Social Emotional Learning

We all struggle at times to control our emotions to express ourselves in safe and respectful ways.  At school, when we build a common frame and a common language for children throughout the school, a supportive and safe learning space is available for all.  This is truly important curriculum.  The link is a great tool to view with children to support the understanding that SEL is something we all work on together.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bKuoH8CkFc&t=11s

A common thread of language and intentionally developed toolkit that children can draw from is what we work towards.  The links below the video are wonderful references for parents and educators.

Elementary Choral Festival 2017

Following a wonderful performance by Norquay’s EMB intermediate choir….the mass number…. Amazing!!!!!!  So proud of our students – they performed beautifully.

Agamographs: math & art. It’s all in how you look at it.

  
It all starts here with two separate pictures.

 
Then through some careful cutting, pasting, ordering, and folding a two sided art piece is created.  

These student samples are completed works from the 2 different angles.

 Sample 1:  (photo from the right and then left)  
 
Sample 2: (photo from the right and then left)

  
 Sample 3:  (photo from the right and then left)

  
 

Happy New Year!

鸡年吉祥     Good luck for this Rooster year!

As we embark on the Chinese New Year,  it is a perfect time to reflect on just how privileged we are to be part of this wonderful school community and celebrate the new year together!   This has been an incredibly busy week at Norquay – all classes have been learning about the Lunar New Year – involved in crafts, baking, fact finding, dance and music – it’s been an incredibly festive week!!

 

 

 

 

 

I look forward to seeing our students from the Mandarin classes at the Chinatown Parade on Sunday:  “The 44th Vancouver Chinatown Spring Festival Parade

Year of The Rooster” – Sun, Jan 29, 2017, 11AM.  It’s a great family event. Hope to see you there.

Happy New Year

I hope that all of our families enjoyed a restful and connected Winter Break.  We are already into our third week of 2017 and ur students are engaged in wonderful learning activities!

As a parent, I always want to know details about each of my son’s day, yet I’m often answered with “nothing” as his response when I ask what he did at school.  Knowing that this is a common response for all children, I find it important to “create a window into our school” to keep parents engaged and informed of the great things happening in our building. Our newsletter, website and classroom sites all provide a glimpse and I hope this blog supports my efforts as well!

We started off our new year with an assembly where we talked about all those things that make Norquay a great school and reflected on how each of us can make our school a safe and caring place to learn.  We’ve named January Thank-O-Rama month and we all have moved into the new year with the challenge to be the reason why someone else smiles each and every day.  Our monthly assemblies are an opportunity for us to connect as a community, share and celebrate learning and bring us together to share ideas that can be woven into the month ahead.  I think of this as my classroom – and love our time together as a whole school.  Ask your children about Thank-O Rama, about how they can make a difference in our school and what they like about assemblies.  February will see classroom learning and celebrations centred around the Lunar New Year, Black History Month, Pink Day (anti-bullying), Valentines Day and much, much, more.

These are some of the displays of learning I’ve enjoyed while strolling the halls and classrooms these past two weeks:

WINTER ART DISPLAYS:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
  

 

 

 

 

ARTS UMBRELLA VAN-GO WORKSHOPS:

 

 

 

 

Seasonal sing along!

What a wonderful way to start the day: voices joined together in song! 

  

  

  

 Happy holidays to everyone!  Thank you for a memorable 2016!    

Debates in Div 2

Resolution:  ‘Humans should intervene to save a critically endangered species from extinction’ 

Students built a number of  skills as they worked though the process of preparing to debate: research, group work, listening, synthesizing, supporting their thinking, responding to opposing ideas, public speaking, shifting their thinking …..

These students did an excellent job in their first efforts of engaging in formal debate.  Job well done!

It’s all in a name

The children in Ms Kwan’s class explored the origins of their names.  While visiting with Shane Point, our District’s Elder, they learned the meaning of his name was ‘thunderbird.’  This led to their curiosity about their own names and family roots!

It was fun hearing their stories.  You could see how much fun they had bringing their family stories back to the classroom to share!

My hero research projects

The project based and inquiry learning in Ms Ang’s class has been rich!  The students chose a hero and learned about and responded to their learning through the creation of cross curricular theme books!  The presentation of their learning was uniquely shared in paper bag theme books; each pocket containing interesting facts or responses to their learning.

  
  

Noon hour Games

We appreciate our students for their desire and commitment to be involved and lead by example!  Noon hour games are up and running with indoor soccer.  Thank you to our sports reps, our students who come out and play and to those students who come to watch and cheer each other on!  It’s always a full house!