I hope that you all had the opportunity to view and share with your child their journey of learning in Division 2.

There is a form that needs to be filled out and sent back to school. Please ensure that you have initialed each of the boxes on the front side after your child shared their learning from each of the subject areas. As well, on the backside, there is a parent feedback section of 2 stars and a wish.

1. Band Tuesday April 26th @ 8:00am. Please bring your instruments!
2. Early Dismissal April 27th for student leds
3. Craft Fair and Food Drive – last week for sales and donations

The Math 8 Honours placement exam will be held at Burnaby North on Wednesday, May 4^th 3:30 – 4:30 (Make up on May 17^th – same time) Room 105i in the North building.

* Students must take the assessment for possible placement in the Honours class.

Welcome Back!

I hope you had a great holiday season and have now settled into routines once again.

Here is what’s new in Division 2:

1- The class presented their science projects on Evolution. It was so great to see all the creative animals and environments that each group made up. The purpose of this project was to describe evolution of a species in terms of an environment that it would live in.

2- Ancient Civilizations: Division 2 is finishing up their research of an  ancient civilization. They had to look into daily life, systems/structures of government, and traditions and beliefs, and more! The goal is represent their findings in a visual way to display during our Socials Fair. Stay tuned for some evidence of our learning

3 – Math, Math, Math. The past little while has been dedicated to exploring the world of fractions, decimals, percents and ratios. Through various lessons, questions, projects and shopping sprees, the students are learning how to represent, convert and connect all these important mathematical concepts. Ask your child to show you their Math powerpoint to learn more.

4 – Best Part of ME: Division 2 has taken time to appreciate the part of them they feel is the BEST! Through sketching and literature each student expressed the importance of this particular body part.

Last term, Division 2 explored ADST stations in the library with Mrs. Field.  Students had a lot of fun experimenting with a variety of technologies and hands-on activities.

binary beading

snap circuits

Keva blocks 

making music on Garage Band

Here’s a quick break down of what we have been up to:

1. We finished reading a book called Kingdom of No Worries, as a read aloud. Throughout the story we practiced various CAFE reading strategies; comprehension, accuracy, fluency and extending vocabulary. Students are now working on a book review essay.
2. Timelines: we have been exploring development of societies and civilizations since the beginning of time. As a class, we have read through information sheets and completed different activities to understand the progression/formation of civilizations. We are now creating timelines to show our learning. Once this is finished, students will chose an ancient civilization to investigate in a project based learning activity.
3. To carry on the theme of change overtime, we are looking at the process evolution. And who other than Darwin to help us through. We have been reading about theories of evolution and in groups, the class is sharing different aspects of change overtime.
4. Numbers, numbers everywhere! We are finishing up our second unit in math on Integers.
5. Exploring the Group of Seven….who are they? That’s what we are about to find out. All Canadian artists with similar artistic style and a passion for landscapes. Watch out for our creations inspired by one of the artists.

Friendly reminder that tomorrow, Thursday November 4th, is photo retakes for those who want.

We have started our first speech of the year. Students are working on creating a speech about THEM! We will begin presenting the week of November 1st. There are two suggested ways to go about developing the speech:

1. Five Things About Me: choose 5 items that represent you as a person. Use these items to guide you through your speech be describing why you choose them and how they represent you. You can bring the items in, take pics and create a poster, do a slideshow, etc.
2. Key Life Moments: students can choose 2 (or more) life moments that show who they are as a person and how they have developed into the person they are today. Students would go into more depth on the defining moment and reflect how it has shaped their personality.

• Speeches must be 2-5 mins in length
• Include some type of visual
• Memorize parts of the speech

Rubric and further details to follow.

Ways to support at home: 

• encourage your child to practice
• ask them to share it with you and provide positive feedback only
• READ ALOUD READ ALOUD READ ALOUD: kids will practice and just read in their head but it is very different when you have to read aloud. So continue to reinforce that they should be reading out loud to the wall or to themselves in the mirror. 

Monday October 4th is the much anticipated Picture Day! Come dressed in your best and don’t forget to comb your hair 🙂

Many families have started booking time slots for the Parents as Partners meetings on Oct. 6th and 7th. Don’t forget to do so as soon as possible in order to get a time that will work for you. If you can’t make it work with what is available, please reach out and I am happy to set something up to meet your needs.

I have attached the form that I will fill out during our conversation.  You DO NOT need to fill it out. I will do that while we are talking. This is just a suggestion/guide of what I usually like to cover, but we can discuss whatever you feel is important about your child. Feel free to discuss these ideas with your child before hand in order to include their thoughts during our conversation.

I look forward to connecting with everyone!