Category: We are scientists.

Dear Division 11 Families,

Our hearts were warmed by your presence at our Families as Partners conversations last week. We thoroughly enjoyed meeting you in person and learning more about your child through your stories. Thank you for your investment of time to share as we journey and work alongside each other this year.

Patterns
In Math, we continued to learn about different varieties of patterns. For example, a pattern can be different by shape, colour, size, and rotation. We started our Patterns booklet where we got to create our own book cover and demonstrate our understanding of repeating patterns including identifying the core pattern. Next steps: Learn how to identify, create, continue, and describe increasing patterns.

Way to support at home: When you are outside, look for patterns in nature. At home, take out items to create varying patterns that change by shape, colour, size or rotation.

One of our core competencies is personal awareness and identity.

We read a story called I Like Myself! by Karen Beaumont. Watch the animated video on YouTube of the story. The goal of reading this story was to critically think about our strengths, core values, and character traits we appreciate about ourselves. This isn’t an easy task even for some adults! Students had an opportunity to respond to this story by writing about what they like about themselves.

Learning requires exploration of one‘s identity. – First Peoples Principals of Learning

This principle reflects the importance of identity in relation to learning. Identity is what connects people to each other, to communities, and to the land. The exploration of one’s identity includes developing an understanding of one’s place in the world, in addition to being able to identify all the factors that contribute to how people see themselves. These factors include their strengths and their challenges, their innate abilities (gifts) and capacities to learn. In addition to using this understanding to help one grow in life, knowing one’s own strengths and challenges is a part of the responsibility a person has to his or her family and community, as a people are considered to have a duty to use them to contribute to others (family, community, and land). Taken from https://firstpeoplesprinciplesoflearning.wordpress.com/learning-requires-exploration-of-ones-identity/

We are each unique and beautiful but together we are a masterpiece!

Ways to support learning at home: Have a conversation about what they wrote in their writing books. Help them extend understanding of themselves by helping them see some of the positive characteristics they have. Support them in seeing the examples (or receipts in their lives) that demonstrate these positive traits that you see. Developing a positive self image through awareness of strengths and core values is one of the first steps in building a strong foundational relationship with themselves. When they know who they are, what they stand for, and what brings them joy, then they can anchor into these when faced with adversity or challenges. If you were to model this, what would you say to your child?

We are scientists.

Big idea: All matter is made of particles.

You may have seen a yellow sticky note come home in their planner with the word “matter” written on it. We went around the room and in the hallways to “label” everything we saw as matter to demonstrate our understanding that matter is anything that has mass and takes up space. They were asked to tell you what we did with the sticky note and show you examples of matter in your home.

We also talked about atoms. Their minds were blown away when they learned how many atoms are on the top of a pinhead!

Orange Shirt Day

During our Orange Shirt Day assembly on Friday, we learned about why we wear orange shirts. Why? An orange shirt was taken away from a residential school Survivor: Phyllis Webstad. This day raises awareness of the residential school system in Canada. Wearing orange reminds us of the impact of residential schools still felt today. We also went for a short walk around the school.

On Monday, September 30, the school will not be in session for National Day for Truth & Reconciliation. This is an important day of reflection to honour Survivors, families, communities, and remember the ancestors that never made it home. For me as a mother, I can’t help but feel emotional when I think about children being separated from their families. Some children may have emotions about this too when they try to empathize. Please have a conversation to help them understand our history and why National Day for Truth & Reconciliation is an important day. Thank you.

Ways to support at home: Please feel free to visit the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation website to continue the learning and reflection at home. Feel free to watch the video we also watched at our assembly.

Scholastic Book Orders

One of the ways we have built up our classroom library is through the Scholastic Reading Club. The books in these flyers are generally wonderful and are very reasonable. Teachers are awarded points to use toward books and classroom supplies when students place orders. We will be sending home flyers regularly. Learn more.

Our class code: RC235868

Some of our class books were donated by previous students. This is so appreciated! If you have books at home that your child is no longer interested in, please consider donating them to the classroom. Children need an interesting variety of books to be motivated to read and we do a lot of reading! If we cannot use them, we know many new teachers who can. Any unwanted craft supplies, puzzles, or games are also greatly appreciated. 

Thank you for your support at home. If you returned the student information forms that went home last week, thank you! If you have not yet, then please return this week.

Looking forward to another great week at school!

With gratitude, Ms. Chan

A message from Ms. Kim

This week in art, our students learned about the artist Keith Haring. We explored the concept of pop art and discussed his unique style. Next week, the students will create Keith Haring-inspired family portraits and learn about complementary colors through his artwork.

We spent a significant amount of time in class discussing Orange Shirt Day and the importance of this day. This year, the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation event will be taking place on Sunday, September 29th, 2024 at Memorial Peace Park in Maple Ridge, beginning at 10am until 3pm. This will be a good opportunity for students to learn more about the significance behind this day.

In math, we are continuing our work on data analysis. The students have been developing their own survey questions to gather and display data.

In Social Studies, we read a wonderful book called A Family is a Family is a Family by Sara O’Leary. This book celebrates all types of families, and we will continue our conversation about families into next week, eventually exploring family traditions from around the world.

As always, I am thankful for your support in your child’s learning journey.

Kindly, Ms. Kim

Dates to Note:

• Wednesday, October 2: Picture Day
• Friday, October 5: Painting our fish for Stream of Dreams; send children with clothing appropriate for painting just in case. I am not sure if the paint is washable. These fish will replaced the ones currently on the fence along Gilmore Ave.
• Every Friday: Conversation Circles for English Language Learners newer to Canada. Come practice your speaking and make new connections at school!
• PAC fundraiser: Apples! Last day to order is October 9.
• Friday, October 18: Family movie night. Save the date!

This was our writing and art about our names! Look at all of the cool designs we made with our names!

Dear families,

These weeks are going by so quickly! There is so much to savour in our last few weeks. It has been such a sweet year together with your sweet children.

We can reflect.

One of our core competencies is reflective thinking. One of my favourite quotes is by John Dewey “We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience.”

There is so much to learn about ourselves, our self identity, and how to continue to grow. One of the best ways to do this is through reflection. Last week, your child had an opportunity to reflect on their learning this term, share what they are proud of, and to set a couple of goals for next year. Please feel free to ask your child what they wrote. What are you curious about in terms of their reflections on learning? Ask them!

This week, they will share what they think will help me be a better teacher and what they think have been the biggest life lessons I taught them. I love asking this question! It tells me a lot about whether my core values come through in my teaching. I am constantly in pursuit of betterment. I love learning and reflecting on my learning. Even after 25 years, I am still curious about being a better teacher and leader in the school so I read a lot, listen to a lot of podcasts, and follow people who inspire me to be better every day. If you have any feedback for me, please share with me too. I would be open to learning about what you see as my strengths and areas to improve. Thank you for your time.

Invitation: Ask your child what are the top three life lessons you taught them. I asked my young adult children this a couple of years ago and it was very interesting to hear their answer. Their life lessons learned were different from me and my husband. I wonder what they would say to you about what they learned from you so far in their young life.

We are mathematicians.

We are learning about money. I know many people don’t carry or use money as much as we used to but it is helpful for your children to understand financial literacy.

We sang the song “Canada in my Pocket” by Michael Mitchell and watched “How Money Is Made“. Feel free to watch together at home and have some conversations about money.

We are scientists.

Don’t blink or you may miss this!

We recorded our observations in our ladybug journal.

We are artists.

• Their beautiful and brightly coloured copper thunderbird paintings inspired by the Canadian Indigenous artist Norval Morisseau
• Hand drawn mandalas, which were an excellent practice in symmetry, adding fine detail, and staying patient through the process
• Paper sea collages, which were inspired by their recent trip to the aquarium and involved using their fine motor skills and lots of by imagination! Students created starfish, axolotl, sea otters and more, and as always, they went above and beyond with what they created.

Field Trip

• Fri. June 21 – Revs Bowling and Burnaby Lake picnic (All families are welcome!) We need more parent volunteer drivers, please. If you can drive for a part of the day, please let me know. Perhaps we can share the load. Please email me if you can drive us to the bowling alley OR from the bowling alley to the park OR from the park back to the school. Thank you to the parents who already volunteered. We appreciate you!

My heart is full of gratitude for your support at home.

Gratefully, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

This time of year always has me feeling like I don’t want the school year to end. The relationships and connection I feel with your children are deep. I guess it just can’t be helped when you love and care for them and think about them at night and on the weekends. As I’ve been telling you all year, they bring me such joy and I know they bring each other joy too!

Last week continued to include experiences that brought us joy.

We are communicators and writers. 

We are improving in learning how to write paragraphs. We have a few goals:

• To write complete sentences that begin with a capital and end with proper punctuation
• To write sentences that have details that include thoughts and feelings, reasons, explanations, or examples to help paint a picture of what happened.

To support this, we used a single-point rubric to remind us of what we are working towards showing proficiency. This was given to them as a self-reflection so they were encouraged to read their writing to look for proficiency and to make changes to get closer to proficiency. Using rubrics like these make the criteria clear and something they can strive to work towards. Feel free to have your child refer to this if they do any writing at home. It can be simply used like a checklist. For some of your children, you can add something about printing legibly with appropriate sizing and formation of letters, and writing on the lines for neatness. Please let me know if you’d like a PDF copy and I’ll send it to you.

Then they had an opportunity to be paired up with a classmate chosen randomly. When we look at someone else’s writing to assess, there are different skills they learn like many of our core competencies: communication, critical thinking, reflection, personal and social awareness and responsibility. If case you missed it, I shared more about core competencies in last week’s post.

They were encouraged to share strengths (where their writing glowed) and an area to work on (where their writing can grow). I love listening in to their encouraging conversations. I wish you were there to listen too. They were kind and supportive.

We are communicators and listeners.

We played cooperative game where we were split into four teams. Each team was given the same Lego pieces. This is how the game works:

• Each team sends one person as the communicator.
• When the game starts, they come to me to look at the secret structure to memorize.
• They go back to their team with their hands behind their backs to explain how to re-create the structure. They can come back as many times as they wish.
• The rest of the team works together to make sense of the instructions by the communicator and then they have an opportunity to communicate with each other to collaboratively build the structure. They need to work together to all agree on what they are collectively building.
• It really challenges them to work on their core competencies: communication skills, critical thinking, personal and social responsibility!

We played a few rounds and I was proud of how each group was able to successfully re-create each structure!

We are scientists.

We saw our ladybugs go from the first stage as larvae into the next stage as a pupa where they stop eating to prepare to become an adult. We have been making observations and recording them in our booklets.

We have also continued to work on our animal research with our partner. Some are creating a poster and others have decided to present using PowerPoint. They are working so well as partners. I am so proud of them!

We are athletes.

As you know from our Student Led Conferences, we regularly do exercises that challenge us. One of the ones they seem to really enjoy is plank so I wanted to show you a picture of us! This really helps build their core muscles. May I encourage you to try some of the exercises we do at home? Feel free to ask them what some that are often chosen. We take turns choosing three exercises each day.

Volunteer Tea

We have been so blessed to have many parents support our learning this year. If you helped on a field trip, for an in-class activity, or volunteered to help at a school event like Pancake breakfast or attended a PAC meeting, please CLICK HERE to fill out the RSVP to let us know you will  join us. To learn more, click here.

Date: Wednesday, June 5
Time: 1:30 to 3:00 PM
Place: Gym

I apologize ahead of time but I will be at a meeting all day. If you are there near the end, I will see you then. We are so grateful for your time and dedication to our learning this year!

Gilmore’s Spring Fair – Community Event

You may know that my last school was Gilmore. It is located at 50 Gilmore Avenue.

You can pre-buy a punch card to save 25% off games (Wed, June 5 is the deadline to pre-buy but you can purchase at the fair). You can also enter a raffle to win $1000, $2500, or $5000.

To learn more, CLICK HERE to go to Gilmore’s website. It is a fun and well attended community event open to everyone! Feel free to invite your friends from other places to join you!

Dates to Note

• Wed. June 5 – Volunteer Tea
• Fri. June 7 – Pro-D day; students do not attend
• Fri. June 7 – Gilmore’s Spring Fair from 5 to 9 PM
• Fri. June 21 – Revs Bowling and Burnaby Lake picnic (All families are welcome!)

We really appreciate your continued support at home. Grateful for you!

Gratefully, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

I hope you had a lovely weekend! Last Thursday and Friday, I gratefully attended a two-day professional development opportunity called The Empowerment Ecosystem Summit with three leaders in assessment who travel around the world presenting for Solution Tree. With their broad reach, they can clearly see that BC is one of the leaders worldwide in standards based grading with an added focus on core competencies and curricular competencies. We are blessed in Burnaby because we have been a lead district in BC.

We measure student’s understanding of the learning standards based on the proficiency scale (emerging, developing, proficient, and extending), which is what you see on their Learning Updates (also called Report Cards) in the subject areas.

Another very important part of learning is focused on core competencies like communication (communicating and collaboration), thinking (creative, critical, and reflective), and personal and social (awareness and responsibility, positive personal and cultural identity). Here we do not assess their competency using a proficiency scale, but your child will do a self-reflection instead. In our class, I often use the vocabulary of core competencies to make this part of their learning more visible. These are the important 21 century skills that some call “soft skills”. I endorse Simon Sinek‘s take on calling these “human skills” because they need these skills to relate to one another. These skills will directly help them be better social beings which will lead to improved relationships in their lifetime.

How to support at home: Use the same language to point out this learning in themselves. Notice – Name – Nurture: Notice prosocial behaviours. Then name it to nurture it. For example, ask them to use their “critical thinking” brain to come up with solutions to problems or thank them for taking “personal responsibility” for making sure their planner is in the backpack.

Assessment is an area of passion for me. I read and listen to a lot of material on assessment and can talk shop all day with colleagues. There are many aspects to how we support our learners equitably, to accurately measure proficiency, and determine next steps to teach so that all students can increase achievement. My core beliefs in assessment are centered around children feeling empowered to take an active part in ownership over their learning through goal setting, reflection, and self-assessment while offering some choice. This directly increases their investment and engagement.

If you are curious about any of this and would like to unpack it some more, please reach out. I am happy to have a conversation with you to help you better understand.

We are mathematicians.

We continued to solidify our understanding of perimeter and area.

How to support at home: Please ask your child to teach you how to measure perimeter and area. In case they don’t remember, it is important to include the unit of measure (e.g., mm, cm, m, km for perimeter and mm², cm², m², km² for area).

We are scientists.

We are learning about the ladybugs life cycle! We did our first observation record last week. Tomorrow, I am excited to see how much they have grown since we saw them on Wednesday!

Before we went out for our Wondering Wednesday walk, we used our observation and critical thinking skills. We had a great discussion about maple seeds and how they may have adapted to increase their chance of survival.

How to support at home: Ask your child what they wonder about ladybugs. Feel free to come up with questions together to research. This is a great way to model questioning and researching skills.

Dates to Note

• Fri. May 31 – Click here to order Pizza for lunch (order by May 28)
• Fri. May 31 – 2 PM Early dismissal
• Fri. May 31 – Click here to learn more about our PAC’s Freezie sale
• Sat. June 1 from 9:30 AM to 4 PM – Hats Off Day. Click here to learn more about this great annual event that happens along Hastings street.
• Fri. June 7 – Pro-D day; students do not attend
• Fri. June 21 – Revs Bowling and Burnaby Lake picnic (All families are welcome!)

Thank you for your continued support at home! We appreciate you!

Gratefully, Ms. Chan