Evening performance; bring your tickets!
  • Pick up your child at the end of the performance in the Annex, Room A6

Save the Dates

• Fri. May 16 – Sports Day; early dismissal at 12:30pm
  • Students will be travelling from station to station with our buddy class. They will be divided into 6 teams. More information to come.
• Mon. May 12 – Whole school tennis lessons begin
• Mon. May 19 – Victoria Day; school is closed
• Thur. May 22 – Community Dinner at 6:00pm
  • Everyone is welcome! Bring a dish to share.
• Fri. May 30 – Early dismissal at 2:00pm

We are so grateful for your time and support. It is hard to believe we have less than two months to enjoy each other’s company as we continue to learn together. Rest assured, we will continue to empower your child to develop their identity, be affirmed in their strengths, and grow in their stretch zone as we support them in the process. Can’t wait to continue to share our learning with you! Thank you for your time to read our blog posts!

As always, please reach out should you have any questions, concerns, or would like to share successes.

With hearts full of gratitude,

Ms. Chan and Ms. Kim

Dear Division 11 Families,

We hope everyone is having a great week so far! Apologies for the late update on our learning. It’s been a fun and busy week filled with exciting experiences, including two workshops: a Coding Workshop on Wednesday and a Honeybee Workshop on Thursday.

We are Scientists

Honeybee Workshop

This week, we had the opportunity to learn about Honey Bees! Students learned about the different types of bees and their important roles within the hive. We rotated through different stations; searching for the queen bee, tasting various types of honey, participating in hands-on bee-themed activities, and even trying on real bee suits! It was a great experience that deepened our understanding of bees and the important role they play in our ecosystems.
 

Landforms

We also started a new unit on landforms. Students explored a variety of natural landforms found on Earth. In one of the activities students used loose parts to design and build landforms, developing both their creativity and understanding of physical geography.

We are Mathematicians

Our multiplication learning continued this week with a focus on using arrays and connecting them to real-life scenarios. Students explored how objects arranged in rows and columns can represent multiplication facts in a clear and visual way. Keep an eye out for real-life arrays at home!

We are Inventors
This week, students began brainstorming invention ideas to solve everyday problems they encounter. Over the next few weeks, students will move from planning to creating their own inventions, using a variety of materials to bring their designs to life. We’re excited to see their problem-solving and design thinking skills in action as they build their creations!

ADST (Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies)

Dear Division 11 Families,

We hope you are having a wonderful weekend!

We had an amazing time on our field trip to Britannia Mine Museum. Thank you again to our parent drivers for making this trip possible! We’ve created a folder with photos from the field trip, which will be shared with you via email soon.

Here’s a glimpse into the fun learning that has been happening in class over the past week:

Science


This week, our class went on an exciting field trip to Britannia Mine! We learned all about the history of mining and how it has impacted local communities over the years. Students got to wear hard hats and ride an underground train, giving them a real sense of what it was like to work in the mines. They also saw live demonstrations of old mining equipment, which brought the experience to life. Inside the museum, we explored interactive exhibits that showed how minerals are extracted and processed. One of the biggest highlights was gold panning—students had so much fun searching for minerals and were thrilled to take home their discoveries. We left with a deeper understanding of Earth science and the effects of human activity on our environment.

The Smart Cookie

Among the many books we read this week, we reflected on The Smart Cookie by Jory John. This heartwarming story explores themes of self-awareness, growth, and confidence. As a class, we discussed how being “smart”   can mean different things to different people, and that intelligence comes in many forms. Students shared what makes them feel smart and created “I am smart because…” statements to celebrate their personal strengths. This activity not only helped students recognize their own unique abilities but also strengthened our classroom community by highlighting the diverse ways we all shine as “smart cookies.”

Here’s a link to the book: The Smart Cookie.

Language Arts

In Language Arts, we focused on building the structure of our stories and learning key writing techniques. Students began typing their first drafts, organizing their ideas into clear sections and creating a solid layout to support the editing process. A big focus this week was writing strong introductions that hook the reader and draw them into the story. This stage of the writing process gave students the opportunity to strengthen their work before moving on to peer feedback and revisions.

Math


This week in Math, we began learning about multiplication! Students explored the concept as “repeated addition” and “equal groups of” through games, real-world examples, and hands-on activities. One of the highlights was a new game called Circles and Stars, which helped reinforce the idea of equal groups in a fun and visual way.

Feel free to try playing this game at home to support your child’s learning—we’ve included a link here to show how Circles and Stars is played.

Happening This Week:

• April 8th – Science Workshop
  This workshop will take place in our classroom from 9:00–10:00 a.m. Please help your child arrive on time so we can begin smoothly. For this activity, we are looking for 2L plastic bottles. If you have any at home, we would greatly appreciate you sending them in for us to use!
• April 9th – Honeybee Workshop
  This workshop will be held in the gym from 2:00–3:00 p.m. Students will be dismissed from the gym afterward. Thank you, families, for sending in your forms!

We are always so appreciative of your support. Have a relaxing evening!

Warm regards,
Jake, Cailyn, and Livia