Dear students and parents,

First of all, a very Happy Mother’s Day to all of our mothers! I know that probably for many of you, how you celebrate is likely not how you might usually have celebrated. For me, my brothers and their families would always come over to celebrate with my mom (my parents live with me) but unfortunately, this year, it won’t happen as we stay safe in our own homes. There is, however, still much to be grateful for. This time apart from my extended family and friends has truly solidified how much I love and miss them and appreciate them. In the same way, being away from my students, their families (you!), and fellow teachers has made me appreciate you all even more. Every day in my daily tasks when I sign off, “Missing you, Ms. Chan,” it is written with the most heartfelt emotions of affection. I don’t write it because it sounds like the right thing to say. I DO miss every single child. I miss their smiles, their laughter, watching their interactions, having our conversations, the funny things they say, their kindness, the way they make me feel so happy, and so much more to list here. Thank you for raising such wonderful children who bring joy to those around them. I am so grateful for your continued support at home. Please feel free to hit COMMENT to let me know how it is going for you at home or how I can better support you. You are always welcome to send me an email too! I am here to support you and your child.

Here’s a recap of what we did last week:

• So excited we had our very first Digital Book Club meetings which were awesome because I felt they came prepared to share (Say Something) and really understood their role in listening, sharing, and building on each others’ ideas. Click here to read my tweet! Next Book Club meetings will be on Tuesday, May 10. Look for a Zoom invite in your child’s Outlook Mail shortly.
• Students continued to practice writing responses in their double-entry journal to capture “My Thinking” in response to a part of the story. They should be able to include thoughts and feelings and dive in deeper to how they connected to that part of the story by providing an example, reasons, or explanations.
• In Numeracy, we continued to practice subtraction with regrouping and learned how to subtract with zeros using the box method. By the end of the week, students were asked to create a video that explained how to subtract with regrouping. If they can explain the concept, then they fully understand it. This would be considered as “Extending” on our proficiency scale. If your child has yet to complete this video, I will gladly accept submissions anytime from now until the end of the school year for both addition and subtraction. It can be uploaded to OneDrive or shared with me. If you need help or aren’t sure what I am talking about, please ask. This week, we will begin learning our multiplication facts. Students whose subtraction is not yet solidified, please continue to practice.
• Our Collaboration Space continues to be a true highlight not just for me as I frequently check over the course of the day. Guaranteed to put a smile on my face or even a laugh, I get so much joy from reading their contributions. This past week, I saw so many share some heartwarming thoughts too. If you haven’t checked it out, it’s worth a look through! Ask your child to show you. Click here to read my tweet about our Collaboration Space on Star Wars day, May the 4th (be with you).
• Your child was given a Secret Mission on Monday to work on throughout the week. They received their instructions via their Outlook Mail. I hope you were surprised and thoroughly enjoyed reading it! Please feel free to write a COMMENT on this post to tell me what you thought. Thanks!
• On Friday, I asked for a reflection after week 4 of learning at home. If your child has not completed this yet, it is very important information for me. I deeply value learning about how your child is feeling, how they view themselves as a learner, and receiving an update on how they are doing in each of our four areas of Literacy, Numeracy, Well-Being, and Flexible Learning. Students, please go to your Reflections section > End of Week 4 reflection to answer my questions. Thank you for your time!
• This was the second week of working on our Passion Project. Continue working on it! Have fun learning!

Next week, I will add a little excitement each day with a Daily Challenge! I absolutely can’t wait to hear their stories after the first challenge! My daughter and I raced to complete the challenge. Can you guess who won? Yes, I did. I had to use my critical thinking skills to figure it out! Bet you can’t wait to login tomorrow to see what it is!

We will have our weekly class meeting on Zoom on Friday, May 15 at 10:30am. Look for the invitation in your child’s Outlook Mail.

As you have been such an integral part of your child’s learning at home, I can’t thank you enough for your time, effort, patience, and love. I am deeply grateful. I would love to have an opportunity to see you face to face (on a screen, of course), to personally thank you for your support. I am inviting ALL parents to join me in a special parent Zoom meeting on Friday, May 15 at 7:00 PM. The purpose of this meeting is primarily to connect us as a parent group but also to share how you are doing, discuss concerns, ask questions, share tips, and come up with ideas on how to ensure we make the rest of the year a memorable one for our children. I hope you can tell by now, I so love being your child’s teacher. It has been an honour and a blessing. Year after year, we use the words, “parents as partners” but this year, you have truly lived it as you climbed mountains and persevered to truly be my beloved partner in your child’s education. I have needed to lean on you to support me during this unprecedented time. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

My sincerest and most heartfelt gratitude, Ms. Chan

Dear students and parents,

This past week, students have continued to work diligently on their daily tasks in OneNote. Our Passion Project small group meetings were a great success! I felt so energized and excited for them after all of our meetings on Friday.

We have been working on developing our skills. Your child should now be able to (or with increasing independence):

• log in to check daily assignments and complete with progressively less support unless it is a new concept
• go back to yesterday’s Daily Activities to check for messages from me. If they did any work, there should be messages from me to read.
• stay connected with classmates by contributing to our Collaboration Space daily and attending Zoom meetings
• read independently for 20-30 minutes each day, and write a double-entry journal with increasing details that include thoughts and feelings
• subtract up to 3-digits with regrouping and be familiar with navigating in IXL
• get some physical activity every day
• have a direction for what they will be working on for their Passion Project
• send me an email if a question arises or something isn’t working

Digital Book Club

I originally mentioned that we will begin our Book Club meetings on Monday but I do not have everyone’s book selections yet so I will give people one more day. Our first meeting will be on Tuesday, May 5th instead. If your child made their selection, they will receive an invitation by tonight. Ask them to check their district Outlook Mail and click ACCEPT so I will know they will be attending. Thanks! Please click here to review the Book Club information.

How to prepare for the Book Club meetings:

• Students should have read at minimum the first chapter of their chosen book.
• Review the Say Something strategy. They should be familiar with this because they have had many opportunities in class. They can also choose to share what they wrote for their double-entry journal for their reading response (found in Thursday or Friday’s page in OneNote).
• Come prepared to “say something” to the group about a part of the story or a quote from the text and their reaction to it.

Here’s the schedule for Tuesday, May 5 on Zoom:

Here’s the schedule for Wednesday, May 6 on Zoom:

Danny’s Doodles @ 1:00 PM (to accommodate a classmate returning by plane on Tuesday)

Any questions? Please ask.

Something fun!

It has been five weeks since “returning” to school after spring break and I thought it is time for some extra fun… not that we weren’t having some elements of fun along the way! We will soon be diving further into how we continue to stay healthy – physically, mentally,  and emotionally. These are important elements of our health as we continue to stay at home to keep safe. So, I was inspired when I saw what the Physical and Health Education teachers at Argyle Secondary in North Vancouver created. It is a video that challenges their students to stay active. Enjoy watching! My friend is the one who is playing football in his backyard.

So, as a launch into our focus on healthy habits, I am asking students to videotape themselves doing some kind of physical challenge with a roll of toilet paper. They are welcome to copy something they saw in the video but this is a fantastic opportunity for their creativity to shine. I would LOVE to see what they come up with! Here are some videotaping hints:

• ensure there is enough lighting
• film outside
• film in landscape mode and NOT vertically if you are using your phone
• keep the video to less than 10 seconds

Feel free to include any family members including pets! I would love to share the finished video on YouTube but I understand if you have concerns so I will create two versions. I will not be posting any names. I will create a video that will be shared only in Stream, which is a private channel within O365. If there are enough of you who are comfortable with it being shared on YouTube, then I will proceed to make a second one. Note: There are creative ways to videotape so no faces are shown too. Video can be taken of the back of your child’s head, for example. When finished, please upload the video to their own OneDrive folder with their name in O365. Rename the file to include “toilet paper” in the title. Then send me an email to let me know it has been uploaded, please. If you wish for your child’s video to be included in the version that is uploaded to Stream only, our private channel, then please mention it in your email. Thank you for your participation. I am so looking forward to seeing what your child and you come up with! Feel free to make this a family project for extra time together! Have fun!

Appreciation

Thank you for your continued support at home. I will be going into school this week to pack up belongings that your child may be able to take advantage of like colouring pencils so we can do some art lessons at home. If you have not yet informed me what your child’s inside shoes look like yet, please send me an email. If you believe an umbrella was left at school too, please also include a description. I appreciate you all for working with me as partners at home. I am truly thankful. Please always feel free to email me. I am more than happy to answer any questions or address any concerns as we move forward. If you prefer a phone call, please let me know and I will call you instead of responding by email. We are supporting your child together!

With deep gratitude, Ms. Chan

Dear students and parents,

I miss you! Thank you for your continued time and effort spent on your learning at home. An absolute highlight every night is to review your daily tasks and write messages to you. Know that when I look at your work, hear your audio recordings, and especially watch your videos, I have a big smile on my face and my heart is warmed. It truly fills my bucket and my soul. Thank you for your hard work!

Last week, we had our very first class meeting on Zoom. Reading your feedback after our meeting touched my heart. I was thrilled to know that you all thought it was very nice to see everyone. Looks like you really enjoyed playing Zoom the Room. My secret agenda was to get you moving and doing some exercise too. Mission accomplished! I am so looking forward to our next Zoom meeting on Tuesday, April 28 at 11:00 AM. Please sign in a few minutes beforehand so we can get started shortly after 11. Thank you! Please check your Outlook email for the invitation and accept the invitation so I know you will be attending. Return to your email to find the link on Tuesday morning. See you again soon!

All Earth Day work submitted on time was shared at our digital online Celebration of Learning. Click here to view all projects. There were other submissions after the deadline so please go to OneNote to check those out under Collaboration Space > Class Ideas > Earth Day. Please feel free to add more compliments. Check it out!

In Math last week, we focussed on addition with regrouping. For grade 3’s, you will need to know how to add 3-digit with 3-digit numbers with regrouping (596+388 =    ) and grade 4’s will need to know how to add 4-digit with 4-digit numbers with regrouping (5967+3885 =     ). Students were asked to demonstrate this by creating their own equations. They were challenged to create larger and larger numbers to add. Then students were asked to record themselves teaching me how to add with regrouping. These were the highlights of the week. You make great math teachers! I saw some great cinematography too with camera movement and zoom in shots! Fancy! Thank you, parents, for helping! And thanks, Isaac, for the image. Next week, we will begin with subtraction facts and then move to regrouping.

On Friday, I asked for your reflections and self-assessment on your own learning in the past two weeks of learning at home. Thank you for taking the time to write. I really enjoyed reading your honest thoughts. I sense that there are parts of this learning at home that you like but the part you don’t like the most is that you don’t see your friends and that you miss coming to school. I’d like to remind you that you are all doing a good job of doing our part so that we can return to school sooner – thank you. I hope that our Zoom meeting will help with the feelings of missing each other. I understand it is not the same. I appreciate your feedback that you are enjoying the tasks that I have been giving you. Many of you expressed that you like the Collaboration Space because it feels like our Community Circle that we had every day so we will continue to use that. I’ve got more great ideas coming your way! If you have an idea too, please share! If you have not completed your reflections, please go to the Reflections section to fill out. I would love to hear from you too. Thank you!

We also started thinking about our Passion Project or a Genius Hour concept. Students were asked to go to the “I’m a self-learner” section to create a new page to record what they want to learn for “flexible learning”. What is it that you have always wanted to learn how to do or learn more about? Now that you have more time at home, what a fantastic opportunity to dive into those passions! My son has learned so many unique things at home on his very own that he would not have been taught at school like playing the melodica, card tricks, Japanese, stop motion short films, video editing, skateboarding, to name a few. Here’s your opportunity! The world is your oyster!  You will be recording what you wish to learn more about in our Collaboration Space on Tuesday so you will be able to see what others are interested in also. The learning could be the process and you can work on a final product at the end too! A couple samples were shared in OneNote that I will share here as well. Kiana recorded herself reading aloud and Zia researched zebras. Thanks for sharing! Enjoy!

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Reminder: We have a Pro-D day on Monday, April 27. There will be no tasks posted in OneNote. Enjoy your day! I feel like I have learned a LOT lately but I absolutely love to learn so I will be doing more professional development!

Look out for more tasks on Tuesday! There won’t be a lot because your biggest task will be participating in our virtual class meeting. We will be sharing how we are feeling and something you did over the weekend so please come prepared. Thanks! Can’t wait to see you!

Did you notice that I added my Twitter feed on the right? Comments are always welcome on our blog. Click on Leave a Comment. It can be found right under the title of this post. Thank you!

Sincerely missing you,

Ms. Chan

Dear students and parents,

My sincerest hope is that you have continued to stay safe and healthy. We finished our first official week of remote learning with a variety of tasks. As mentioned in my email, the sections in OneNote have been streamlined to make it more efficient for both you, your child, and me. It’s a win-win! At any point, should you have any questions, please reach out by email. I will respond as quickly as I can and will call if that is your request.

If you have not responded to the mid-April check-in survey, please fill it out at your earliest convenience. I appreciate your time.

Just last Thursday, we were provided with information for us to use Zoom for classroom purposes. Since this is a new videoconferencing tool to us, it is important to review the expectations with your child and to remind them of what it means to be a good digital citizen. Click here to look at a poster provided by the District. Reviewing the poster will be one of our tasks for tomorrow so please login to O365 OneNote to look at the first task! Why tomorrow? Because on Tuesday, we will have our very first online class meeting on Zoom at 11:00 am! I know many of you have asked when this will happen but I needed to wait for more direction from our District first. Thank you for your patience. I am super excited to see everyone again soon. We will be playing a fun game called Zoom the Room!

We are constantly evolving with our program of learning at home. As such, resources are quickly being created and made available to us. I wanted to highlight a few things here to bring it to your attention:

• Ms. Vivien, our yoga instructor, and a Brentwood parent, has so kindly and generously offered FREE yoga sessions over Zoom every Tuesday at 11 am (ages 8+) and every Thursday at 2 pm (all ages). Yoga sessions will run approximately 30-40 minutes. To signup, families must email her at  vgomes@me.com. Please provide the following details:  parent’s email address, number of children, their ages, and division number.
• Mr. Maroney, our music teacher extraordinaire, has created a blog for students to continue their learning at home. Click here to go to his blog. We appreciate all the work that went into it. I added a link to his blog under School Links.
• Ms. Delvecchio has been busy updating our school website. We now have a section called Continuous Learning. I have added a link under School Links. Click on Student Resources to find links to books online or if you have a question you want to ask Ms. Delvecchio, click here to do so! She is waiting to connect with you!

I am deeply grateful for your continued support at home. I appreciate your time and effort in helping your child. It is my hope that they will become more independent and require less of your support over time. As these are new tools to them (and there will be more!), they may find themselves feeling frustrated at times. Remind them of my first message to them: This is the perfect opportunity to practice our growth mindset with a positive attitude, stop to do some breathing exercises, practice perseverance and say to themselves, “I can do this” or “I can’t do this… YET” and use their critical thinking skills to approach the issue. There is something of value to be learned through the struggle. I know my own kids at home really don’t like it when I don’t come to their rescue right away but I want them to learn how to self-regulate and practice the skills I just mentioned above. I remind them, “The more I help you, the more I’m not helping you.” Of course, it always depends on the situation as I always gauge what they can and cannot handle. We know our own child best… well, on most days, at least!

I hope you can really feel in your heart that I am here to support you and your family during this time and that I am working hard to stay connected with your child especially through OneNote and email. Please reach out if you need anything.

I am so looking forward to seeing you during our car parade tomorrow at 1:45pm! Here is the map of the route. Click here for more details.

Sincerely, Ms. Chan