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Hi, division 4 families!

What a fun day! We have now started a “storytelling” unit to foster students’ creative thinking and oral language skills. We did some small group storytelling activities as well as a collaborative game of “Story Ball” in the beautiful outdoor classroom. It’s great to see so many students eager to speak up and try telling an impromptu story!

As well, today we practices how to tell time, did some review of place value, and explored some more problem solving involving calculating elapsed time.

We also enjoyed investing time getting to know one another and building social connections. The students have been learning about their “Multiple Intelligences”, and here is an instructional video I made to give students and families and overview. We learn about Multiple Intelligence theory to give students more precise language to describe their strengths and to foster self-confidence and growth mindset.

As well, the students have the now completed their wonderful “Heart Maps” and “Identity Maps”. Below you can see my instructional video, which explains the project concept. Keep scrolling and you will see the detailed and lovely artworks the students made to communicate who they are.

Here are some questions you could ask your children…

-How do you play “Story Ball”? Can you show me?

-How is your independent reading practice going? What novel are you reading now?

-Did you do any of the “centres” today? Which ones?

-What happened in the school assembly?

-What are some things you illustrated on your “Heart Map” or “Identity Map”?

-What is a digit? What is place value?

-In the number 78 561, which digit is in the thousands place?

For further study, here is a video that reviews the concept of place value:

We are off to a wonderful start in division 4! I am so happy to be your teacher this year. We have such caring, creative, fun, and helpful students in our class, and it has been so nice to see them collaborate and make new friends with one another.

We have started our year with some stories, discussion, brainstorming together, art activities, gym class, games, music class, writing activities and more. We have jumped right into our math learning with some initial open-ended assessments, a review unit on how to tell time, math stories, and problem solving challenges as desired. We have established a fun an motivating end-of-day “Centres” time where students meet a range of curricular goals by choosing from selection of fun hands-on activities that challenge their critical and creative thinking, while fostering collaboration and communication skills.

There is so much more to share with you about our classroom, such as routines, practices and schedules and what we are learning. However, I will hold off on sending home much more information until things are finalized with our Gym, Music, Library and other classes.

For now, I invite families and students to please enjoy exploring and discussing these photos together. Here are some questions you might pose to your division 4 student…

-What are you enjoying most about your class this year?

-What can you tell me about “Centres Time”?

-How do you store your belongings in class?

-What novel have you been reading in class?

-What can you tell me about “Class Jobs”?

-What are “tiny artworks”?

-How does “cozy reading” work?

-What are some of the routines you have in class?

Dear students and families of division 2,

My heart is overflowing with a bittersweet happiness and pride today—we shared our last day in class as division 2. I’m so incredibly proud of how far each student has come, and I can see the world is in wonderful hands with these young leaders.

First, I must say an enormous THANK YOU! Thank you for the thoughtful cards, gifts, gift cards and moments of connection that were so special this week. I was so moved by the lovely video the class created for me—and I am going to have a luxurious time with my over the top generous gift card for Charelli’s. Students, you know I love cheese—so what a perfect group gift.

There is more to say, but for now—if you are feeling a little bit nostalgic or even sad that the year is over, please remember that nothing can erase the powerful imprint we have had on one another’s hearts and minds. We grew together this year as a “wolf pack” and in a way we are an extended family. Always feel free to reach out to me by email or social media and know that I am cheering you on!

Hello, division 2!

What’s been going on Math? Since wrapping up our data and graphing units, we’ve been enjoying exploring probability and geometry. Students have been creating fun math games too. Our math enrichment has focussed on advanced probability (see video below), more advanced tangrams puzzles, and independent math projects.

Adding to our math learning and study tools, we’ve also explored how to find math teaching videos online and how writing and singing math songs helps encode deeper understanding and promote retention of concepts. Here is a link to “The Transformations Song” by Numberock, which is about translations, rotations, reflections, and dilations: https://youtu.be/gOLO6F7twS0

Hello, division 2 families!

Our class continues to have fun making “Time Traveller’s Trading Cards”, and as well, we have ramped up the work on our Personal Interest Projects!

We will have our TIME TRAVELLER’S TEA PARTY on Friday, June 17th! This is a nice time to relax with some (caffeine-free) hot or cold herbal or berry tea and chat with one another about all we have learned during our “travels” with our classroom time machine.

Looking back on this week, we enjoyed some more time with our “little buddies” in Mr. Cairns class. This week the buddies worked together on an ADST challenge to design and build a new chair for “baby bear” from the Goldilocks story.

We’ve wrapped up our money unit and data and graphing unit and will spend the remaining math blocks of the year enjoying more geometry and some new probability activities. Students who have invented math games will be sharing those next week too.

In P.E., we are focussing on running through our favourite activities at least a couple more times before the end of the year.

A nice surprise today was when Mr. Hansen came by to share a thought provoking literacy lesson on a book he read to us, “The Shrinking of Treehorn”.

Hello, parents/guardians!

*Please let me know if you are a grade 4 parent/guardian who call join our June 21st beach day as a supervisor. We would love to have you with us!

Today in math we reviewed our learning in preparation for our data and graphing assessment tomorrow. As well, we practiced some more calculations with money.

We also enjoyed a read aloud of “The Peace Tree from Hiroshima” and followed up our Social Studies learning around the history of human rights violations in Canada, such as Japanese interment camps.

Combining learning goals in Physical Heath Education and Career Education, we explored more about making healthy choices and identifying and standing up to harmful forms of peer pressure. Students considered stories and brainstormed what to do when faced with various forms of peer pressure.

Our reading strategies lesson in the afternoon focussed on how to improve comprehension of higher level texts, using retellings of the history and invention of cheese and another text about the invention of ice cream. We reviewed the importance of identifying new vocabulary words and trying to understand their meanings from context clues and from using a dictionary. We practiced reading aloud with expression and fluency, placing emphasis on specific words to enhance meaning. Two new words for us today were “patent” and “rennet”.

As well, we continued with the research and art making required for our Time Traveller’s Trading Cards project. The cards are coming along so nicely and look amazing!

Happy Wednesday, Division 2 families!

Check out these fantastic portals to different places, times and dimensions…

Hearing students explain their creative choices and where they would like to travel had been wonderful.

As well, here is a peak at the math we have been exploring. This morning I told the students that they would “find a few hundred dollars on each desk”. I invited them to get to know the features of the currency, add it up, and create a multi-question “math story” about the money. The students were so excited to make deals and buy and sell things. It was fun to see their joy in the play of striking it rich. Hahah!

Hello, Division 2!

Our class enjoyed an extra special presentation and art lesson on the afternoon of Friday, May 13th. Carol McDougall, the award-winning author-illustrator of A Salmon’s Sky View, kindly joined our class to share a preview of her beautiful forthcoming book, Jellies in the Belly: A Sea Turtle’s Atlantic Adventure!

Carol read her wonderful story and shared her beautiful watercolour paintings with students, and then revealed her painting secrets! Students were then supported in creating their own underwater scenes featuring sea turtles and jellyfish.

This rich lesson was a meaningful way to celebrate and extend research we began on sea turtles—and it was truly inspiring to learn about Carol’s creative process. Thank you so much for generosity, Carol! Your teaching

Hello, division 2 families!

It’s been a whirlwind of sunshine-infused learning and adventure lately! See below for a little glimpse into our fun. We have now wrapped up our Fractions and Decimals units, and are working through our units on Perimeter and Area as well as Money and Financial Literacy.