Dear families of Division 6,

We hope you had a great Family Day last Monday! I apologize for the late blog post.

Here is an updated Daily Health Check for Students:

Please continue to do the daily check before sending your child to school. Thank you!

Last Thursday, we were truly blessed to have Ms. Lee, Oscar’s mom, Zoom in to teach us about character development for story writing. She is an author of many published books, a podcaster, and an SFU instructor! We loved how she inspired us to use our creativity. Ms. Lee will join us again this Thursday!

For Math, we practiced subtraction with regrouping large numbers. Please practice at home if your child is not comfortable yet with regrouping up to 1,000,000, thank you. For example, 987,654 – 134,558 =

We will have some new art to share at the end of this week! Thank you for your continued support at home!

Appreciatively, Ms. Chan and Ms. Paulich

Dear Division 6 families,

We had another fantastic week together! I feel that I sound like a broken record each week but your children continue to amaze me with how hard they work, how kind they are to each other, and how well they work together so I am thrilled to be a broken record week after week!

Personal Awareness
This past week, we continued to work on our “I am” statements. We pushed ourselves to look for more words we could use to describe our strengths. I discovered that when I did the same thing, half of my final list of 10 words came from diving in further the next day! I am always offering opportunities for them to push them into their stretch zone. This was the perfect real-life example! The list we came up with on Friday was in our comfort zone. The extended list we added on Monday was in our stretch zone. So many students found new words they added as their strengths on Monday just like I did! If we had stopped on Friday, they wouldn’t have grown their vocabulary of strengths or found words that better described themselves! Take a look at Nicholas’! On Friday, they typed up their “I am” poetry so we are now ready for the next part. Stay tuned! It’s NOT what they will expect!

We are scientists.
This week, we had an opportunity to form groups to review the three body systems we covered so far: circulatory, respiratory, and digestive systems. Groups were given choice as to which one they wanted to create and present a skit. They had so much fun working together. So far, we had one group present: Olivia, Maya, Rachel, and Vienna had a clever and entertaining skit where they were in a restaurant ordering food. When the food arrived, they explained what happens and what would happen to the orange that was actually ingested by Maya!

We watched a very interesting video from Mystery Doug on Which animal has the biggest heart. Click here to view. The heart was gigantic!

We are mathematicians.
We continued to work on our addition videos. All students should have them completed by the end of this week and uploaded to their digital portfolios with their reflection. They reviewed subtraction with regrouping this week. Please feel free to check that your child understands how to subtract with regrouping. You can have fun challenging each other with big numbers!

We are readers.
We had a successful Book Club meeting with our group members. During the debriefing, we talked about what went well, what they found challenging, and what they would do differently. I am so looking forward to watching them grow in their conversations about what they read! How you can support at home: Have conversations about what your child reads. The connections they make, for example, are an important part to help them understand. Ask them about a favourite part or what they think will happen next and why. Ask them about a part in the story that surprised them, why, and how they might change that part of the story. Ask them about the characters and perhaps which character they align with. Lastly, model reading at home. Children who see their parents read are more likely to read as well.

Virtual Celebration of Learning
Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, we were not able to watch the Celebration of Learning on Friday. It will be available for viewing on Tuesday, February 16. Look out for the email with the link. Our class will be presenting their One Word.

 Celebrating Friendships
Valentine’s day celebrations looked a little different this year. There was no food shared but they brought their own snacks. They had a wonderful afternoon playing and socializing with our cohort class, Division 5.

We talked about creating Valentine’s for each other digitally. Please enjoy the kind messages they sent to each other! Click on the image to view or click here.

My heart always feels so happy when I get to spend time with your children. The sense of family is strong and I feel so blessed every day to be their teacher. Thank you for your continued support at home. Report cards will be going home before spring break but at any time, if you wish to have an update, always feel free to reach out. I am grateful for our connection.

Our sincerest appreciation, Ms. Chan & Ms. Paulich

Dear Division 6 family,

Wow, how is it already February? Time flies when you’re having fun, right? January was a great month with great learning and February started off that way too! Thanks to Nicholas, this was his celebration!

One Word
As you know, on Fridays, it’s our celebration day… not that we don’t celebrate every day but we officially celebrate on Fridays. Many of our celebrations centered around a feeling of great satisfaction in completing our One Word canvases, recording their message in front of a green screen (What’s my One Word? Why did I choose this word? How will I live my One Word this year?), and putting it all together in short videos. Ms. Paulich and I are so very proud of how hard they worked from start to finish! Here was our process again:

• Listened to a storybook about One Word
• Brainstormed, searched for and chose One Word. Some chose more than one and that was okay! I love to offer choices to students!
• Complete some writing around our One Word. Some wrote a paragraph and some wrote a few paragraphs! Here, they took a deep dive into why they chose this word and how they will live their One Word this year. I liked how some students chose to turn their One Word into an acrostic so each letter represented something to do with their One Word to make more meaning for them.
• Planned out their canvas on paper. Drew and painted their One Word.
• Learned to summarize their paragraph into main points they wanted to express in their video in front of a green screen. They were so diligent in practicing over and over again.
• Learned so many things throughout the whole process! Had fun!

A special thank you goes out to Gabriella and Iman who became our student leaders as they supported others in teaching them how to create and edit videos! I couldn’t have finished it on time without them! I so appreciate you, Gabriella and Iman! And I so appreciate everyone for their hard work, determination, and respect. In a busy classroom, everyone was so cooperative. The girls would say, “Quiet on the set!” and then there was silence for their classmate to record their piece. I am so very proud of them all!

Virtual Celebration of Learning
I am so very excited that some of the videos will be submitted for our Gilmore Virtual Celebration of Learning (COLA) that will air on Friday, February 12. Viewing will be for a limited time only so look out for the email with the link! Unfortunately, I will not be able to include all of the videos because each class was given a time frame. Please understand that as much as you may wish to see your child in the COLA, some of your children made a request not to be included so I have respected their wishes. If you haven’t received it yet, I will send you an email so you can view your child’s One Word video or you can wait for their reflections in their digital portfolios. Enjoy!

Digital Portfolios
I hope you enjoyed reviewing your child’s learning in their Digital Portfolios last week! They will continue to add to it throughout the year. If you need the invite for FreshGrade again, please let me know. Thanks!

Math

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

– Albert Einstein

As mathematicians, we have been working on creating videos teaching others how to add with regrouping including videos. I love having students explain their understanding. This really helps me see if they understand it well enough. I love what I have seen so far!

Science
As scientists, we have continued to learn about our digestive system. Many were interested to see a real camera scope into our bodies starting from food entering our bodies through our mouths. Here are some videos if you would like to watch with your child at home:

TedEd How Digestive System Works

3D real life digestive system at work

Mr. Binoc Digestive system explained

Journey Inside Your Body

Reading
This week was an exciting week because we started our Book Club! Each student chose from a list of books. While they read, they are asked to record their connections, any questions, and/or effective word choice by the author. They will read and meet in groups to discuss. Next week, they will be introduced to some phrases to help make more meaningful conversations. Please take a look at the image and begin to use these statements in your conversations at home – whether you are discussing the book they are reading or current event issues or any conversations, the more they can practice using these at home, the better they will be at using the same language at school. Thanks for your support!

Understanding Self
I firmly believe that children need to know what their strengths are as part of their self-discovery and learning about their identity. Yesterday, they wrote a poem with a list of statements to describe their strengths. “I am…” We will continue to dive deeper into understanding themselves next week. Recently, I had to deal with some adversity but understanding myself, anchoring into knowing who I am, and knowing my strengths and core values really helped me through it. I also believe that children need to know what their strengths are because that is their foundation of who they are while seeing this as a starting place to build on those strengths too. I speak about this on a recent podcast that I had the great honour to be a guest on with Dr. Dan Kreiness – Leader of Learning, watch Episode 99 or listen.

Some upcoming dates:

• Friday, February 12 – Virtual Celebration of Learning
• Monday, February 15 – Family Day
• Wednesday, February 24 – Pink Shirt Day

Please read the letter from Ms. Perez that was sent home via email regarding bringing items for Valentine’s Day. Please do not bring any food items for your child to hand out. Thank you.

Celebrate Learning by Reading Blog Posts Together
If you aren’t in the habit to read these blog posts with your child, I highly recommend it because it is a great opportunity to further engage in your child’s learning. The discussion you have brings attention to the importance of their learning at school and how you value it. Ask your child what their highlight of the week was. Ask how they helped others. Ask what they are most proud of. This will give you a great segway to sharing how proud you are or how hard they are working and their accomplishments. Try to focus more on the process of learning rather than the final product and focus on how they feel about their growth and strengths rather than how it pleases you. This encourages intrinsic motivation (feeling proud of self) versus extrinsic motivation (praise).

Looking for Feedback
What have you enjoyed learning about through our blog posts? What would you like to see more of? What suggestions might you have to add more value to you reading it? We’d love to hear! Please send me an email or write a comment on this post. Thank you for your feedback!

I get so much pleasure from writing these weekly blog posts! It’s a great way for me to reflect on the great learning that we are doing as a class. Thank you for your continued support at home. Should you have any questions, please reach out. We are your partners in your child’s learning! We are happy to connect!

With much gratitude, Ms. Chan and Ms. Paulich

Dear Division 6 family,

We had another great week! I love how quite a few wanted to celebrate how hard they worked this past week and recognized how hard everyone else worked too. As one student reflected and celebrated out today, “I’m celebrating a good month of learning and how hard we worked since we came back after the break.” (Paraphrased and I completely agree!). Your children are truly blessed to be with such a great cohort of kids and we are truly blessed to be their teachers!

We hope you enjoyed your extra day with your kids on Monday. I loved our Pro-D day as we invited a couple people from our Staff Development Team in Learning Support Services to refresh us on inclusion and the steps to planning for differentiation. We all have students in our classrooms with varying levels of skills and abilities so this was a valuable way to spend our day so we can better meet the needs of all learners.

Literacy Week
At the end of the week, we always share our celebrations. It was great to hear how many people appreciated having extra time to read this week! Today, they paired up to read to each other like they might have done in primary grades. I loved seeing their smiles as they read together and to each other! It reminded me of how important it is to continue to offer this as another way to enjoy books together even though they are intermediates!

On Tuesday, we had a guest reader, Mrs. Ballarin, read Mr. Peabody’s Apples (click link to listen to story). (Thank you so much for your time to read to us!) It is such a heartwarming story written by Madonna. Here’s a summary on Amazon: Tommy Tittlebottom sees Mr. Peabody taking an apple from Mr. Funkadeli’s fruit market and is very surprised that he doesn’t pay. Then Tommy sees it happen again and decides that Mr. Peabody is a thief. Word spreads quickly around the town. When Mr. Peabody arrives at the baseball ground, ready for the usual Saturday game, only Billy Little turns up and he soon explains what has happened. It is then up to Mr. Peabody to teach Tommy about the importance of truth and the power of words. 

On Wednesday, we read We are All Dots, which is a story about compassion. Here’s the summary on Amazon: With gentle wisdom and visual originality, this deceptively simple book makes the case that compassion is the solution to humanity’s challenges. The perfect book for any child curious about differences and diversity, this visually driven story bears a decidedly modern and inspiring message about compassion, cooperation, and a sense of shared humanity—all qualities that appear increasingly rare in recent months. With simple black-and-white drawings—little more than black and white dots and the images (of a hamburger, of a skyscraper, of a Ferris wheel, etc.) they make when arranged just so—this fantastic tale of neighbors tells a story of a world, much like our own, of haves and have-nots.

Beginning with a set of prosperous dots on one page and another set of impoverished dots on the other, the book takes us through their struggle to bridge their differences. Just when it looks look like the dots will be forever doomed, they work together to find a solution that will help them all. Great things happen when we learn to share and work together.

With such great stories, it provides you an opportunity to follow up at home on the lessons learned in these books. Watch the stories together. Talk about their thoughts and feelings. How would they feel if they were Mr. Peabody? How would they feel if they were Tommy? What do they learn from the author’s messages?

On Thursday, many students dressed up as a character! Just a friendly reminder that the Family Literacy Bingo “cards” are due on Monday, February 1st. Kids enjoyed the daily trivia! Congratulations to Princeton who won a prize!

Digital Portfolios
We have been working hard on getting our digital portfolios ready for you to comment on. Here are some tips on commenting and supporting your child’s learning process:

• Notice their thoughts, capacities, and growth.
• Connect with your child’s opinions, stories, or ideas.
• Share your intellectual curiosity; wonder aloud.
• Encourage
• Co-conspire… “You are interested in spiders? Me too, here’s an interesting website I’m reading about spiders.”
• I noticed you…
• The part I found most interesting…
• A few things you did really well here are…
• One thing I’m seeing about your work is…
• Have you considered…

If your child has chosen to use FreshGrade Connect, you will have your own login.

Here are the reflection questions that your child should have in each portfolio entry:

• Explain what the activity was or what you did.
• What are you most proud of? What were your strengths? They were asked to write an “I can…” statement.
• What did you find challenging or outside of your comfort zone?
• Next steps: What would you do differently if you were to do something similar next time? What did you learn about yourself?

If you find that your child’s reflection does not have these elements, please encourage them to go into their stretch zone and add in their reflections based on the questions above. Thank you for your encouragement and support!

Typing, Tynker, and Khan Academy
Just a reminder that we have All the Right Type (paid by the District) for students to learn how to type. Over the winter break, Hailey FINISHED the program! We are so very proud of her! The younger they can learn how to do touch typing like in grade five, the more efficient they will become as they move into upper intermediate grades as they prepare for high school. This may be a good year to learn how to be proficient before they have more and more homework next year and in grade 7!

Tynker is a website where they learn to code. Last weekend, I updated their OneNote profiles and added their username and password for Tynker.  In OneNote, go to their name > Handouts > Accounts to find their login information.

Students can always practice their math skills at Khan Academy! Login information can be found in OneNote.

Coming Up!
This coming week, we will be finishing our One Word canvases! Students will record a short speech explaining their One Word, why they chose it, and how they plan to live by it. Please have your child think about what they will say. They will be given class time too but having a conversation at home may really help some of them prepare!

Dates to note

• Tuesday, February 2 at 7:00pm – Gilmore Community Council meeting
• Friday, February 5 – Wacky Hair or Hat day!
• Gilmore swag! Go to School Cash online to buy a shirt for Pink Shirt day on Wednesday, February 24. The water bottles are stainless steel and only $10. There were quite a few kids who seemed to express interest! They are sold at or below cost. Masks are available for purchase too!

Thank you for your continued support! We appreciate you for all that you do to support us and your child at home. We would love to know, what are some of your favourite literacy activities you did at home for the Bingo card? Please leave a comment! Thank you!

With such gratefulness, Ms. Chan and Mrs. Paulich