Dearest Division 6 family!

I hope you had a most wonderful and relaxing spring break! I thoroughly enjoyed mine as I primarily spent time at home enjoying checking things off my to-do list, passion projects, and connecting with many friends over Zoom. I also celebrated my birthday over the break and felt so loved.

As we return to school on Monday, please continue to do the health check in the morning before coming to school and remind your child to wash their hands well at school. We will continue to remind them to do the same when at school. Click here to learn more about the Daily Health Check.

I hope you enjoyed reading the report cards with your child. It’s important to discuss and celebrate all of the strengths and growth areas. We write them from a strength-based perspective. I often tell people that although it takes numerous hours to write, this is dedicated time where I am intentionally thinking about each student, to celebrate their strengths, consider where they can be pushed for next steps, and how best to support each one of them moving forward. It’s a great time to stop to reflect. If you would like to meet to discuss any part of your child’s progress, please let us know and we will set up a time to meet over Zoom.

Here are some Mystery Doug videos you can enjoy with your family:

How Pencils are Made?
Could People Ever Walk on Walls?
How is a Rainbow Made?

We have an exciting first week back planned. I have done a lot of daily professional development over the break and I’m feeling even more impassioned with some new ideas to inspire your child. One thing we talk about every day is pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone. I would love for you to start having conversations at home about that too. So instead of asking your child, “What did you do at school today?” ask…

• What did you do that was in your stretch zone today? Follow up with: Your stretch zone is where you grow more!
• What did you do that required you to be brave today? Follow up with: You’re braver than you think. You can do hard things.
• What did you do to help, support, or in service to others today? Follow up with: How does that make you feel when you show kindness?
• How did you make someone’s day a brighter one? Follow up with: How does that make you feel when you made an impact?
• How hard did you work today? Follow up with: How does it feel when you persevere and work hard to complete your assignments?
• What are you most proud of today? Follow up with: What would you like to be proud of for tomorrow? What might a goal be?

I recently wrote a post as the first one to introduce a new monthly blog series called Many Gifts to Discover. Go to my livchan.com website to read if you are interested. I’d love to hear what resonated with you most. Thank you for reading and for sharing!

As always, thank you for your continued support at home. We treasure our partnership!

Sincerely, Ms. Chan

Reminders:

• Sign and return report card envelopes by the end of the week, please.
• Wednesday, March 31 is jersey day. Please wear your favourite jersey to school!
• Continue to practice all math facts at home (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division). As a mother, I know it takes time and effort at home to practice WITH your child but there is a direct positive impact because they can make calculations with greater speed, accuracy, and confidence. I know their grade 6 and eventually grade 7 teachers appreciate it!

Dear Division 6 family,

What a week! It flew by! I did not receive any suggestions on how this blog space can better serve you so if you have any recommendations, please feel free to share anytime. You can finish this sentence starter:

• On this blog, what I like is _________.
• I wish _________ .

Please share it as a comment on this blog or send me an email. Thank you for your input!

For Math, we started our unit on multiplication. At first, students were given a blank sheet of paper to see what they know already. This was used as a pre-assessment and will be used to compare what they know at the end of the unit to show growth. Next, we did a Number Talk (in the curriculum) with the number 10 together. The next day, they tried doing a Number Talk with the number 12 on their own. A number talk is a brief discussion that focuses on student solutions for a chosen math concept. Students are asked to share their math processes while I record their thinking visually.

Please continue to have your child diligently review (memorization would be so helpful!) their multiplication math facts to increase their computational fluency and accuracy. Many students struggle with computations when we multiply larger numbers so becoming familiar with the facts is a huge advantage to gaining confidence much quicker!

As scientists, we started our next body system: the muscular-skeletal system. We watched this video to help us understand better. Click here to watch at home.

As scientists, some students started researching their disease. As mentioned before, we are one step closer to our Gilmore Medical Conference where our expert doctors in their field will present on a disease of interest. Any students who are finished early will help with the organization of our event like creating the conference tags, signs or posters, the schedule and program for the day, etc. If any of you are in the medical field and would like to be a guest speaker on our conference day, please let me know! We will need a keynote speaker to begin our morning! More details to come in the following weeks!

On Friday, we co-constructed our criteria for our presentation. Click here to view the PDF and make a copy if you wish.

The opening slide should introduce themselves as Dr. _____ so if I was researching heart attacks, I would be Dr. Chan from Cardiology.

Please review the criteria with your child. Thank you!

The class has been visiting the library to work with Mrs. Papapanagiotou on learning how to properly cite the resources we use. This project is a fantastic way of practicing our new knowledge as responsible digital citizens who properly acknowledge the work of others. If you have any questions at all, please reach out to ask for clarification.

Report cards will be going home at the end of this week.

When we think about parents at home and the support you give to your child, we deeply appreciate you!

Gratefully, Ms. Chan and Mrs. Paulich

Dearest Division 6 family,

I so appreciate you for your time to read my blog posts every week and your interest to stay informed. It is hard to believe we are finished another month and more than halfway through the year! These updates are for you so I’m looking for feedback on these weekly posts. What is something you really enjoy? What would you like to see more of? What suggestions do you have to make this space more beneficial to you? Thank you for your feedback! Please comment on the blog or send me an email at Livia.Chan@burnabyshcools.ca. Thank you for your time!

Last week, students worked hard on their self-assessments and reflected on what they are proud of. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading all of their responses. I felt so proud to read their thoughts. Reflection is such an important part of learning.

“We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” – John Dewey

To understand the importance of reflection, it was ADDED to our revised curriculum in our Core Competencies under Thinking – Critical and Reflective Thinking. I recently found an article on FreshGrade’s website about reflection. You will see some of their reflections in their report cards in the Student Voice section. They were so honest and open!

I also took this opportunity to have my students write a “report card” for me! I asked them for feedback on what I am doing well and what I could be doing better. Their honest feedback was so appreciated. I firmly believe in the power of reflection, the power of voice, and self-advocacy. If there is something I can change to make their school experience a better one, I am open to listening and we can co-create the curriculum in response!

This past week, we continued to work on our stories that Ms. Lee, Oscar’s mom, encouraged us to write. On Thursday, we were on Zoom with Ms. Lee again! She taught us some valuable tips on overcoming the fear of sharing our writing and speaking. Thank you to Olivia H., Quinson, and Rasul who pushed themselves outside of their comfort zone to read their stories. They were so SO good! I would have loved to see more students dive into their stretch zone to read their stories. Please encourage your child to find the courage to share, thank you! We SO appreciate her time and for sharing her expertise with us! Ms. Lee also wrote and shared her own story based on the collective brainstorming they did last week. The story was so engaging! We were SO blessed to have her teach our class! Thank you so much, Ms. Lee!

Students finished some window art and thank you to Ms. Paulich, it beautifies our windows! I loved seeing the different designs and colours. It’s always so amazing to me that students are given the same instructions but the final results are so varied because of the creativity in their brains!

Coming up, we will begin to learn about multiplication so if your child does not know their multiplication facts, please have them practice at home. We will learn some games they can play at home to review too so get a deck of cards ready to have some fun and you practice your math facts with them!

As always, we really appreciate your continued support at home. At any time, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. Thank you for being partners in your child’s learning.

Remember, I’m looking for feedback on what you like and what you’d like to see more of in these blog posts, so please share!

We also have some exciting news! We have a new student named Dante who will be joining our class in the morning! He comes from a nearby Vancouver school. Welcome, Dante, and your family! We are thrilled you will be joining our school family!

With a heart full of appreciation, Ms. Chan and Mrs. Paulich

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