Division 13

Dear Families,

This week we have been learning about standing up for our friends as we prepare for pink shirt day next week. Pink Shirt Day is on Wednesday February 24th and we have been learning about what the day means and what the pink shirt symbolizes. I am encouraging all students to wear pink on Wednesday.

We have read several books to support our learning and had several discussions about how we can keep our classroom and school a place where we all feel safe and welcome. We have been practicing using our strong voices if we see someone being unkind. We learned that even a little voice can say stop, and that if one voice stands up and says stop, then others will join in.

We read several stories to support our learning and our discussions.

We will continue our conversation next week.

We have continued to learn double addition facts. We have gotten very good with addition to 10 and are just beginning to learn addition of numbers that add to 11 – 20.

Here is a video if you want to practice with your child.

Happy Saturday,
Ms. Hutchinson

Dear Families,

This year, we will be celebrating Valentine’s Day on Friday, February 12th.

If your child would like to make cards for Valentine’s Day (please know this is optional), please make sure that they make enough for every child in the class. We have 17 students and 2 teachers.

Due to Covid restrictions, I would ask that you only send cards to hand out as many families may be unsure about treats and goodie bags and we will not be able to share any kind of treats during the day.

I am sending a letter home with all of the students names this afternoon.

I will ensure that the students are able to safely hand out their cards on Friday, February 12th.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask.

Thank you for your support,

Ms. Hutchinson

Welcome back to school!

This week we have been reviewing our routines, welcomed a new friend back to our classroom, got new books from the library, restarted our small group reading instruction, began learning about “rainbow math” (ways to make 10), have explored our forest and most importantly have been learning about learning.

This term, we are learning about our brains and how they work!  How can we help our brains grow strong and support us to learn at school? We are learning about growth mindset and the power of YET.  We are just getting started, but already we have discovered a lot,

Here is a link to the videos that we have begun to watch and that have inspired our conversations about our brain and learning:

Growth Mindset: Class Dojo

And here is our work so far:

I have really noticed students beginning to embrace and be excited about using the words practice, challenge, making mistakes and I can’t do it yet. These words are very  powerful in supporting our young learners’ to embrace a growth mindset around learning, know that it is okay to make mistakes and to understand that we never stop learning.

Have a wonderful weekend,

Love

Ms. Hutchinson

Dear Families,

Wishing you all a peaceful, relaxing and safe winter break. I look forward to seeing you all on Monday January 4th, 2021. 

love,

Ms. Hutchinson

Dear Families,

Happy November!! This month our focus is on peace and kindness. We have started our bucket of kindness and are busy being kind to each other and filling in each other’s buckets.

We spent most of last week (as well as focusing on Halloween) on learning to look closely at ourselves and to love the skin that we are in. We used mirrors and each other to look closely at our faces. We were very excited to discover that the whole class has brown eyes, except for Ms. Hutchinson and we learnt a very important lesson when we discovered that peach is not skin colour. Skin colour means whatever colour your own skin is.  After we drew and painted ourselves, we were given the task of looking closely at a friend and drawing their face.

Today we drew poppies. We have begun talking about the significance of the poppy as we get closer to November 11th and Remembrance Day.

Have a wonderful week!

Ms. Hutchinson

Dear Families,

What a busy week. We have continued to explore our neighbourhood and the Morley Forest and we have spent several happy hours exploring and learning about our community.

Your child brought home their My Family book on Friday. They are so proud of their writing and are very excited to share their family book with you. We worked hard every day to brainstorm ideas, copy words, and try out some of the strategies that we have been learning – listening to beginning sounds of words, stretching out words slowly to hear the sounds and using the word wall to help us. We used the My Family book shown below to help us with our writing as well as to help us as we begin to learn early reading skills.

We used our math tool kits for the first time. We are working on counting with numbers up to 10 and then counting on from there. We are also exploring one  to one correspondence – For example, a child who touches each counter in a row and says the number name aloud for each counter touched, “One, two, three, four…” is demonstrating the ability to count with one-to-one correspondence. We are learning different strategies to help us count and count on – we use ten frames, counters, number lines and chanting.

I hope you have a wonderful long weekend.  Even though we are still in the middle of Covid, there are so many things to be grateful for and we hope that you spend some time celebrating those things in whatever form Thanksgiving has in your home. This week we have spent a lot of time talking about gratitude and being thankful. We have started our gratitude journals and will continue to spend time over this year reflecting on what we are grateful for.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to email me at: amelia.hutchinson@burnabyschools.ca

❤

Ms. Hutchinson