Category: Physical/Healthy Living

What an incredible day in the mountains! Our Grade 6/7 students from Division 1, 2, and 3 had an unforgettable experience at Mount Seymour, taking part in the Winter Survival Challenge. With clear skies and perfect conditions, the students embraced the adventure, working together to build shelters, snowshoeing through the stunning landscape, and, of course, enjoying some fun in the snow!

It was amazing to see their teamwork, creativity, and problem-solving skills in action as they tackled the survival challenge. Whether constructing sturdy shelters or navigating the trails, they demonstrated resilience and enthusiasm every step of the way.

A huge thank you to our wonderful parent volunteers who helped make this trip possible—we couldn’t have done it without you!

Check out some highlights from our adventure below!

This past week, our students took on the challenge of designing more sustainable and inclusive communities. Using their knowledge of sustainability, accessibility, and urban planning, they created prototypes that reflect both environmental responsibility and the values of their user personas.

Through hands-on model-building, students explored solutions for:

Sustainable Housing: Energy-efficient homes using renewable materials and smart design.

Accessible Pathways: Safe, well-connected routes for people of all abilities.

Recreation Facilities: Green spaces that promote health, well-being, and biodiversity and energy efficient swimming pools.

Transit & EV Charging: Infrastructure that supports low-carbon transportation.

Retail & Food Systems: Locally sourced goods, food waste reduction initiatives, and integrated community food bank programs to ensure food security while minimizing environmental impact.

Community Spaces & Stewardship: Multi-use areas that reduce waste and promote circular economies, including makerspaces where residents can repair, repurpose, and sell upcycled products. These spaces also foster community engagement, allowing people to track and celebrate progress toward environmental goals.

Each project was guided by a unique user persona, encouraging students to think deeply about how design choices impact real people’s lives. Their creativity and problem-solving skills were on full display as they built models that prioritize environmental sustainability, inclusivity, and community needs.

Check out the incredible student work below!

Through this process, students gained hands-on experience in sustainable design thinking which is an important step in shaping the cities of tomorrow. What features would you love to see in a more sustainable and inclusive community? Let us know in the comments!

This integrated unit involved:

ADST -prototyping, food safety, and making their pizza to show creativity, originality, and bold flavors.

Math-financial literacy (budgeting).

Health-Nutrition and menu/recipe planning and the exploration of healthy/unhealthy ingredients.

French-food vocabulary and how to order pizza in French.

Students really enjoyed planning for this activity and made some incredible pizzas. The whole school smelled amazing and the judges were left salivating over their final creations. Once the pizzas were judged, students got to enjoy their final creations. They all turned out great and there was very little if any remaining pizza. Well done Division 3!

This week students had the privilege of learning about wild, native, and medicinal plants from Lori Synder, a First Nations Métis herbalist and educator. It was a rich learning experience and we are inspired by her teachings. We are also very excited about transforming our garden/outdoor classroom, making it a more diverse space where students can gather and learn more about native plants and indigenous ways of knowing and doing. As the season change and new plants are added, take time to observe, witness, and listen to what the garden is offering us.

In addition, students wore orange shirts throughout the week and explored age-appropriate lessons and had discussions about the meaning behind wearing orange shirts. This generation of children will have a far greater understanding of the history of residential schools, their negative impact, and the importance of reconciliation as we look critically at our country’s history and strive to do better. Tomorrow could be an opportunity to ask your children about what they have learned from their sessions with Lori and Mme Heardman this week.

Today in class as part of our Mind Up Curriculum we learned about the different parts of our brains and how they help us control our emotions and help us learn.

In our lesson today, students learned about their brains, specifically the limbic system which controls their thoughts and emotions. The three parts of the brain they learned about today were:

Prefrontal cortex:  ‘our leader’ right in the front of our brain. It is in charge of making decisions, thinking, learning and problem solving.

Amygdala:  our ‘security guard’ that warns our body of danger and stress to protect us.

Hippocampus: our memory saver or our filling cabinet that stores all of our experiences and everything we learn.

They learned that in a calm and safe state, their amygdala can communicate with the ‘leader’ or prefrontal cortex to make good decisions. They also learned that when they are in a negative emotional state where they feel stressed, anxious, or fearful, the amygdala fires a fight, flight, freeze response to warn them negatively impacting the communication with the ‘leader’ or prefrontal cortex part of our brain, which is responsible for clear decision making.

We examined various ways to calm the amygdala and train the brain to respond reflectively rather than reactively in different situations. We also discussed the importance of developing an awareness of what is going on inside our brains so that we can reason and think clearly to make better decisions.

Diagram of the Brain/Facts:

https://sd41-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/e19647_burnabyschools_ca/EbvCDXxadeVNm-93qOtx99AB90dSAv4AphY8sxJNLy2u-A?e=i8jbWf

Videos From Today’s Lesson:

https://youtu.be/3bKuoH8CkFc

https://youtu.be/D-uSlY6NBno

The strategies we will continue to build in the coming weeks will help students learn self regulation strategies and help them develop the capacity to recognize and take control of their emotions and actions while being mindful and aware of themselves and others.

Today we had a presentation from the Youth Crisis Centre on mental health and self-care.  Our presenter Nick taught us more about what mental health is.  We learned that mental affects the way people think, feel and act and that taking care of our mental health is just as important as having a healthy body.

We learned that life isn’t always easy and that sometimes there are challenges along the way and that by using a variety of self-care tools we can learn ways to overcome these challenges and bounce back.

We learned that we cannot always see the emotional baggage people are carrying and discussed why it is important to be supportive and kind to others. There are many self-care tools we can use to help improve our mindset, eliminate negativity, reduce stress and anxiety, improve mental clarity, and help us cope with and overcome challenges.

We also learned that when dealing with challenges that affect our metal health we should always stop, take a breath, observe with curiosity, proceed with caution and use trial and error to help us figure out which self-care tools are most appropriate for dealing with the  situation. Things won’t always be easy and to develop good mental health it will require daily effort and a variety of tools.

Lastly we learned that sometimes we don’t always have the answers and there are many organizations and people we can go to for help if we cannot solve our problems on our own.

Student Feedback Survey:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfAJNNgwRNpTWeBChopXpJfyn3pabHtLfyNtcz5HtaNuZKalA/viewform

Youth Mental Health Resources:

https://sd41-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/e19647_burnabyschools_ca/Efd9qYF5dVpFiQS1abYOn94BAyYj64hxc3aorRbeWZexYA?e=NCqKAb

Today we harvested 298 potatoes with Division 9/11.

Check out how much our spuds have grown since Spring Break.  Harvesting will take place in June.  How many potatoes do you think these plants will produce? Put your predictions in the comments section of this thread.

1. Today we planted our seed potatoes prior to spring break. We will harvest the potatoes in June. Our class predicts that we will grow approximately 100-320 potatoes.