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

Dear families,

I am excited to inform you that Ms. Kapusta will be our teacher during my Head Teacher time! I worked with her at Gilmore last year and am absolutely thrilled that she will be my partner this year! She has been with our class for the past two Tuesdays and they already adore her! Last week, they painted the letters that spell “Every child matters.”

Last week, we spent time every day learning about Orange Shirt Day and why we commemorate National Truth and Reconciliation day. Some stories we read were:

• Shi shi-etko by Nicola Campbell
• Every Child Matters by Phyllis Webstad
• The Orange Shirt Story by Phyllis Webstad
• I Am Not a Number by Jenny Kay Dupuis

“Learning involves recognizing the consequences of one’s actions.” – First Peoples Principles of Learning

We reflected on what “every child matters” means and the significance of Orange Shirt Day. This required us to use our critical thinking skills to formulate our thoughts and feelings to put into words. It wasn’t easy for some of them to articulate but with perseverance, guidance, and a push into their stretch zones, they did it.

How to support learning at home: Ask your child what they learned about residential schools and the importance of Orange Shirt Day. It can be hard for children to listen to our Canadian history and how Indigenous families were greatly and negatively impacted by residential schools. As reassurance, each time we discussed this, I reminded them that they are safe and very well loved and cared for at school.

On Thursday, we gathered in our whole school assembly to learn more about Orange Shirt Day and why we have a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. I had the greatest honour to share the land acknowledgement. I spoke about our homes and the beautiful land we have the privilege and blessing to live on. I guided us all to feel gratitude deep in our hearts for the unceded territory that we get to live, learn, and play.

We are artists.

One of Ms. Kapusta’s passions is teaching art so she will have an opportunity to introduce our artists to explore different kinds of art including tools, styles, and mediums to develop their creativity! The week before, she led us in learning some Doodle art techniques. Check out some of the doodles of ourselves!

We are Mathematicians.

We continued to learn about patterns. Last week, we created our own action patterns with partners and then each had an opportunity to demonstrate our patterns for our classmates guess. They had so much fun!

Our mathematicians were introduced to increasing patterns and had opportunities to create theirs to add the class book we are creating on Book Creator (an iPad app).

How to support learning at home: Review the concepts of repeating patterns and increasing patterns. Use various household items to create patterns. Ask your child to identify the core pattern (the pattern that repeats) and to name the pattern. For example: fork fork spoon knife – fork fork spoon knife. The core pattern would be “fork fork spoon knife”. They would name it an AABC pattern.

For an increasing pattern, it might look like this: fork spoon – fork spoon spoon – fork spoon spoon spoon – fork spoon spoon spoon spoon. This is a grade 3 concept they are expected to understand. They need to be able to describe the pattern rule. For example, the pattern rule would be described like this:

Start with one fork and one spoon. Add one more spoon each time.

Students continued to enjoy learning their Making 10s math facts! We learned how to play Making 10s Go Fish.

How to support learning at home: Play Making Tens GO Fish – The goal is to have combinations that equal 10. Take a regular deck of cards. Remove the Jack and King. The Queen represents zero because it looks like a zero. Combinations that make ten: 0+10, 1+9, 2+8, 3+7, 4+6, 5+5.

Each player starts with 5 cards. If any of the cards they hold make a combination of 10, they can put the pair of cards down for all to see. For example, if you have a 3 and a 7, you can put the cards down because they equal 10.

Then just like how you would play Go Fish, the first player asks anyone playing for a matching card that equals 10. If they have a 6 in their hand, then say, “Do you have a 4?” If they have a 5 in their hand, then say, “Do you have a 5?” If not, “go fish” and take a card from the central deck. Have fun!

If you would like to learn more about the grade 2 and 3 curriculum thus far, please visit our We Are Mathematicians page.

We are scientists.

We started our learning about matter and how everything is made of matter. To solidify this concept, each child wrote “matter” on a sticky note and were challenged to go around the classroom and school to use their label to tap different things they saw that is considered matter. Yes, that is just about everything! You can imagine how excited (maybe a little too excited!) they were to do that! They were tapping all sorts of things including each other!

We are creating our booklet on Matter. I love to have students create their understanding of concepts. This is at the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy! Click here to learn more.

How to support at home: Ask your child what they understand about matter. We learned that matter is anything that takes up space and can be weighed.

We are readers.

We are learning to build our reading stamina. Last week, we worked up to being able to sit in one spot and read for a full 6 minutes. We hope to reach 10 minutes this week.

Fridays will be our Library time. The Library is open EVERY DAY from 9 to 9:30am for a flexible book exchange and EVERY DAY 11:30 to 12pm except Thursdays. What this means is that they don’t have to wait until Friday to exchange their books. This works out perfectly because we begin every day with Heart Time (a soft start) so they can visit the library then!

West Coast Weather

The weather is changing. We will begin to have more days with rainy weather and wet grounds. Please have your child prepared for the weather as they will be going outside even in the rain.

Please bring a change of clothes to keep in the classroom. Clearly label the bag with your child’s name.

Please also have inside shoes to change out of boots. Boots are typically heavy and not the best for sitting or moving around throughout the day. Thank you.

Save the Date!

On Friday, November 17, we will be going bowling in the afternoon with Divisions 14 and 15 (Ms. Tai and Ms. Santorelli’s classes)! We will be going to Revs Bowling at 5502 Lougheed Hwy.

We will need parent volunteer drivers. If you are available to help us, please save the date! Thank you so much!

Reminders

• Wednesday, October 4: Individual photo day
• Please go to School Cash Online to pay for school supplies. Although our planners have not arrived just yet, there is an option to pay for that as well. We hope to have the planner the following week. Due to the fire in their warehouse, they had to reprint all of our planners, hence the delay.
• Monday, October 9: Thanksgiving Day; school closed
• Request: If you have extra disposable (plastic or wooden) forks and spoons sitting in your drawers that you don’t think you will use, please send them to school. Sometimes, lunches are packed without utensils, so I usually have a bin they can get it from. Thank you!

As always, I have such gratitude for your support at home as we work together as partners in your child’s learning. Thank you for reading the weekly blog post that keeps you informed about what we are learning about. Please feel free to read it together with your child as an invitation to review what they learned.

I am so very blessed to spend my time at work with your children! They bring me such joy!

With much love and gratitude, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

We definitely had a fun and fantastic second week of getting to know each other better. We are getting to know each other better and they are settling in very nicely into our classroom routines. Last Tuesday, my friend from my previous school was our TOC during my Head Teacher time. Ms. Kapusta commented on how they already knew our routines well! She introduced doodle art to them. They are almost all finished. Once we put them up on the bulletin board, I will share an image with you.

We thoroughly enjoyed our All About Me Bag presentations throughout the week! Children did so well for their first presentation! Thank you for your support in helping them prepare.

Families as Partners

I am ever so grateful for your time to have rich conversation about your child during our conferences. It was such valuable information which added to the form you so thoughtfully filled out prior to our meeting. I appreciated your openness. We are very fortunate and appreciate having such supportive parents. I am very excited about this upcoming year as we work together to support your child’s overall development and education. Thank you for your part in being my partner! Please feel free to connect with me anytime if you have any questions or concerns.

One of the questions brought up was your curiosity about the curriculum. If you are interested, please check out the Page on our class blog called “We Are Learners”

Here, you will find the curricular areas and what we are currently learning about. If you would like to check out our full BC curriculum, click here. Click on the curriculum and then choose the grade level.

Be sure to click on “Elaborations” for more details.

Core Competencies Development

We played some different games to practice the skills of communication, cooperation, and collaboration as we developed our teamwork skills.

One of our games was “Basketball”. They were placed into teams. They had to use the backboard to try to get as many balls into the basket. Each player took turns to be the backboard. Click here to see my X/Twitter post. You will see a short video of what the activity looked like. So many smiles and so much laughter was shared! I loved the reflection time afterwards when we unpacked all of the skills we practiced and the importance of teamwork!

The other game we played was “Keep up”. Using a happy face balloon, each team of 3-4 people had to take turns keeping the balloon up in the air for as long as they can. They tried to beat their personal team best. Again, the smiles and laughter with cooperation was such a happy sight to see! Great communication and teamwork skills too!

Terry Fox

We learned about Terry Fox’s life and dream to run across Canada to raise awareness and money for cancer research. We read a story written from the perspective on his best friend called Terry and Me and wrote our reflection in our writing books.

On Friday, we went to Willingdon Heights Park as a school to participate in the Terry Fox Run. It’s not too late to make a donation to the Terry Fox Foundation if you wish. Please click here.

We are Mathematicians.

This week, we played around with making patterns. We made a class patterns book with all of our examples! The main learning was around repeating patterns, identifying the core pattern, and describing the pattern as AB, ABB, ABC, etc. We also practiced action patterns with our bodies too! They really enjoyed that!

How you can support at home: Look for patterns around your home and in the neighbourhood. There are a lot of patterns out in nature too! Encourage them to find them in their natural surroundings! Use items in your home to create patterns together! Ask them to identify the core pattern and describe the pattern like AB, ABC. That is the core pattern that repeats.

We also used ten frames to practice ways to make ten. This means learning the combinations that equal 10 when we add two numbers together:

0 + 10 = 10
1 + 9 = 10
2 + 8 = 10
3 + 7 = 10
4 + 6 = 10
5 + 5 = 10

We practiced our accuracy and speed using a new iPad app named MathTappers: Find Sums. Click here to learn more. They had so much fun learning and practicing their facts! So many personal bests were reached with each turn!

How you can support at home: Click here to download this FREE app on your Apple device. Tap on the little blue i in the top right hand corner to change the sum to 10. This week, I will teach them a game using cards to practice the same concepts so you will have a new game to play with your child at home!

Orange Shirt Day

This week, our learning will be centered around Truth and Reconciliation. This Thursday, we will have an assembly in the morning before recess. Students are encouraged to wear orange on Thursday. Our class will be doing a little presentation to share our thoughts and feelings.

Reminders

• Friday, September 29: Pro-D Day; school not in session
• Saturday, September 30: National Day for Truth and Reconciliation – commemorate the history and legacy of the residential school system
• Monday, October 2: Truth and Reconciliation; school closed
• Wednesday, October 4: Individual Photo Day

Gratitude

Every day, I am so grateful to be your child’s teacher. There are so many moments in each day that bring us joy. Thank you for your sharing your children with us and for working with me to see them thrive and flourish!

Please feel free to leave a comment on this post or to email me with your thoughts or theirs on our past week! I’d love to hear about it! Thank you! 🙂

With much gratitude, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

We had a wonderful first week together! Everyone is settling in well as we learn about each other and our classroom routines. I just can’t help but tell them how much I appreciate them because of the joy they bring to my heart! Thank you for sharing your beautiful children with me. I am committed to making it a phenomenal year of growth, love, learning, and joy in each other’s presence because we all will play a part in making it happen!

I really appreciate the thoughtful and thorough Families and Partners Information forms you have filled out and returned to me. I still have a few to collect so please send it back to school on Monday, if possible. If you need another copy, CLICK HERE. It has brought me joy to read them over and to learn more about your child and your family!

Meet the Teacher Night

On Wednesday, I met with many of you to tell you a little more about me, my passions, beliefs, and teaching philosophy. Thank you for being there! I know some of you couldn’t be there so here is a very quick recap plus some extra information:

• What is key to building a warm, welcoming and inclusive environment where all children love to be, where they can feel like their authentic selves, and where they feel like they are a key contributing member with gifts and leadership qualities? Building a kind, thoughtful classroom culture based on children feeling loved, seen, valued, heard, appreciated, and safe is KEY! I love cultivating love and joy, and teaching them how to cultivate joy too! We will regularly practice expressing gratitude, which is key to increasing our level of happiness; when children are happy, they learn better because it activates more centers of our brain! These are non-negotiables. (If you are interested, I included some links to my blog posts on the topics.)
• I love to plan for fun, varied, relevant, and meaningful lessons and activities. I aim to make them engaging so children are motivated to learn. How do I do this? I try to make learning feel like an experience that involves not only their active brains but their bodies. They have learned lot of sign language so far! Ask them to teach you what they know!
• A common question centers around blended grade classes. We have almost an even split between grade 2s and 3s. If you’d like to learn more, CLICK HERE. For most of my career, I have taught grade 2/3. This is my absolute favourite combination! They have a beautiful opportunity to learn together at this age group. Many of your children’s learning will be driven by personal goal setting and reflection so it empowers them to take ownership of their own learning.
• I am a firm believer in developing core competencies and curricular competencies through the learning standards. I love to foster a sense of curiosity. One of my favourite things to offer are Passion Projects!
• I will not assign a lot of paper homework but I will send home unfinished work from time to time. I highly encourage children to read and write every day or practice their math skills, especially depending on the areas they need further development.
• All primary classes will be collecting $30 for school supplies. You will be able to pay on School Cash Online once it is set up.
• I added your email address to this class blog. Every time there is a new post, you will receive email notification. I aim to write weekly blog posts to keep you informed about all of the fun and engaging learning we get to do. I believe that these blog posts help to tell our story. Please see this as a gift to provide you with an opportunity to share a big part of their school life with you. Use it to solidify learning, deepen their understanding, and grow their curiosity. Thank you for your investment in your child’s education and thank you for being partners with me! Happy reading!

HAWKS Week

Last week was HAWKS week. Every day, we focused on a different word. We read stories that were aligned with the theme of the day, had discussions, and learned how to sign:

H = Helpful
A = Accepting
W = Welcoming
K = Kindness
S = Safety

For helpful, we played a balls in a basket game where we had to help our partners on our team move some balls to and from the baskets. They had fun!

For accepting, we read a book called The Dot by Peter Reynolds and used oil pastels to create our own dots. I’m sorry but I forgot to take a picture of their beautiful art! I will share it next week. We also had an opportunity to join a live event with Peter Reynolds on Friday for International Dot day! They got to hear him share his story.

For welcoming, we did an interactive activity where we practiced 5 different levels of being welcoming and made our own special handshakes with some classmates.

When your children line up in the morning, please encourage them to say hello to their classmates already in line. This really fosters a sense of welcoming and belonging. It also helps develop their comfort with each other in social interactions and makes them feel less like strangers. You can model this to them too when you say hello to their classmates already in line. Feel free to ask them their name. “Remember that a person’s name is to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” – Dale Carnegie

• Level 1: Smile only with no teeth showing.
• Level 2: Smile with teeth.
• Level 3: Smile with teeth and wave.
• Level 4: Smile with teeth, wave, and have wider eyes that say, “I’m happy to see you!”
• Level 5: All of the above but with an even larger big mouthed smile and waving both arms to say hello!

For kindness, we read a couple of books on kindness and wrote our first journal entry!

For safety, we practiced being safe in the gym with Mr. Ho, our PE teacher for the year.

Math

Children had fun graphing our classmate’s birthdays! We got to see that there are a couple months where we have no birthdays and a month where we have birthdays three days in a row!

All About Me in a Bag

Your child should have come home on Friday with a paper bag and an “All About Me Bag” notice. CLICK HERE if you did not receive the details on our first presentation opportunity!

I will be using a rubric to assess. CLICK HERE to see it. This will give you and your child a better idea of how to prepare. No pressure! This is their first presentation and I know they will continue to improve throughout the year. They will have many more opportunities! It truly is incredible how much they develop over the year with their communication and presentation skills.

How can you support? Please help them choose 3 items. For each item, help them come up with at least 3 details about each. It would be very helpful to write down what they want to share, practice reading it over and over again so they will feel more confident. Here’s a tip: Video record them presenting. Watch it together and have them reflect on what they can improve. Then practice again and record after a few more tries. I bet you’ll see an improvement!

Thank you! Presentations will begin anytime next week. If they are ready on Monday, they can present. If they aren’t ready until Friday, that’s okay too! I’ll find time for them to present on Friday!

Families as Partners

Thank you for booking an appointment to spend some time with me this week as you will have a fantastic opportunity to tell me more about your child. All appointments are 10 minutes long. I will refer to the information sheet you filled out and take some extra notes based on our valuable conversation.

If you did not book an appointment yet, please CLICK HERE to choose a time. I am really looking forward to it! I am so grateful for your time!

Terry Fox Run and Early Dismissal

On Friday, September 22, we will have a Terry Fox Run. After recess, we will gather in the gym for a short assembly and then walk to Willingdon Park for our run. They will be back on time for lunch. Please have your child dress appropriately for the weather and to bring a water bottle. Thank you! Look for fundraising information on the school website if you are interested in supporting the Terry Fox Foundation. It will be added early this week.

In the afternoon, there is an early dismissal so please pick up your child promptly at 2:00pm. Children often worry when their families don’t pick them up on time during early dismissal days.

Gratitude

In the short time I have been at Kitchener, I feel so blessed and grateful to be placed here. Staff, families, and children have made me feel so welcomed and so supported. I am so fortunate to be placed in such a warm and inviting community. Thank you to ALL of you for your part in making Kitchener such a phenomenal place to be! I appreciate you!

With a heart full of love and gratitude,

Ms. Chan