Dear families,

I feel so blessed to be at Kitchener as your child’s teacher and the school’s Head Teacher. On Thursday, October 5, it was World Teacher’s Day and it made me feel overwhelmingly grateful to have the honour to be in a profession that changes lives and touches hearts every day. I cannot imagine a more rewarding and joyful role for myself. I felt compelled to share my feelings on X/Twitter. See image on the right.

This year, I celebrate my 25th year as a teacher. My life has been enriched because of the love and connections we get to create every day together. Thank you for sharing your children with me.

Social-emotional Learning

Today, I shared my story about the boomerang I have in the class. I call it a joy boomerang. Why? It represents how when we share our joy, it spreads to others, and then their joy boomerangs and comes back to us.

Our emotions are contagious. The more we contribute to our positive and supportive classroom community as caring and helpful leaders, the more we feel good about being a part of the joyfilled space we share. It’s the same boomerang effect with kindness. When we show helpfulness and deep kindness toward others, we cultivate a joy inside of us.

Every morning, we sit together in our Community Circle to share our feelings and our story. One of the common feelings your children share is how happy they feel because they are in our class. It is truly heartwarming to hear.

“Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place).” – First Peoples Principles of Learning

Wonder Wednesdays as Scientists

On Wednesday, we went for a short walk outside with Ms. Tai’s and Ms. Santorelli’s classes. This was an introduction to what will be the first of many this year. The purpose is to spark curiosity and wonderment about the place we live and the world around us. It is also to develop place consciousness and foster an appreciation for the land we have the privilege to live.

Here are some of the curricular competencies in the Science curriculum:

Please CLICK HERE to read the notice or click on the image on the right to view the PDF. We may need some parent volunteers on some of our walks in the future, please. Thank you!

How to support at home: Anytime you go for walks or car rides, encourage your child to be curious! Model curiosity by sharing your “I wonder” statements about what you see in your local environment.

City of Burnaby’s Recycling Program

Also on Wednesday, we had a representative from the City of Burnaby’s Recycling program come to teach us all about recycling. Students had an exciting opportunity to see a truck in action too!

How to support at home: Talk about environmental stewardship and involve them in the habit of recycling at home like paper products, metals, plastics, and the management of food and yard waste. Recycling is more than just a routine; it’s a crucial step in reducing our environmental impact. Discuss the importance of reducing waste, reusing items whenever possible, and recycling materials to give them new life. By doing so, we play a vital role in preserving our land and conserving valuable resources.

This year at Kitchener, we have a bigger school recycling program that include plastics like our milk containers, paper products, and food waste.

We are scientists.

This week, we continued to extend our learning about matter. We learned that there are three states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas.

As we dove in deeper into solids, we discovered that solids can have different properties. They can differ in their shape, size, colour, and texture. We also learned about mass and volume.

Students are working hard in their All About Matter booklets!

How to support at home: Ask your child to explain the different properties to you. Use the image to the left to compare the properties. They each got to hold these items to learn about the different properties of solids.

Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies (ADST)

I am so proud of everyone’s patience and perseverance as they had their first introduction to using laptops today! Everyone was able to successfully login and logout. We practiced this a few times to make sure they knew how. Some had an opportunity to launch Google Chrome to visit our class blog too!

I highly encourage you to read these blog posts WITH your child. Better yet, have them read the blog post to you! It’s a real reason to read! That way, you can talk about what they learned too. We know that when children review and can teach you about what they learned, it solidifies their understanding. As Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Your child came home with a blue sheet that has their login information. The first number you see is actually their 7-digit pupil number. This is the same as their username which is what they need in order to login to the laptops.

Their email address is their pupil number and @edu.burnabyschools.ca so it looks something like this: 2951869@edu.burnabyschools.ca. This is one of the trickiest for young children to memorize but grade 2/3s can do it! They will need to have this memorized by next Friday when we log in to O365. I will not have cards made with their login information and I don’t want them to write this private information in their planners either. The best place to keep their password safe and secure is in their brain. Thank you for your support at home!

Epic

Epic is a free website and app that offers over 40,000 popular books. (If you are interested, families can purchase a plan that allows them to use it in the evenings and weekends too.) The free version can be accessed at home starting at 7:00am on school days until 3:00pm so if your child is sick at home, they can still read high interest books on Epic! Of course, only if they have the energy. Their primary focus should be resting and feeling better!

They will have opportunities to read books on Epic while at school too.

Planners

Now that your child has their long awaited planners, please have them bring it to school every day.

How to support at home: Please check the planner every day and initial it so I know it was read. If you have not paid for the planner yet, please go to School Cash Online.

When my children were young, their responsibility after school was to empty their lunch bag, put any food scraps into the food waste bin, put their thermos into the sink, and take out their planners to put it in the same spot every day for me to read and initial.

I encourage families to make it their child’s responsibility to ensure their planner is in their backpacks the night before school. If they do this every night, they will develop a good habit as they will likely have Planners until the end of grade 7! Children this age will sometimes say to me when they don’t bring their planner to school, “My mom forgot to put it in my backpack.” That’s when I say to them, “It is your responsibility. Not your mom’s.” They are ready for this independence at this age. 🙂

Kitchener’s Multicultural Dinner

You are all invited to attend the Multicultural Dinner on Thursday, October 12 at 6:30pm in the gym. It is a great way to get to know more people in our community! Please bring a dish from your culture to share. In order to help us plan for the number of people attending, we ask that you fill out this online form. CLICK HERE to fill it out to let us know how many people will be attending. Click here to learn more.

Reminders

• Monday, October 9: Thanksgiving Day; school closed
• Wednesday, October 11: Ms. Chan will be at an all-day workshop. There will be a TTOC in my place. She is a friend and an experienced retired teacher! They will have a great day! 🙂
• Friday, October 20: Pro-D Day; no school for students
• Thursday, November 2: Photo re-takes
• SAVE THE DATE: Bowling at Revs on Friday, November 17. We need parent volunteer drivers, please. Thank you!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am grateful we work as partners in your child’s learning! Thank you for your continued support at home. Please feel free to write a comment in response to this post. I appreciate you for your interest and time to invest in your child’s learning each week by reading our class blog. Enjoy the long weekend!

With great appreciation, Ms. Chan