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