Category Archives: Uncategorized

This week was spit into two very distinct ideas. The first half of the week we were full of excitement and JOY as we celebrated Halloween with  sweet treats and costume fun while the second half of the week was much more somber.  We went from playing games with our friends and enjoying laughs and candy to discussions about war and the PAIN wars cause. Remembrance Day is coming up this month and so we are thinking about how lucky we are to live in such a peaceful place and showing gratitude for those who fought with their lives to give that to us.  All the while, we know that right now, in our world, there are several devastating wars happening where innocent children and civilians just like us, are caught in the middle and are definitely not living in peace. So many emotions wrapped up in one week!

We did some “writing in role” on Thursday and Friday and had to imagine ourselves as a Remembrance Day Poppy.  We worked in groups to brainstorm how a poppy would respond to the following prompts:  ” I am… ; I represent…; I am seen…; I fear…; I wonder…; and I hope for…”  Using our collection of responses, we each wrote our own poem entitled “I Am a Poppy” and these poems are the newest page on our living “growth portfolio” bulletin board.  Our Friday volunteer, Kiara, taught us on how to make to make tissue paper poppies for our Remembrance Day wreath.  Our wreath will be put on display at our assembly next Friday to honour the brave men and women who sacrificed their lives for our freedom and for those who are still serving to protect it.

In Literacy discussions this week, we talked a lot about how to inference about character’s  feelings and motivations. Feelings can be illustrated by the author through descriptions of body language, facial expressions and even words. For example, if someone is jumping up and down yelling “Yippee1”. it is a strong inference to guess the character is happy.  When inferencing about motivation, things get a little more complex. Motivation is a larger idea that explains the WHY someone is behaving the way they are or feeling the way they are.  We shared how some times of motivators can be money, ambition, acceptance, love, friendship etc.  You are all developing great detective skills and we hope it helps you to dive deeper into whatever it is you are reading right now.  At the start of next week, we will be having a small “check-in” to see how you can inference independently.

Math has been all about basic facts and the 10’s rule.  Multiplying by multiples of 10’s is pretty easy, as long as you know your basic facts! That is why we hope you are continuing to memorize you multiplication facts up to 12. Being able to recall your facts quickly and easily will definitely make all other math problems easier to solve. Most of you took home some math homework this week that is asking you to apply what we have been learning all year.  Applying your estimating and multiplying  skills to problem solve problems and explain your thinking is a great way to become a more confident mathematician.  You all work really hard in class and are very focused, it is very impressive to see.  Next week, we will be moving on to solving 2 and 3 by 1 digit multiplication problems. Keep working on those basic facts everyone!

Our Graph of the Week explored the question: If you were not allowed screen time, what would you do in your spare time?  Most of the class opted for playing a board or card game while a bunch of us also thought of other activities such as doing a sport, going swimming, or baking.  All great options! Since we had to pick a first choice and a second choice from the options, a double bar graph was one way we used to represent the results.  A pictograph showed the results of the combined data.

In science this week, we learned about basic reproduction in animals, plants and humans. We compared the three and found that there are many similarities and a few differences in how reproduction works in each. Overall, we learned that reproduction in all is for the purpose of continuing on with the species and increasing population. On the other hand, some plants are able to self reproduce. Most species need fertilization of some kind to occur in order for reproduction to be successful. Next week, we will be looking deeper into how these species support themselves, protect themselves and move.

Just a reminder that your research for your Unique School project is due on THURSDAY November 9th.  On that day, you need to come ready to share what you have found with your group mates so that together you can compare notes and choose the most accurate information for your presentation.  So.. if you still think you can find some more bits and pieces about the unique school you are researching… do it!  Also, it would be wise to “brush up” on what you know about the David Suzuki Public school for our quiz coming up next week.  

Perseverance is a word we unpacked this week in order to help us set some goals for ourselves.  From our analysis of different quotes we were able to see that in order to achieve our goals and reach our potential we need to use our passion and hard work. We discussed how important it is to set goals and to always be working on ourselves. What was the most interesting was how many of you were able to quote Albert Einstein from memory to explain that  failure only  comes from not trying. You all continue to amaze us with your knowledge, it was a very impressive moment this week. We used this discussion as a springboard to set a few goals for ourselves with a plan to get there as well.  We will be checking in regularly to see how our goals are coming along and setting new ones whenever necessary.

Your blog response this weekend is to put on your thinking caps and write another short poem in “role”.  This time… imagine you are PEACE.  How would PEACE finish these sentences?

I am Peace. 

I am ________, _________, and __________. 

I come from _____________ and __________

                                     I create  _____________

                     I am seen in a _____________ 

                I wonder ____________________? 

                                        I am Peace.

Have a wonderful weekend Division 6!  See you on Monday! 

Mrs. Gil and Mrs. Davis 

This week has been filled with birthdays it seems. Olivia this past weekend and Howard and Daryl this week.  Happy Birthday to all of you! It sure is nice to spend the week celebrating such happy occasions.

After several short weeks in a row, we finally got to spend an entire week together. We started the week by diving deeper into developing our inferencing skills. It is great that we are focusing on because being strong at inferencing can help us in all our studies. For example, inferencing involves being a bit of a detective, looking for clues in the text to help us understand what we are reading. Being a detective and using clues is also an important skill as a scientist. When we are studying science, we often have questions that we are trying to answer. Often times, we must come up with a hypothesis (educated guess) before we begin testing and researching to find the answers. We have to make inferences using our background knowledge and through more reading in order to move forward in our exploration of topics. Being a reading detective is a skill we need and use all the time.

Congratulations everyone!  All of the oral presentations have been done!  We’re still looking forward to hearing one more, but Kendrick has been away lately so he hasn’t been able to share about himself yet.  All of you did very well!  It is pretty intimidating to speak in front of such a large group of your peers, but you all handled it beautifully!  It was lovely to hear all of you encouraging your classmates by providing positive and constructive feedback after each presentation. Way to go!

We rounded out our work with the scientific method by talking about some important vocabulary that we need to understand in order to be successful in our experimenting.  We used our gummy worm experiment as a model and figured out what these terms meant:

Dependent variable, Independent Variable, Constant Variable, Qualitative data, and Quantitative Data

These are parts of all experiments and are key vocabulary terms to understand if you want your experiment to be valid. Our next topic of investigation in science will be comparing human, plant, and animal life systems. We have begun to collect information/notes and are comparing them one system at a time.

Our Unique School research has begun! We used The David Suzuki Public School as our model to collect information and take notes. Using the text from Off to Class by Susan Hughes we read to find out the 5 w’s behind the school  (Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How). Our inferencing practice is also coming in handy as we read, because many of those answers aren’t explicitly written on the page… there’s some digging involved. Now we’re all in groups of 2 or 3 and have a unique school that we are learning about and collecting information on.  By next week, we are aiming to have all our research completed so that we can compare our notes with our team members and write a description about the school researched.

In Math we are continuing to have daily practice of subtraction with borrowing and multiplication drills. Once those are complete, we practice different multiplication and division strategies. This week we worked on skip counting, doubling and halving, and some “tricks” for questions involving numbers like 6 and 9.  The strategies are important to learn and practice but, once you have the hang of them, you can choose your favourite and use that strategy to help you solve problems all the time.  We continued to reinforce our multiplication skills with a few games on Thursday.  We completed our first round of our Multiplication War tournament.  Next week we’ll continue with round 2. We also played “Connect 4” using a deck of cards and a multiplication chart.

Our Graph of the Week this week focused on Halloween.  We created pictographs and a bar graph to represent the data.  Then, in keeping with the Halloween theme, we worked on a coordinate graphing hidden picture activity. It was quite challenging as it required plotting points and connecting the dots. Two of you were able to successfully complete the picture while the rest of you are still working on it.   Try to finish this at home this weekend or at least by Tuesday… Halloween day!  What was the hidden picture of?

Tuesday, next week, will be Halloween. It is a fun and exciting day. If you are going to dress up, make sure it is an appropriate costume for school. To celebrate we are going to spend the last hour of the day playing games together. Please feel free to bring in your favourite board game from home to share with your classmates. Also, you can bring yourself an extra afternoon snack for our game hour if you like.

Finally, Division 6 we wanted to say a HUGE thank you for your dedication and faithfulness in your role as Peer Mediators these past 6 weeks! Every one of you had a chance to do this job and you took your role very seriously.  We really appreciate your help out there at lunch with the primary students.  It’s time to hand over the job to the next class ( Division 1) and we’ll get another chance to do this job in June… to finish off the year.

Your Blog Response is this:

1. What is ONE thing you ENJOYED about being a Peer Mediator? 
2. What is ONE thing you found CHALLENGING  about peer mediation? 
3. Will you volunteer to do this again in June? 

Have a wonderful weekend Division 6!

Mrs. Gil and Mrs. Davis

Another short week has come and gone as we continue to watch as the season changes around us.  The leaves are falling and the beautiful fall colours right outside our window are keeping things bright and beautiful even though we have begun to see more rainy weather.  In your planner this week, we reminded you to make sure you come to school prepared to play outside and recess and lunch. This is because it is very rare for it to be an inside day so you must have rainy weather attire so you do not have to spend the afternoons wet and soggy. It is really hard to learn when you are wet and cold, don’t you agree? Also, the weather changes from day to day here in Burnaby so it is important to take a few moments to watch the evening or morning news to plan your wardrobe for the school day ahead.

In Language Arts this week, we read a passage about video games. The focus of our reading this week was to identify both the main idea as well as the supporting details of the paragraph.  These concepts may seem straight forward but they are not. It takes time and practice to be able to read passages and pin point what are sentences are supporting the main idea and which are just fillers. There are six main types of supporting details: descriptions, vocabulary, proof, voices, explanation, and importance.  The main idea sentence is usually the subject of discussion and the topic sentence. Most of you were able to identify the main idea quite quickly while more of you found identifying the supporting details more challenging. We will continue to explore this idea and many more reading strategies in the months to come.

Congratulations Division 6 on finishing your  “About Me” puzzle piece .  They are all up on our bulletin board and it’s a pretty interesting looking puzzle!  Now it’s time to prepare to share those with the class in your first ORAL PRESENTATION! A photo has been taken of your puzzle piece and is in TEAMS. Use that photo to prepare a short presentation about yourself and what you put on your puzzle piece.  Practice with your family as your audience and be ready to share sometime over the next two or three weeks. Last year’s Div.8 students will be the first ones to present and then everyone else will have their turn… random draws will determine who’s up… so… make sure when it’s your turn, you are ready!

We were busy in science this week as we finished our observations of our gummy worm experiments and have begun to write our conclusions. We discussed that a well written  conclusion of a science experiment must have : the answer to the question you were trying to answer, evidence for your findings with specific data/numbers, and reasoning which explains WHY things happened as they did.  Next week, we will take some more time in our pods to finish these up together. If that is not enough, we also had a visit from Naomi from Douglas College’s Institute of Urban Ecology to share her knowledge with us about amphibians living in our communities. More importantly, she had us think about the threats they face living in urban areas and what we can do to help keep them safe.

We embarked on our study of unique schools around the world this week in Social Studies.  We started with an “anticipation guide” which included several statements about different schools.  In groups we discussed whether or not each statement was true or if we thought it was false.  We followed that up with 2 short videos that revealed the answers to our anticipation guide.  It was pretty surprising to find out which statements were true… in fact, we were pretty blown away to discover that ALL of the statements were indeed TRUE!! Which fact did you find most unbelievable?  We also read about a unique school right here in Canada.  The David Suzuki Public school in Windsor Ontario is known for how eco-friendly it is and is the “greenest” school in the country!  Do you remember any of the unique features that this school has that makes it “green”?

In PE this week we began working on our volleyball skills. Grade 6’s are able to join the school’s volleyball team so we are excited to help you all gain some skills that will encourage you to join the team and have some fun playing this great sport!  This week we worked on “bumping”. We worked in pairs to get comfortable being in “ready” position and using the proper hand position to bump the ball to our partners.  It would be great to see some of you taking volleyballs outside at recess and lunch to practice some more, what do you think?

What do the terms “strike”, “spare”, “gutter”, and “bumper” have to do with? BOWLING!!   What a great time we had as a class at REV’s on Friday!  Although we were ready to not have bumpers on our lanes, a sudden switch resulted in almost all of us having bumpers! That certainly helped our scores and it was so fun to see a bunch of STRIKES and SPARES in the mix as well!  Thank you to all the parent volunteers who walked with us to and from the bowling alley and for Mr. Peters for organizing this fun day for us!

Here is your blog response for this weekend about the unique schools we saw on the videos: 

1. The school I was most shocked by was the ______________ school because ________________________________.
2. The school I was most interested to learn more about is the ____________ school because _____________________.
3. If I could visit one of the schools I would choose the ___________ school because ______________________________.

Have a fantastic weekend Division 6!

Mrs. Gil and Mrs. Davis

It has been a short week but a busy one in Division 6. We have had a new addition to our class, Kendrick, welcome! We are now at 29 students making the room more lively and definitely energized.

We have been working on our Name story paragraphs.  Our first drafts needed some work so we discussed how to make our paragraphs more story-like and less like a list. Some of you have already mastered the art of the paragraph using introductions to start, details in the middle, and a closing sentence at the end. Others of you are still practicing using all the parts. Either way, we have all completed two drafts and are ready to complete the finished product. With each revision, your paragraphs improved in style and polish. Editing is a crucial part of the writing process and is something we will focus on all year long. In addition to our name stories we began to create our Name Mandala’s which will be the art to accompany our stories.  We learned a little about where Mandalas come from and what they are meant to represent. The word “mandala” comes from Indian language and it means “circle” or “center”. The creation and coloring of a mandala can be calming and promote wellness.  Did you feel that way when we started? Do you think it will change as we keep moving forward with making them?

In Math, grade 5’s have moved on from their work on place value and are practicing their rounding/estimating skills. The past few weeks we have been working on different strategies to estimate like front-end, compatible numbers, compensation, clustering and even using a number line. We have begun to look at real life uses for estimation and applying estimating skills to real world problems.  Next up, we will be moving into operation practice. It is important at this grade level that students learn to become fluent with their multiplication facts up to 12.  Being able to recall the facts quickly and easily by memory makes division a snap and really helps make problem solving quicker and easier. If you have not already, you should be practicing your times tables and doing your very best to memorize them all. Our mad minute drills are coming soon, be ready!

Our Gummy Worm experiments are going great! This week you and your pod mates chose a liquid to place your worm in to find out how the liquid will affect the worm. After some research on both the worm’s ingredients and the liquid’s, your group was able to create a plan for your procedure and make observations over a few days. Next week, we are going to write up our conclusions and discuss if our hypothesis were correct or not. Another exciting science event next week will be our visit from a scientist from the Institute of Urban Ecology at Douglas college  for an in class workshop about Amazing Amphibians. This visit will be our introduction to our next unit of study which will be comparing humans, plants, and animals survival systems.

You have started the study of Education/schools around the world in Social Studies. You have been warming up your brains to the idea that schools can look very different from ours depending on where in the world it is located. On that same theme, we are reading School of Fear by Gitty Daneshvari. The school is very different from our school because it is a summer school that is helping students to overcome their fears. The students we have been introduced to so far are Madeline who is afraid of bugs, Theo who is afraid of death, Garrison is afraid of large bodies of water, and Lulu is afraid of small spaces. Next week we should begin to find out what is different in this school from other more “regular” schools.

Friday was the Terry Fox Run. Did you bring a toonie for Terry? Do you know someone who is fighting cancer, has beat cancer, or has died from cancer? Cancer is something that has touched most families in some way and that is why it is so wonderful to get together as a school community to fundraise for Cancer research.  If we all do our part and honour our fellow Canadian’s legacy of hope we can continue to help doctors search for better treatment and maybe even a cure for this devastating disease. Thanks for you participation Division 6!

This is a long weekend and we hope you and your families will be spending time together and taking time to think about what you are thankful for. We, your teachers, are thankful for all of our wonderful students this year. We have had so much fun getting to know you all so far this year and we are thankful we get to be part of your learning journey.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

Your blog response this weekend is………..

Tell us three things you are thankful for….

Have a wonderful long weekend,

Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Gil

A warm welcome to everyone. Thank you for visiting this blog. We hope that you will find this a helpful tool to connect parents with their children and what is happening for them at school. We are so happy to have you here with us in Division 6 this year.  This blog will be a place to learn about the goings on in Division 6 on a weekly basis. We will be introducing this blog to all the parents at our Open House this Wednesday, September 27th. At the Open House, we will be going over our classroom routines and expectations as well as answering any burning questions parents might have about the upcoming year. If you are unable to attend the meeting, this blog will cover some of what will be shared there.

We are a grade 5/6 classroom and the only one in the school! We have a wonderful year ahead of us and we cannot wait to get started.  Mrs. Gil works Monday-Wednesday and Mrs. Davis is teaching Thursdays and Fridays.  We are partners and we are in constant contact with one another so the transitions between teachers is quite seamless. We have been teaching together for several years now and enjoy sharing the class and working together. We can best be reached by email. Please never hesitate to reach out to us with any questions or concerns. Some other teachers who will be working with your students this year are Ms. Wong for French twice a week and Mr. Chen for music once a week.

Our classroom has a lot of routines and expectations that really help it be a great place to grow and learn.  It is important that parents are aware of what is going on in class and we find that this blog is a great way to spark conversations at home as well as keeping parents “in the loop”. Another tool for communication that we should be receiving shortly in the classrooms is planners.  Students are expected to fill in a planner daily and show their planner to someone at home. We try not to give out too much homework but sometimes, work comes home that needs to be finished and there is always the expectation of nightly reading. We realize that families are busy with extra curricular activities etc. so if ever something cannot be completed for whatever reason, please feel free to email us and we will happily allow for extra time. It is important that we get information from parents rather than the students because it demonstrates the students awareness of responsibility and lets us know that parents are aware of what is coming due.  Notices will also be found in the planner which are usually the parents’ responsibility to sign and return. Students are given time at the end of each day to fill out planners and complete classroom jobs so there should be a planner for parents to look at every day. Finally, planners will be a place students can write passwords and store their library cards.

As you may have heard already, there is a Mega Market in our class where students can purchase items and learn some real life money sense. The students are able to earn Mega Bucks by participating and completing routine tasks.  Here are the most common ways:

• home reading program
• km club
• weekly classroom jobs
• weekly blog responses (ON TEAMS)

There will be many opportunities for students to volunteer and participate around the school this year and we hope everyone will try and help care for the community.

Students in grade 5 and 6 can be lunch monitors and peer mediators and we are proud to see how many students from Division 6 are already taking part.  Well done! During the year, there may be other ways to participate like joining teams, fundraising and donating.

Students have each been given two very important folders. One is for homework which is meant to travel to and from school daily. The other is a “Working On” folder which students will keep in their desk to store any ongoing work until complete. Once complete, students will use binders to store completed work and they each will have a “living portfolio” on our bulletin board where we will be displaying work that we are proud of and want to share with each other. We also have shared school supplies for the students which frees up room in their desks and allows us to ensure all students have the tools they need to complete any task.  That being said, because the school supplies will be staying in the classroom, we hope the students will have a set of supplies at home to use for any homework assignments that come home. Perhaps supplies left over from previous years? We have suggested to students that they make themselves a supply kit for homework and keep it close to where they like to do their homework.

We know this has been a lot of information but we also hope this is a helpful outline for some of the important routines and expectations of Division 6 for you. We look forward to the year ahead and let us make this our best year yet!

STUDENT BLOG RESPONSE:

Answer the following questions on the word document in our TEAM and be sure to “TURN IN”.

1. Who did you read this Blog with?
2. What is one question they asked you about our class?
3. Do you remember how many Mega Bucks you can earn filling in the weekly blog response?

Have a great weekend,

Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Gil