As you know, BEST participated in Orange Shirt Day the last week of September. Orange Shirt Day was designed to educate people and promote awareness in Canada about the Indian residential school system. Prior to the day, we read and discussed a version of Phyllis Webstad's story called "Phyllis's Orange Shirt" which presents a complicated issue in a simplified way for younger students. We wanted them to understand why we were preparing to wear orange. On the actual day, we read the book "You Hold Me Up" by Monique Gray Smith which was written to prompt a dialogue among young people, their care providers and educators about reconciliation and the importance of the connections children make with their friends, classmates and families. It fit well with our ongoing encouragement to show love and support for each other and to consider each other's well-being in their everyday actions in our learning spaces. Following the book we shared how others held us up. We wish you could have been there to hear the wonderful things the children had to say about their families and the things that made them feel loved. Simple things like hugs, helping when things are difficult and playing together. It was heart-meltingly sweet and a lovely way to wrap up the lesson.
Mondays will be our library day and the children were very excited for our first visit. We met Ms. Kipp, our librarian, and had a look around the library. Ms Kipp showed us how to use our Spot Cards to mark our place when we remove a book from the shelf, she read us Mr. Wiggle's Book, which reminded us how to take care of books and then we chose a book and signed it out on the computer with Ms. Kipp. We will be bringing a new book home every week as long as we have returned the book we borrowed the previous week. If the book becomes lost or damaged, it will have to be paid for before another book can be signed out. We put our books in the special library book bags to keep them neat and clean for the trip back and forth between school and home. Returned library books can be taken out of their bags and put, with the bag, in the Library bin beside our door. We loved going to the library!  Team Awesome will be joining Mrs. Philips in the gym and her special learning space for part of Tuesdays and Thursdays to sing, dance, act and do art projects while we try to get caught up on things (imagine a hamster running on a wheel). We are always interested to see what exciting things Mrs. Philips has planned for the team and they are going to enjoy all her activities this year!
|
