Category: Communicating Student Learning

Dear Parents/Guardians,

Next week we will be having 2 student teachers from SFU joining us at Aubrey to complete their 405 long practicums. The student teachers will be with us from September 14th-November 29th.

Ms. Knowlan has been assigned to work with our class and we are very excited to have her joining us.  Ms Knowlan is a graduate of Kwantlen Polytechnic University with a major in psychology and a minor in counseling. She currently lives in Vancouver with her cat, Trip. When she’s not focused on school and her professional development she loves to cook and bake, explore the great outdoors, and spend time with her family. She is very grateful for the opportunity to learn in our classroom and and get to know each and every single one of you and your children!

Throughout her practicum we will be sure share all of the exciting things we are doing over the coming weeks on our classroom blog http://sd41blogs.ca/smithc/.  You will also see Ms. Knowlan and I at drop off and pick-up.  Please feel free to say hi and introduce yourself while continuing to follow our Covid-19 health and safety guidelines.

Kindest Regards,

Crystal Smith 

Grade 5/6 Teacher

Ecole Aubrey Elementary

1075 Stratford Avenue, Burnaby BC V5B 3X9

Phone: 604-296-9001

Email: crystal.smith@burnabyschools.ca

After a very successful Business Fair students from Divisions 1, 2, 3 and 5 donated 15% ($607) of their profits to the Canadian Red Cross to provide humanitarian assistance to those affected by the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Congratulations everyone on a job well done at this years Business Fair and thank you all for your generous donations.

How do you make slime with glue, water and Borax? Slime is made after a chemical reaction occurs between two main ingredients; polyvinyl alcohol and borate ion. Glue contains polyvinyl acetates (PVAC) molecules. These are long polymers that are like long strands of spaghetti tangled together on your plate. The Borax (borate ions)hook these together so they don’t flow so well and begin to act more like a solid and their viscosity increases.

During the slime lab students learned that increasing the amount of water in their slime mixture helped it flow better, while increasing the amount of Borax made the slime firmer.

After reading “The Great Realization” by Tomos Robert the students create a similar poem on their own global issue. They worked in pairs to create a 6 stanza poem with A, A, B, B or A, B, A, B rhyming scheme.

Below are the poems they created.
Student Poems

Link to Read-Aloud: https://youtu.be/Nw5KQMXDiM4

Today, in class Ms. Knowlan our student teacher taught a lesson based on the book The Great Realization written by Tomos Roberts. The book is about the pandemic, times of crisis, and the many  global issues we are facing today. It also highlights how the pandemic has helped us open our eyes to some of  these global issues during the global pandemic.

A few questions we discussed as a class were:

What do you think the meaning of this poem is?

What are some things that resonated with you?

In the video how does the relationship between Roberts and his siblings influence his message, choice of words, delivery and impact?

Does Tomos Robert paint a positive or negative picture?

Do the illustrations from the book change your perception or understanding?

Why do you think the author chose the title “The Great Realization”?

What are some key issues he identifies?

How does he portray the world after lockdown?

What does he mean by “hindsight’s 2020”?

For the next lesson we will be partnered up and asked to write and illustrate our own poems on global issues affecting us today (poverty, pollution, climate change, inequality, technology consumption, war, natural disasters, over population, corruption, etc.).

Blogpost written by: A.W.