September Highlights

Dear parents,
I really enjoyed getting to know my wonderful students this September. This is such a great group of children: we’ll have a fantastic year! In the last month, as we worked to create a respectful and inclusive classroom environment, a lot of our learning was centered on the Career Education curriculum, as well as the Positive Personal and Cultural Identity and Social Responsibility core competencies. Here are some examples of what we worked on:

Classroom Rules and Social Responsibility

We worked together to identify broad rules that set positive behaviour expectations and apply to all that we do:

1. Respect others (students, teachers, guests, staff, etc)
   
2. Be responsible and positive (control your body and your voice, do your best and follow expectations)
   
3. Take care of our materials, our classroom and our environment
   

​Students will now start to assess their own level of social responsibility using these positive behaviour expectations as a guideline.

About Me Cube

Students created a Cube, using drawings and descriptive words, to share what is unique about them. Some of the topics presented in the cube are:

1) My Self-portrait and main qualities;
2) My Family and the things we like to do together;
3) My Strongest Intelligences;
4) My totem animal;
5) and 6) Choice topics such as: My Talents, My Hobbies, My favorite sport, My favorite animal, etc.

Students have started to share their cube during our morning meetings and we are discovering more about each other everyday! We are learning that we are all unique and that everyone has amazing strengths to share with the class. ​

Growth Mindset Activities

We are also learning that we can “grow our brain” by taking risks, embracing challenges and practicing the things that are hard for us. When we understand this, we have a “Growth Mindset” as opposed to having a “Fixed Mindset” (i.e. thinking that we are either good or bad at something, which can lead us to abandon when faced with a difficult task). Our class is taking a leadership role in the school and we have started to teach the whole school about the importance of having a “Growth Mindset”.
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Today, we presented an introductory Growth Mindset Drama Circle at the school Assembly. In the upcoming weeks, students will work in teams to produce short videos to teach other classes about the “Growth Mindset” and why it is important for our learning. Projects such as the drama circle and the videos involve many competencies across the curriculum, such as Communication & Collaboration, Creative Thinking, Language Arts, Drama and much more.