Category: We are mathematicians.

Dear families,

It’s hard to believe there are only two more weeks left before the winter break! I feel happy to spend my days with your children because they make me smile and laugh with the things they say, what they do, and how they positively interact with each other. Also, the improvements I see as they work towards their goals in listening, speaking, work habits, reading, writing, math, etc. make it a rewarding day every day. For example, when I see students begin to use or incorporate new learning in their writing, it really fills me with great joy and fills my heart with excitement. Admittedly, sometimes I am so overjoyed that I spontaneously clap with excitement like a little child. Yes, the children look at me strange but it’s like I cannot contain my giddiness over the improvements I see. It actually feels more exciting than opening any present. Here are some things we learned about last week:

Ms. Innes was our TOC again on Monday. This is a write up from her: We talked about the history of First Nation’s Peoples’ in B.C. The discussion flowed into the residential school system. Then we read “When We Were Alone” by David Robertson. This picture book was delivered through a story basket containing many objects to connect students deeply to the concepts of residential schools. They then recreated a page from the book and wrote a reflection on why that page was chosen and what their favourite part was.

Ms. Innes also taught them how to say, “[Name] is my name” from the language of the Squamish Peoples’ called Sḵwx̱wúmesh Sníchim. It looks like this: Ms. Innes ḵwi un sna. There were also signs that went with each word. Please ask your child to demonstrate. 

So as an extension lesson, students were introduced to the alphabet in American Sign Language. They learned how to ask another what their name was by signing, “Your name what?” (The syntax is different than in English.) Then they responded by signing, “My name ______” followed by signing, “Nice to meet you.” They had an opportunity to practice over and over again as they greeted each other. 

Based on what we were seeing with student’s writing, we learned about what makes a sentence = subject and predicate. We then practiced with some examples on the whiteboard. After that, the real fun began. Students each received four strips of paper to write down two subjects and two predicates. We paired up and matched our subjects to our partner’s predicates. What ensued was lots of laughter because of the silly sentences that were put together as we moved from partner to partner. One of Steven’s favourite sentences was: Ms. Chan fell down a rabbit hole. There were some very creative and interesting sentences put together!

We watched the story How to Catch a Star (video link) and then students had a choice to retell the story providing the main parts or to write a sequel to the story. I so enjoyed reading their writing because of their creativity and they enjoyed writing part two to the story.

Over the next couple days, we watched the story Olive the Other Reindeer (video link) and The Elves and the Shoemaker (video link). Students were given the choice to write a prequel or sequel to the story. I so loved the creativity I saw in their writing again. They love listening to the sequels written by their classmates as we showcase word choice, use of dialogue, and creativity, for example. 

Students are really responding to the writing lessons and have continued to improve in this area. After they finish writing, they have an opportunity to conference with me. During this time, we read their writing together to learn about what they are doing well (strengths so they know what they need to continue doing) and to learn from the errors (some of these errors become our new goals). This valuable discussion provides each student with feedback on their personal learning goals so they can improve from exactly where they are as they are offered next steps in how to improve. If there is a clear area of opportunity, children are asked to take that opportunity to re-write or add on to their writing that day for immediate practice in exactly the area they need to improve. I wish you could see their faces when they come back to show me their changes – just full of pride.

We had our first Christmas concert rehearsal in the gym on Thursday. I can’t wait for you to see them perform! A reminder that your concert ticket orders are due on Monday, December 9th. There will be an afternoon performance at 1:30 pm and an evening performance at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, December 17th. 

On Friday, we walked with our little buddies to put their letter to Santa in the mailbox. I so loved hearing the chatter and laughter as they walked and talked with their little buddies. Next week on Friday, we will be decorating gingerbread cookies with our big buddies. Please send candies for our gingerbread cookies starting on Monday. Reminder that NO food products with nuts can be brought to school. We have life threatening allergies. Thank you.

We had our second session of yoga with Ms. Gomes. They learned a little about the history of yoga postures, the importance of breathing, and practiced some new postures to challenge our bodies. We have one more session this coming Friday. Please have your child wear comfortable clothing. Thank you.

Throughout the week, we reviewed fractions and decimals in preparation for their Math test on fractions. Thank you for your support at home to help them review. The decimals study guide went home on Friday. Click here to view. Grade 4’s  Math test on decimals will be on Monday; some grade 3’s wanted to challenge themselves by learning about decimals too but please know that this is not expected for grade 3’s. To find out about what the learning outcomes are for this Math unit, this information can be found on our We Are Learners – Mathematicians page.

Continue to bring in new socks for our Sock It to Poverty campaign. We will be collecting food for the Food Bank starting too.

Forms to return and make payments: Christmas concert, gingerbread cookies, and breakfast with Santa

Bring in clothing for Christmas concert in a labelled bag by Wednesday, December 11th. Thank you.

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.