Dear Div 6 family,

I really do see us as a family who comes together to not only spend time but to learn about each other and enjoy our company. Your child may have shared with you that one of our guinea pigs, Coconut, passed early Thursday morning. I thought it was going to be a difficult day at work because I was feeling so sad but as I shared with your children, I also knew I would be surrounded by people who make me feel happier. I knew being around your children would lift my spirits, that their smiles would bring a smile to my face, and their love and care would put a patch on my broken heart. They did just that. 🙂

As you know, every morning, we begin our days with our Community Circle time. We have Thankful Thursdays to remind us there are many things we can be thankful for. Everyone takes a turn to share something they are thankful for. I am a firm believer that gratitude leads to greater feelings of happiness so I see many things as gifts I am grateful for. Every day is a gift. Every interaction is a gift. Every child is a gift for me to teach and get to know better through every interaction. I shared how grateful I am because of how happy they make me feel every day. Thank you for having such wonderful children that bring me such true joy!

There were many lessons I hope your child took away from this: It is okay to not feel okay. Loss and sadness is a real feeling. Even as young children, they can provide valuable support to adults like their teacher, which helps them see their importance and how they can play a big role in caring and comforting others with their words and actions. I spoke about “today’s best” and how I may not be able to give them my usual “today’s best” but I will commit to giving them “today’s best”. It is unrealistic to believe that we can give 100% all of the time but if they can give the best they can at that moment, that is all we can ask for.

Friday and Hallowe’en
Friday was a fun day! Every Friday, we begin our day with Mrs. Pappapanagiotou for our Book Exchange. Feel free to pop that into your calendar so you can remind your child to return their books. When we returned to class, it was time for our Costume Parade. So many cool costumes! After that, we broke into groups for our Cup Challenge. Here, they were given 10 cups with 4 strings attached to an elastic band. They were asked not to use their hands and can only communicate through gestures and hand signals (no voices!). Their challenge was to work as a team to copy the structure on the board. They had so much fun and realized that they HAD to work as a team or the elastic would not stretch well enough to release the cup! In the afternoon, the entire school played BINGO with announcers calling the numbers of the PA. I wish you could see the excitement and smiles on their faces! So much fun!

Math
We learned about decimals this week. In grade 5, they need to know their decimal places up to the thousandths place. We added to our Place Value game boards and practiced understanding decimals with a partner. We watched a couple videos to augment my lessons: Khan Academy and Math Antics. Please feel free to watch it with your child to review at home. We will be starting addition soon so please have your child review their addition facts at home so they will become more fluent. If they have an iPad at home, you can download a free app called Math Tappers: Find Sums. It’s great!

Science
Students are on their way to diving further into their rock inquiry question. If your child has extra time at home, I encouraged them to work on their presentation.

As part of our Science curriculum, this Wednesday afternoon, we will have a virtual workshop with TJ from BC Sustainable Energy Association on Climate Change (over Zoom). Please click here to view the notice that provides more information about the 4-week home program.

As always, thank you so much for your continued support at home. We appreciate you! If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out!

Gratefully, Ms. Chan & Ms. Paulich

Dear Division 6 family,

I often talk about how we are a family. It very much feels that way for me. It makes me happy to share with you what we have been working on! Click here to watch the video update (6:11) or read the summary below.

On Thursday, students were divided into six random groups of 4. Their first priority was this: Be kind. Be respectful. Be cooperative. Be collaborative. Be creative. Step 2 was to build the tallest tower with 15 rolls of toilet paper and long piece of tape (my arm span). I was SO impressed with how well they communicated, shared ideas, took turns and different roles, and worked together. During our class reflection, we discussed that these are all teamwork skills that are important to hone and practice. Then we took the opportunity to reflect on our team building activity. Some said this was the best thing they have done in grade 5 so far!

I would love for you to know that you have such wonderfully kind, caring, and cooperative children. I think the world of them and absolutely love them!

Language Arts
We have continued to work on our personal reflection writing. We begin by doing a quick write where we compose a paragraph together so they can see my thinking as I write. This helps them think about the targets we want to hit in our writing and what to think about to continuously make our writing better. They are becoming more familiar with using the single-point rubric that I shared with you last week. It gives students a clearer target and they know exactly what they need to do in order to be applying (or proficient) in this type of writing.

Students can always hop onto O365, Teams to work on their Writer’s Workshop stories when at home. They can also practice their typing skills too. Imagine how much they would improve if they spent 10 minutes a few times a week! It’s like any skill. The more time you invest in it, the better you get!

We encourage them to read at least 20-30 minutes every night and then have an opportunity to talk to someone about what they read. I would prefer they read for fewer minutes and spend some time talking than to read but not talk to anyone about what they are reading. To help, feel free to refer to this Say Something strategy.

Math
We have continued on our path to fully understand place value by creating our own Place Value booklets. They have enjoyed creating it as they review the concepts at the same time!

Science
We enjoy our Mystery Doug videos each week! For the last few weeks in October, here are some we watched. I love hearing their enthusiastic responses to some of the new learning we do. If your child has siblings at home, feel free to watch it as a family!

How can you tell if a plant is poisonous?
Why do owls say “hoo”?
Why are so many people scared of bugs?

This past week, we learned from Bill Nye about Rocks and Soil. We have many students who love to draw so we practiced taking sketch notes again. We learned there are three ways that rocks are formed. Later in the week, we had opportunities to take a look at various igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks. I wish you could be there to hear the oohs and ahhs. Learning about rocks is one of my favourite things to teach so I’m thrilled to see their excitement too! Next, we will choose a question we are really curious about to research and learn more about. Then, we will become experts to share with our classmates!

Passion Projects
Students are well on their way with their passion projects. It’s one of my favourite times of the week and I gathered it’s the same for them! We set up our PowerPoints so that we can add information that we find as we go along.

Art
High Five to a Great Year! Students wrote words that describe themselves.

Here they learned about colour theory and created beautiful eyes!

We are so looking forward to have a full week with your child! We feel blessed every day to be their teacher! Thank you for your continued support at home.

Sincerely, Ms. Chan and Ms. Paulich

Dear students and families,

We hope you had a good Thanksgiving last weekend! Although I was happy to have an extra day to spend with family, I was sad that I missed a day with our students!

This past week, we focussed on kindness. We listened to a story called Ish (click to watch the story) by Peter Reynolds. It’s one of my favourite books!

As writers, we continued to work on paragraph writing. This time we wrote about what kindness means to me. We shared the writing of classmates that really showcase exemplary work. On Friday, I introduced the single-point rubric that I use to assess. They chose the paragraph they felt most exemplified their best personal writing and self-assessed their work. Next, I will review and provide my comments. From the exercise, they will learn about their areas of strengths and areas where they can improve.

In O365 Teams > Assignments > Writer’s Workshop, they are writing a story. At the bottom of their work online, you will see a different single-point rubric. This one is for creative story writing. You will see the targets students are working towards.

As Mathematicians, we continued to work on our understanding of numbers and place value. We began practicing skip counting by using graph paper to keep us organized.

As scientists, after choosing our rocks, we made and recorded our observations. I loved seeing and listening to their excitement about the small details they were noticing about their rocks!

Students were excited to continue to work on their Passion Projects. If you would like to see some of the previous projects, click here to go to last year’s blog post.

As always, thank you for your continued support at home! We appreciate you!

Sincerely, Ms. Chan and Ms. Paulich

Dear students and families,

Please read with your child or encourage them to read our weekly blog posts too. This offers a real reason to read, reflect, and respond. It also gives you as a family an opportunity to discuss and reinforce learning. Thank you!

When I reflect on our week, I always have such fond feelings. This past week, we read a story called The Best Story by Eileen Spinelli.

This story was to reinforce the idea that the stories we write come from our hearts. We all worked on a heart map to show all the things that have a place in our hearts.

For Math, we focused on Place Value last week by having fun with numbers! We used our whiteboards to show what we know, played a class race game called “I have, who has”, practiced representing numbers in a place value chart and learned how to read bigger numbers beyond the millions place! They had so much fun practicing by playing a different version of war. I wish you could be in the room to see how much fun and how engaged they were in their learning! Read my tweet!

How to play Place Value Showdown? Take out the 10, Jack, and King. The A=1 and Queen = zero in your deck of cards. Each player flips over one card at a time on their own game sheet (place value chart), starting from the ones place. The player with the larger number earns one point. Then both players can earn a second point if they each read the number correctly. That way, the other player can also earn a point each time. Each child has their own deck of cards so they are not sharing. Variation game option: Only the player with the larger number gets the point but they have to read it correctly to keep the point!

How to support at home: Students were told they could bring their game boards home to practice. If your child is not ready to read numbers to the millions place, then simply fold the place value chart over to where they can read numbers and then slowly add one more place at a time. They should not say the word “and” when they are saying their numbers. For example, this number shown would be 69 million, 5 hundred sixty-two thousand, (do not say AND here) forty-three. It’s a common mistake that we add “and” when we read numbers!

For Language Arts, we worked on our paragraph writing about gratitude. During our Thursday morning Community Circle time, we shared what we are thankful for. Then watched one of my favourite videos on gratitude:

Next, we dove into the writing process. I wanted students to understand that we only spend approximately 20% of our time writing. The rest of our writing is more about thinking, reviewing, and revising. Click on the image for the full view of the graphic. So we started with making a list of things we are grateful for. Students could choose to write a list or make a web.

We then learned how to write a good paragraph, reviewed how to write a topic and closing sentence, and what goes in between! I always use a magnifying glass (I actually pull one out!) and tell them that’s what they are doing with their writing. They are diving in deeper to offer explanations, descriptions, examples, or reasons. They chose one thing they are grateful for to dive deeper!

Lastly, we learned what to do when we are “finished’. Well, we are actually never really finished but before they hand in their work, here are the steps to take. To make our writing better, I ask them DYRIO? This stands for “Did You Read It Over?” Please click image to view. I loved reading their writing!

This past week, we had a number of students away. It weighed on me that I was not doing more for the students at home so at the end of the week (Thursday and Friday), I started sharing what we were doing in class so that friends at home would not be too far behind when they returned.

I also have more things set up in O365 Teams so your child can continue to work there. If they go to Class Notebook or OneNote in their own section (with their name), click on the Handouts tab. The first page on this tab is Accounts. Here, you will find the class code for Epic (our online book library), their username and password for a typing program called All The Right Type (ATRT) and Khan Academy (online math lessons and review). Click on the hyperlink to go to the website. Students can always work on their Writer’s Workshop stories found in Teams > Assignments. I will continue to set up processes and things to do should your child not feel well and is at home. Of course, getting better is their most important “homework”! These activities are only for when they just have a bit of a cough and have the energy to do some work! I am still figuring out the best way to hand in their work. For now, emailing me is best. Thank you to those who have done just that! I have loved receiving your work remotely!

Our schedule is set! We will go to the Computer Lab on Tuesday and Friday. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we go to the gym, have Social Studies, and practice our French with Ms. Paulich!

On Friday, we started working on our Passion Projects! It was a fantastic start! If your child is at home sick, working on their Passion Project is also a great way to learn while at home!

If you plan to keep your child at home due to illness, please inform the office. If you also email Marianna and me, we appreciate too! Thank you!

We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving long weekend! I actually found it a bit hard this weekend not being able to see my extended family like we always do BUT I am still grateful for the many blessings I have. I see every day as a gift. Every person and connection we make is a gift. My year with your children and your family is a gift. Time is a gift. I speak about these things and how gratitude is important to me on podcast that dropped at the beginning of September. If you are interested to listen, click here. I would absolutely love to hear what resonated with you if you listen, please. I am grateful for your time!

Thank you for your continued support at home! As always, please feel free to reach out should you have any questions. Thank you for your beautiful children in our lives. We feel so very blessed to be their teacher this year.

Appreciating you, Ms. Chan and Ms. Paulich