Hello Div. 6 family!

It’s been a fabulous week! On Tuesday, our amazing PAC delivered our long-awaited sports bins! We are SO grateful to all parents for fundraising so that our students can enjoy the equipment with friends outside. Extra appreciation to the special parents who purchased, put it all together, and delivered the bins. Your time and dedication are valued.

Remembrance Day
On Tuesday, we observed Remembrance Day by a virtual assembly to honour and remember the people and families who served our country to fight for peace. There were contributions from every class. A special thank you to Mr. Greenwood for all his time and effort to put together a compilation video that we viewed. As parents cannot come into the school to enjoy the artwork in the hallways and classrooms, here is a short video we would like to share.

World Kindness Day
On Friday, it was World Kindness Day. As I shared with them, every day should be World Kindness Day. To the left, you will read one of my life mottos. I tweet about this very often. “Through every interaction, we have the opportunity to uplift others through our love and kindness to make someone’s day a brighter one.” To me, there is no neutral. Your words are either positive and help to make someone’s day better or they don’t. I read them the story Each Kindness. To watch the story read to you, click here. It’s about a girl, Maya, who goes to a new school. On a number of occasions, she makes attempts to be friendly but the others turn away. Eventually, she moves away and Chloe, the character whose perspective we are hearing the story from, desperately wants another opportunity to show kindness to her. Unfortunately, it’s too late and she never gets it.

I daresay that children’s picture books have a happy ending 99% of the time. This story doesn’t offer that but instead, a hard lesson, one we can all learn from. This brings me back to my life motto. I try hard to live by what I believe in. It is in every interaction that we have an opportunity to uplift others. This is so important to me because the opposite is true… in ONE interaction, we also have the power to negatively affect and tear down the person we speak to. Do we make mistakes? Yes, we do but if we live our lives striving for positively touching others, as well as the belief that we can be better today than we were yesterday and better tomorrow than we were today, then we are on the right track. In our class, we notice, name, and nurture kind and thoughtful behaviours. Let me tell you, your children demonstrate it throughout the day and every day. We are so blessed to be in each other’s presence to learn together and enjoy each other’s company. My heart is often warmed by what I hear and see.

After the story, children were given the opportunity for a free write as a response to this story. There were so many heartwarming examples. I wanted to share this with you. Thank you, Iman, for giving me permission to share what was in your heart with us all.

Each day there is an opportunity to be kind to each other. This is important because you will have a meaningful life of happiness and appreciation. In your heart, it grows and grows with appreciation for one another. When you are kind to someone, you feel a rush of gratefulness, happiness, and kindness in you.

When I show kindness, it makes me want to do more and more. It can be as simple as saying hi to someone. You might not realize how lovely kindness feels when you show it.

Another example is every day you have, every moment you live, every hour you show kindness, you are giving kindness. But how? How is that showing kindness? To me, this means the world gives me all this time to show my gratefulness, thankfulness, and kindness to the world you live in, and to the people that live in it with you.

So what kindness means to me is every day when you give a little kindness to people, you are giving much, much more. Every action you do for kindness is going a long, long way.

For us, it is in these kinds of life lessons that are the most important lessons to learn about themselves, their place, and the impact they can have in this world.

Science
We have continued to enjoy watching our Mystery Doug videos. This week: What’s at the bottom of the ocean?

On Monday, we will have our first rock inquiry presentations! Click here to review and refer to the criteria that we co-constructed as a class. Please have your child practice as part of their preparation. Thank you for your support at home!

Climate Challenge
As a family, please continue to encourage your child to review the Climate Challenge. Click here for a digital copy.

Math
We practiced rounding numbers this week. Have you ever heard of the flipped classroom? Please watch this 3 minute video that explains! It is when students watch the video at home and then when we come back to class, we have more time to discuss and learn. So, let’s try it! Please watch this video on rounding: Math Antics – Rounding. He does a great job of explaining the rounding of numbers.

Office Hours
Thank you to everyone who met with me on Monday or contacted me to discuss your child’s progress. If you would still like an opportunity, please let me know. As always, we are here to work together to support your child’s learning. Thank you for sharing your child with us this year. We are so blessed!

Gratefully, Ms. Chan and Ms. Paulich