Dear Division 11 Families,

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!

We are continuing our focus on family, and this week our students will be exploring different wedding traditions around the world. Please have a conversation with your child about some wedding traditions from your culture or other cultures you have experienced. Since we are focusing on “aspects of life shared by and common to people and cultures,” discuss the similarities and differences in wedding traditions from your experiences. We will continue using a Venn diagram in class to help illustrate our thinking.

In math, our students are becoming experts at analyzing graphs. They are starting to show more confidence when interpreting bar graphs or pictographs and sharing what they have learned. This week, we will be wrapping up our data analysis unit. Students will go through the entire process on their own: coming up with survey questions, collecting data using a tally chart, representing their data with either a bar graph or a pictograph, and sharing their findings.

In art, our students have been learning about warm and cool colors and have created two watercolor paintings using patterns. This week, we will dive deeper into how patterns are used in art by weaving these two paintings together to create one unique piece!

Thank you, families, for your continued support!

Warm regards, Ms. Kim

We are grateful.

There is so much to feel grateful for. We have many opportunities throughout our day to consider what we are grateful for. We worked on our Thankful Poems inspired after we read The Thankful Book by Todd Parr and Feeling Grateful: How to Add More Goodness to Your Gladness by Kobi Yamada. Watch this book here.

One of my most favourite videos on YouTube is titled Gratitude. This video reminds us to find beauty in the simple things in life like how each day is a gift and the beauty in our world. “Nature’s beauty is a gift that cultivates appreciation and gratitude.” We started watching this video at 4:30.

Many happiness researchers found that practicing gratitude and focusing on the positive aspects of life can enhance happiness. This leads to an improved sense of overall well-being and a mindset we can cultivate. One way we can develop our social awareness and build positive relationships is by noticing and expressing gratitude.

This also reminded me of how Indigenous People honour the land and have a deep sense of place. Louie Schwartzberg stated, “We protect what we fall in love with.” Imagine if everyone fell in love with nature and the unceded land we have the privilege to live on.

Ways to support at home: Regularly practice gratitude by modeling what you are grateful for. I wrote a blog post called The Gift of Gratitude if you are interested to read it and if you’re curious about how gratitude is taught and modelled in the classroom, I wrote a post that was published on Edutopia called Teaching and Modeling Gratitude in Elementary School. These posts may provide you with some ideas on how our gratitude practice at school can be aligned with what you do at home.

We are mathematicians.

We continued to learn about patterns. Last week we reviewed increasing patterns and learned about decreasing patterns. Here are some examples during play and in our Patterns Books.

Students are expected to know the following:

• increasing and decreasing patterns using words and numbers, based on concrete experiences
  • creating patterns using concrete, pictorial, and numerical representations
  • representing increasing and decreasing patterns in multiple ways

Repeating patterns

Increasing patterns

Decreasing patterns

 

Ways to support at home: Reinforce their learning about patterns – repeating, increasing, and decreasing at home by creating their own and asking them to describe their pattern.

We are scientists.

This week, we learned about the three states of matter.

We watched this video and then practiced being molecules. On the carpet, we were solids where we (as particles) are in a fixed position. Then we were liquid particles moving around on the carpet area only. Finally, we were free to roam around the room in a completely random and much farther apart like in a gas; they loved this one the most!

Students were given the opportunity to add to their Matter Science Books to show understanding in their own way.

Applied Design, Skills and Technologies (ADST) Curriculum

Your children are fast learners! On Friday, we logged into the laptops for the first time. They quickly learned how to login and shut down. All students brought home a blue sheet to memorize their login information and password.

Ways to support at home: Please help your child find a strategy to memorize their username, email address, and password. The next lesson will be to learn how to communicate through email so it will be important to learn how to login to Office 365 with their email address. Thank you!

Stream of Dreams

Have you had a chance to look at all of the fish students of Kitchener painted? They are now on the fence at the front of the school. Enjoy finding the fish your child painted!

Kitchener’s Family Movie Night is this Friday, October 18 at 4:00 PM! Doors open at 3:30 PM.

Please click here to learn more. If you plan to attend, CLICK HERE to RSVP. Hope to see you there!

If you ordered apples, you can pick them up before the movie.

Reminders

• Friday, October 25 is Pro-D day; students do not attend

We are excited to share that starting next week, Ms. Kim will be in our class on Mondays as well! I am looking forward to having some opportunities to be in the classroom to team teach with her on Monday and Wednesday. Thank you for your continued support at home. Should you have any questions, please feel free to ask. We are here as partners and we appreciate you!

Sincerely, Ms. Chan