Dear Parents and Guardians,

We are excited to introduce a new way for you to stay connected with your child’s learning journey! Our class is now using digital learning portfolios, which you can access through Microsoft Teams. This tool allows you to view your child’s work, track their progress, and celebrate their achievements all in one place. You can access this portfolio by having your child log in and take you through their digital folders.

What is a Digital Learning Portfolio?
A digital learning portfolio is a collection of your child’s assignments, projects, and reflections that show their growth over time. It offers a window into their learning, including what they are proud of and areas where they are working to improve.

How Does It Work?
Your child will upload their work to Microsoft Teams.  You’ll see completed assignments, teacher feedback, and even multimedia projects like videos or presentations. This platform keeps everything organized and easily accessible from any device.

To Log In:

Have your child access Microsoft 365 through the Lochdale Homepage. Then have them access our MS Teams page. Their portfolio is located under the “Class Notebook” section.

More Log In Support: https://learning.burnabyschools.ca/using-teams/

Benefits of Viewing Your Child’s Work

• Stay Engaged: You’ll have regular insight into what your child is learning in class.
• Track Progress: Watch as they develop skills and grow in confidence throughout the year.
• Encourage Conversations: Use the portfolio to start discussions at home about what they are working on, what they enjoy, and how you can support their learning.
• Celebrate Achievements: Celebrate your child’s accomplishments and encourage them when they are facing challenges.

We believe that involving families in this way enhances the learning experience and strengthens the home-school connection. If you have any questions about how to access the portfolio or navigate Microsoft Teams, please feel free to reach out. We’re happy to help!

Thank you for your continued support!

Dear Families of Division 1 Students,

• Samples of students’ work to showcase their understanding and application of concepts
• Student-teacher conferences to provide personalized feedback and goal-setting
• Use of ministry and district standards to ensure that learning outcomes align with performance expectations
• Criteria developed with students, encouraging them to take ownership of their learning process
• Student self-evaluation, where students will reflect on their progress and identify areas for growth

• Promoting curiosity and encouraging thoughtful questioning
• Developing students’ metacognitive skills, or their ability to reflect on their own learning
• Integrating First Peoples’ principles of learning into our lessons
• Meaningfully incorporating technology to enhance learning and communication
• Building self-awareness and strategies for navigating challenging situations
• Promoting cultural respect and understanding in our diverse classroom community

Hello everyone, 

We are so excited because a few days ago, the salmon finally hatched! Surprisingly, 5 people got the date correct. We are having a lot of fun watching them and caring for them. Our next step is to go on a field trip to drop them off. 

The grade 7s have been learning the anatomy of salmon through dissecting an ocean adult salmon. Two weeks ago, Ms. Ramen and Ms. Nicholson dissected one to show us a demonstration of how to do it, and the next day, we were split into house teams and were able to have a once-in-a lifetime learning experience. Everyone did a significant job while removing the intestines and especially with taking out the swim bladder. As we have all compared what the size, texture, and shape of a salmon organ looks like to a human organ, it was interesting to see them in person instead of in a picture. A fact about salmon is that they are anadromous, which means they start their lives in freshwater, migrate to the ocean where they grow, and then they return to their birth streams where they spawn and die.  

We all learned a lot about chum salmon that day and we hope we all turn into salmon experts soon! 

-News Crew 

Hello! We recently got 55 salmon eggs! Someone checks the eggs’ temperature every day and we all write the ATU on our paper. ATU stands for Accumulated Thermal Units. It is a unit of measurement used to describe the cumulated effect of temperature over time. We use this method to predict when our salmon will hatch and track our eggs’ progress. One ATU is equal to one degree Celsius. 

We are also learning about their life cycles. We will keep you all updated! 

-News Crew 

On Friday, we had some guest speakers come in to our class to discuss ways we could help to keep ourselves safe online. Some key takeaways included:

• not giving out personal information through geo-tagging our locations in posts on social media
• Red flags from online ‘friends’ are guilt tripping, not taking ‘no’ for an answer, and asking us to meet up in real life
• adding gaming friends to social media accounts is not wise
• do not accept gifts from online friends

In case we have further questions or are worried about a situation we (or our friends) are caught up in, please see the photo below for different hotlines and resources. Trusted adults such as teachers and family members are also there to support us. It’s important to talk to someone if we are caught up in a potentially exploitative situation.

Hello Div, 1! Nora from SFU has kindly invited us to be a part of their research for a paper. In the study, Div 1 and 2 will be playing WarioWare for 9 weeks to record how we act and think while playing it. This study will be only for educational purposes and not for entertainment. All student information will be disclosed to the public other than our grade, and what game we are playing.  

Why are we doing this study? 

This study seeks to better understand how collaborative digital game play can help students develop their language and communication skills. 

Here is what our class thinks of study: 

18 out of 22 people are excited about the study. 

At the end of this study, our class will be rewarded with a pizza party and one of the switches we hope!

-News Crew 

Hi Everyone,

Here is a tutorial for how to put your agamographs together just in case you need it 🙂

See you all tomorrow!

Hello Div. 1!

We were sculpting our skulls around four weeks ago and we were glazing them before last Thursday. We made the skulls because Div.1 and 2 are studying early humans and thought it would be a fun and effective way to learn about the different features of hominin skulls by sculpting them. 

Mylittlepony and Vans interviewed some students about how they feel and what they thought about the activity.  This is what they said: 

Applecidervinegarshampooandconditioner: “It was such an exciting hands-on activity!” 

Grape Juice: “I had so much fun with sculpting the skull!” 

Princess purpleness: “A fun learning experience.” 

Ms. Ramen: “I thought it was fun, but challenging, as there wasn’t enough time.” 

Other students said: 

“It was a very interesting experience because I never did pottery before.” 

“It was very hard to make it look like a skull.” 

“It was hard because you can’t replicate perfect skulls.”  

“I felt like it took way too long to paint the skulls, but I feel the finished result will be good.”  

“It was good because it was fun.” 

Everyone cannot wait to see the finished product! We will receive our finished products tomorrow!

-The News Crew 

Div 1 has recently come up with a News Crew that will update the blog and create newsletters! We will update the blog every other week.  

Now we will introduce our group, we cannot say our names, but our code names are Applecidervinegarshampooandconditioner, Grape Juice, Princess Purpleness, Mylittlepony, Dezdimona, Nutty, Vans, and Vanilla. 

If you have any ideas to add to the blog you can let Ms. Ramen know !

We hope you enjoy our effort! 

– The News Crew

Our class has been working on using self-editing strategies in order to make our writing more powerful, formal, and clear! Ms. Ward and Ms. Lee helped us learn about the difference between formal and informal writing. We might use formal writing when submitting an essay, sending an e-mail to an employer, or writing a letter to a government official. Informal writing is what we use when we text a friend, when we write in a journal, or if we are writing a quick write.

Based on these conversations, we created a checklist that will help us with our editing! Find our checklist below:

Self-Editing Checklist: 

Using the checklist below, read through your paper fully. You can make any corrections using a pen. Check off the list as you go. 

Formatting: 

•  Is there a title? Is it bolded? Centered?
• Is your name underneath (By: Your Name)?
• Is your paragraph indented using the TAB?
• Is the font easy to read (ex: Arial, Times New Roman)?
• Did you use size 12-14 font?
• Is your work double-spaced?

Content:

•  Did you use a catchy or interesting opening sentence?
• Did you clearly introduce your topic/thesis?
• Did you use at least 3 reasons or pieces of evidence?
• Did you use a conclusion sentence and have a strong ending?
• Were you persuasive?

Grammar and Formality:

•  Is the beginning of each sentence capitalized?
• Are names of people and places capitalized (ex: Wirt, Pottsfield)?
• Is there a period, question mark, or exclamation mark at the end of each sentence?
• Did you check for slang (ex: cool, yeah) and remove it?
• Did you remove contractions (ex: don’t, won’t)?
• Did you remove short forms (ex, ur, irl)?
• Did you rephrase your sentences to remove “I” and “we”?