First Day Back + Snow Day

Hello students and families! I hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing winter break.

Yesterday, we got back into our regular routine with 5 au quotidien and made some 2017 resolutions! Ask your child what goal they chose and why.

Over the break, I took a short teaching math course, and the course talked a lot about Growth Mindset. Perhaps you've heard of this term in education already - having a growth mindset means that you know you can tackle any problem you come across if you have the right tools and keep at it. This is opposed to a fixed mindset, usually one of "I can't do this, I'm dumb, this is too hard." Unfortunately, many students, and even their parents/guardians, have a fixed mindset when it comes to math. An interesting 4min clip that we listened to in the course was called "How Mistakes Make You Smarter," and we listened to this in class and discussed. Ask your child what they learned! Here is the link if you'd like to take a listen, it's really interesting: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02xkyml

In Social Studies, we are going to start tackling residential school history. This can be a difficult and sensitive topic, so if you ever have any questions or concerns, please let me know. We started our discussion about what is a right, and what are some examples of those. Then we looked at the Children's Rights as set by the UN, and chatted about how our own school here makes us feel safe and comfortable. Next, I showed some pictures of children playing around the world (India, Brazil, Sierra Leone) and asked students if they could guess where the picture was taken - many showed quiet poor and desolate environments. The last picture was that of the community of Attawapiskat in northern Ontario, and students were shocked to learn that children lived in these conditions in their own province. We watched a short video about how their school was demolished as it was on toxic land, and they'd been without a school until last year. This provoked lots of important questions, such as why don't they just move somewhere else, isn't the government supposed to take care of this, etc.

Last period we were FINALLY back in the gym for our physEd period, and we finished up our basketball unit.

Today was a snow day, and only 5 students from our class came. Hopefully the weather will improve and I'll see you all tomorrow! Stay warm and safe!