Dear Families,

My name is Aman Grewal and I am a student teacher who will joining your child’s classroom for the next 4 weeks as part of my observational learning experience. I am super excited to be a part of the class and to have the chance to get to know each and every one of the students. I completed my undergrad in Psychology with a minor in Counselling and Human Development in the fall. Right after, I began the teaching program at SFU. Some of the things I love doing are spending time outdoors such as camping, hiking, and going out on the water. I also really love to go swimming and for long runs at the New Westminster Quay boardwalk. I have always enjoyed working with children since I was in high school and teaching has always been my dream job. I am super excited to learn from Division 9 and can not wait for everything that is to come!

Thanks,

Aman Grewal 

Dear families,

On Friday, we celebrated Grandparents Day by inviting them into our classroom to join in the fun. We started our morning with our usual Flex time where they got to enjoy various activities. Some unstructured activities included playing cards, reading, building using KEVA blocks, or showing off some of the work we are proud of on our iPads. Then we gathered in our Community Circle, as we do each day, to share a memory or what makes our grandparents special. After that, we had a movement break by doing 75 jumping jacks. It was great to see some grandparents join in our physical activity! Next, students interviewed their grandparents to learn more about them before they dove into an app called ChatterPix to shared their life tip: the one lesson you wish to share with our youth. This app allowed them to take a picture of an inanimate object (a puppet in this case) and draw a mouth so it looked like a speaking animal. We had an opportunity to share all of their work before grandparents left us. There were some great tips so I hope they will take some to heart! Students also had an opportunity for Ms. Lewis to take a special picture of grandparents with grandchildren. Soon, there will be a display of these images on the bulletin board across from the Library. Thank you to all of the grandparents who joined us! What a special event to celebrate a special bond. If you received an update on how their morning went with us, please feel free to post a comment on our blog. I would love to hear what they thought!

Last Thursday, Jocelyn, a special guest speaker from Vancity, visited to help us develop our financial literacy by teaching us about the history of money. She defined what money is, the evolution from barter and trade to modern currency, Canada’s different forms of currency, what money is made of and the features included to prevent counterfeiting, and some fun facts regarding Canadian currency. Jocelyn ended with a story called One Cent Two Cent Old Cent New Cent by Dr. Seuss. They each received a tin can to take home to save money.

For PE, we have been learning basketball skills. We started with ball handling skills to get to know the ball and the feeling of it in our hands. Then we learned how to dribble. Last class, we learned and practiced the different kinds of passing. I used to play basketball in high school so it’s been fun to practice my skills again. There is something to be said for muscle memory!

We have seen our little buddies more often lately because we have been creating samples of kind acts using a new app called Sock Puppets [FREE to purchase on an iPad]. They worked on their storyboards together and then recorded their projects. These will be showcased at our Pink Shirt Day assembly next Wednesday afternoon! I have so loved watching them be such patient leaders when working with their little buddy and I have enjoyed witnessing the fun they are having together.

On Monday, we welcome back Ms. Grewal, our student teacher. She will be with us for the next four weeks. During her absence, she has been attending classes at SFU where she has been learning and working hard on her lesson plans. She will begin to teach some lessons next week.

Things to look forward to next week:

• Mon. Feb. 24: A new student joins our class, Brentwood Park Talent Show, and Ms. Grewal returns
• Tues. Feb. 25: Ice skating at Burnaby Lake Arena – Thank you to our volunteer drivers!
• Wed. Feb. 26: Pink Shirt Day and assembly – Wear pink!
• Fri. Feb. 28: District Pro-D day – School not in session

Things to return:

• For Mr. Maroney (Music) – recorder form
• Science World field trip form

Dear families,

We hope you thoroughly enjoyed your Family Day long weekend! I enjoyed a nice dinner with my family and my very first adventure in an escape room. There were many challenging tasks but it was a great way for our family to spend time together working as a team. We had great fun because the puzzles were creative and really made us think critically!

Today, we enjoyed our second session of ice skating. Thanks to our parent volunteers who made it possible. Last week, we had our first session with lessons. The instructors were impressed with our skaters overall saying that they were quick learners. I thoroughly enjoyed sharing a bit of my passion for ringette with interested skaters! I also really enjoyed playing some hockey when one of the students asked me to join their team because they needed some help catching up. Playing hockey was my first ice sport! 

Looking for more opportunities to skate as a family? Last weekend, my family and I thoroughly enjoyed skating together in North Vancouver by the Quay. If you are not aware, they have an outdoor covered skating rink at the Shipyards where you can skate for free (provided you have your own skates). They are open daily from 12 – 7 pm until March 1. On February 24-26, they also have free skate rentals from 5 – 7 pm. Click here to learn more! Feel free to ask me if you have any questions.

We are writers and critical thinkers. Last week, I forgot to mention that I tweeted out something I had percolating in my mind about what our brains do and how we think critically as we write:

Created this graphic to make the writing thought process more explicit. Wanted students to periodically stop and review writing by re-reading and thinking with purpose before writing more. Does it make sense? How can I make my message clearer or writing better? Writing isn’t ever “finished”. Thoughts?

It is a work in progress. Here is Version 1, which is what I shared with students originally:

So before they write, they think about what they want to write using a variety of pre-writing strategies like talking, drawing, and brainstorming, etc. After they write a bit, if there is a natural pause in their writing or after a few ideas are recorded, they are asked to read over what they wrote so far, asking themselves reflectively, “Does it make sense? How can I make my message clearer?” Then they revise and make changes to improve what they already wrote before going back to thinking about what they want to write next so the cycle begins again. With young writers, I have noticed they often just write and continue writing without reviewing what they already wrote; there is little reflection and revision as they write unless they are encouraged to do so. I truly believe that when writers naturally follow this cycle, what they are trying to communicate becomes more clear and concise. I thought that creating a visual like this infographic makes their thought process as they write more explicit and develops critical thinking skills at the same time.

After some feedback and more thought, here is version 2:

It was interesting to listen to student’s thoughts about it. Since then, it has been great to hear them refer to what their brains should be doing as they think and compose. 

Once they feel their writing is “complete” then they are asked to read it over three times before I conference with them. They are asked, “DYRIO?” = Did You Read It Over? Each time they read it over is with a specific purpose:

1. Read it like a reader. You are someone else reading it for the first time. Does it make sense? 
2. Read it again as an editor looking for errors in conventions like capitals, punctuation, and spelling.
3. Read it a third time as a revision expert. What words can I change to make my writing sound better? For example, my word choice so instead of saying “eating” I could use “gobbled it up” or if I have used “said” numerous times, I might use “screamed, hollered, yelled, cried” instead or add an adverb phrase like, “she cried with big tears streaming down her face.” 

I shared these concepts at one of the sessions where I am teaching other teachers how to use technology to enhance student writing and some informed me that they went back to their classrooms and introduced these concepts to their students the next day! It has been so satisfying to see the improvements in everyone’s writing since the beginning of the year. Communication skills are so important to develop and communicating through writing is just a piece of it.

How you can support at home: When your child writes, encourage them to think critically as a writer: Think. Write. Stop. Read it over. Reflect. Revise before thinking and writing some more.

Please feel free to write a comment to this post to share your thoughts. I know I will continue to tweak this graphic after more feedback and reflection and would love to hear from you. Thank you.

Sincerely, Ms. Chan

Dear families,

All week, we have focussed on kindness. Well, we have talked about kindness often since the beginning of the year. On Valentine’s day, we shared our friendship fruit salad. Thank you to all of the families who generously contributed fruit. There was a lot of fruit (two large mixing bowls) but surprisingly, we finished just about all of it! The kids thought it was delicious. 

We read a story about how to handle teasing and put-downs called Simon’s Hook. It is about a boy who was teased about a bad haircut by some friends. Then he runs into Grandma Rose who compares teasing to fishing hooks and tells him a story about how fish learn not to bite, which is an analogy to not reacting to teasing and he learns some strategies on how to deal with teasing and put-downs. 

We also read Have You Filled a Bucket Today? It’s a story that encourages kindness by using the idea that we fill other’s buckets when we do or say kind things. We learned that it could be the little things we do that either fills or empties someone’s imaginary bucket. When my kids were younger, I would use this language at home about filling and emptying people’s buckets. Sometimes it really helped them understand that their actions and words had both a positive and negative effect on others. Give it a try at home!

In Math, we continued to review our “new way” of adding. This is called decomposing using friendly numbers where we take one of the addends to make it a friendly number like 10, 20, 30, etc. to help us mentally add more efficiently. 

We are becoming more fluent in our addition of numbers to 20. Knowing our doubles is an important one: 2+2=4, 5+5=10, 7+7=14, etc. So, when you become fluent with all of your doubles, this new strategy will help:

2+4=6  If you can see that the one number between 2 and 4 is 3, then simply double the middle number (3) to find the sum. Here is another example: 6+8=14   The middle number is 7. Double the 7 and your sum is 14.

If your child is having trouble remembering their doubles, pull out a deck of cards from A to 10. Randomly flip over the cards and have your child call out the number doubled. 

All students brought home their report cards last Friday. I reviewed it with each student and discussed in detail the proficiency scale along with their strengths and next steps. They all appeared to be happy about their report cards. Please sign the envelope and have your child return it tomorrow or at least by the end of the week. Thank you.

We start our day tomorrow skating at Burnaby Lake Arena. Please arrive to school on time. Bring necessary items to school. Grade 3’s, please bring your booster seat too. Thank you so much to all of our parent volunteer drivers!