In the Loop - April 23, 2026
KEY RESOURCES IN LANGLEY
- Guide to Key Websites and Resources: Here
- Instructional Services Website: For all your district-vetted resources K-12! Check it out!
- Aboriginal Resources vetted by the District: Here
- TCS Sites: Key resources are still being placed in these Teams. If you need access to one of these Teams, please email dzurbuchenjonker@sd35.bc.ca.
- TCS SS-Grade 3
- TCS Grade 4-8
- TCS Secondary
DISTRICT LEARNING COMMONS
The DLC is your one stop shop for useful resources to enhance your teaching available to all school staff in the Langley School District. You don’t need to buy everything for all of your lessons yourself! We deliver and pick up all the items you request through district mail twice per week (Tuesdays and Thursdays). Links to all the info below:
- View and book online through Insignia Library system | Here
- Find instructions, an area to check out new resources, request new resources and report lost or damages kits | Here
- Sign out instructions | Here
Featured DLC Resource:
MENTORSHIP PROGRAM
*NEW!* Follow us on our UDL/Mentorship Instagram! @sd35mentorshipmoments
We post lots of events, teacher tips, UDL strategies, and more!
Upcoming Events:
- Book Club: Valley of the Birdtail: An Indian Reserve, a White Town, and the Road to Reconciliation. May 5, 2026 4-6pm SBO HUB
- Year-End Celebration | Monday, June 15, 2026 4-6pm, SBO HUB | More info | RSVP by June 5, 2026
HONOURING TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION
Indigenous Youth Art Contest | For Ages 5-18 | Deadline May 22, 2026 | FORED BC | More info
To celebrate the rich cultural and heritage traditions of the Indigenous people of Canada, FORED is sponsoring its annual artwork, photo and video contest. $150 cash prizes are available for Indigenous youth, aged 5-18. This contest is a wonderful opportunity to find a mentor in the Elder community to pass down this important knowledge to Indigenous youth.
Theme: Indigenous Traditional Knowledge & Medicine
Prize: 4 x $150 prizes with at least one national winner. Group work shares prize.
DISTRICT PROFESSIONAL LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
Deconstructing Otherness with Kevin Lamoureux | On-Demand Learning Feature
Kevin Lamoureux speaks about "Deconstructing Otherness" as we continue our learning journey around anti-racism.
Basic First Aid for SD35 Staff| May 15, 2026 | Register Today!
The WorkSafeBC Basic First Aid course is an 8-hour program, including coffee and lunch breaks and is designed to provide life-saving first aid skills to workers in industry. Successful candidates must demonstrate competency in practical skills and achieve 72% or higher on a multiple-choice exam. Certification is valid for three years.
What you will learn:
- Priority Action Approach
- Primary Survey – Conscious patient / Unconscious patient
- Cervical spine control
- Airway and Breathing interventions
- Hemorrhage control
- One person CPR
- Minor injuries which require medical aid
- Management of soft tissue injuries
- Records and reports
CUPE 1260 Spring Conference | May 15, 2026 | Register Today!
Begin your day at RE Mountain Secondary, where you will be provided with snacks and fresh tea and coffee. Take this opportunity to chat and catch up with friends at different work sites. We have a breadth of workshops this year! Learn some of the ins and outs of our Collective Agreement and how bargaining works with our Union Executives. Take some specific programs training in Excel or Outlook. There are plenty of workshops around conflict management, mental health, wellness, stress management and The Brain Guy, Terry Small, is providing us some workshops on how our brain work, and more importantly, how to make them work for us! Make your own beaded bracelet with Nadine McSpadden, learn Métis Dot Art with Kelly Poitras, and connect with others in the telling of their stories.
EXTERNAL PROFESSIONAL LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
From Knowing to Understanding: Rethinking Learning and Assessment Webinar | April 28, 2026 | Register
In many classrooms, learning is still defined by what students know. But knowing is not the same as understanding. The 90-minute webinar explores the shift from factual knowledge to conceptual understanding; what it means, why it matters, and how it changes the way we think about both teaching and assessment. Tania Lattanzio is an inquiry friend who has vast expertise in developing conceptual curricula across subject areas and year levels, providing teachers with strategies to create learning experiences that are conceptually driven and develop students' conceptual understanding.
SEL & UDL: New Avenues to Implementation | CAST | April 29, 2026 | Register
Join CAST on April 29 for a free, 60-minute webinar exploring how Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) work together to reduce barriers and strengthen learner agency. Grounded in CAST’s Circle Up research, this session shares practical insights for educators and leaders looking to bridge research and classroom practice. Can’t attend live? Register to receive the recording.
Education in the Age of AI: Moving beyond hype and panic to realism | Matific | April 30, 2026 | Register
Join Matific for a real-world conversation on how AI can genuinely support teaching, reduce workload, and improve learning—without losing the human touch. The webinar is free to join and will explore:
- How AI can support more personalized learning experiences
- How it can reduce the administrative burden for teachers
- How AI can provide better, faster insights into student learning
- What this means for how teachers spend time in the classroom
Bring the Tale-Bot Robotics Series to Your Classroom | Logics Academy | May 5, 2026 | Register
Discover how Tale-Bot turns storytelling into a hands-on learning experience for young students. In this interactive workshop, educators will explore how Tale-Bot supports early literacy, sequencing, and foundational coding skills in Kindergarten and primary classrooms. You’ll leave with ready-to-use, curriculum-connected lesson ideas and the confidence to integrate Tale-Bot into language, math, and cross-curricular learning through play.
LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES FOR STAFF/STUDENTS/CLASSES
BugQuest Across Canada | More info | How to Join
BugQuest is working toward 1,000 sites across Canada, and every school that takes part helps build a stronger picture of insect biodiversity across the country. Schools participate by hosting a seasonal insect trap on their grounds during Fall 2026 and Spring 2027. Participation is free, and BugQuest provides the trap, instructions, laboratory processing, species identification, and covers all shipping costs. Hosting a trap is simple and takes about 15 minutes per week for a few weeks per year. In return, your school can involve students in hands-on science, generate biodiversity data from its own grounds, and connect learning in ecology, genetics, and data to a real national project.
LEARNING RESOURCES
Making Thinking Visible | Thinking Pathways | Resources
Thinking Pathways offers a collection of free, downloadable graphic organizers, each accompanied by clear explanations for both student and classroom use. Under the “Educational Resources” tab, the site organizes tools by different phases of thinking, with suggested activities to support and scaffold student learning. This is a handy resource for educators looking to deepen thinking, support metacognition, and make learning processes more explicit across grades and subject areas. Appropriate for elementary and middle use, maybe even some high school too!
The Amazing Earth Podcast | Ideal for Ages 8-11 | Curio | Podcast
Set out on an adventure with three young people striving to meet one captivating mission: to live in harmony with nature! This youth podcast produced by the Biosphere is ideal for teachers and students who want to learn more about the environment while having fun.
Each episode of The Amazing Earth podcast includes a companion educational kit. These kits promote active learning, outdoor exploration, the development of cross-curricular competencies (science, arts, social development), and a commitment to caring for the environment.
- Learning in Motion Program Website – hosts free classroom resources for educators to view, download and print (posters, activity sheets, assessment tools) that align with the Physical Education and Health Curriculum.
- PLAYBuilder Tool – a free digital platform that provides B.C. educators with 1,600+ activities/games and videos, 150+ lesson plans and a term planning tool for grades K-7.
Run through roughly 130 years of Japanese Canadian history and get ideas and resources to help you teach it! Accompanying resources have been created to align with grade 5 and 10 social studies as well as grade 5 English.
Japanese Canadian history is more than just internment; there were several key ideologies and events that set the stage for the forced uprooting of roughly 20,000 Canadians during World War II. Topics include:
- Vancouver's 1907 anti-Asian riots
- Picture brides and their experiences
- The fight for voting rights
- School segregation in Richmond
- Japanese Canadian involvement in the natural resource industries
- Japanese Canadian internment/incarceration
- Differences between sites of internment
- Resistance to forced uprooting and dispossession
- Postwar deportation of roughly 4,000 Japanese Canadians
- The fight for redress
- The legacy of forced uprooting and dispossession
- The contemporary Japanese Canadian community
How to Win At Classroom Management in 6 Easy Steps | Pembroke Publishers | Free Preview
In this practical guide, Angie Barrett shares her tried and tested teaching strategies in six easy steps. You’ll find a game plan for success, personal and colleague-shared experiences, tips and tricks, as well as troubleshooting through real classroom examples. Based on extensive classroom experience, new and experienced teachers will find just what they need to create a classroom that works for teachers and supports student learning in the classroom and beyond.
Fail-Safe Strategies for Science and Literacy | Pembroke Publishers | Free Preview
This thoughtful, engaging book dives into the cognitive skills that are shared by science and language arts. You'll gain confidence and engage students with the hands-on activities and experiments, and help students make sense of science content and vocabulary.
PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL READINGS
My Legacy Podcast: Dr. Gabor Mate on Trauma, the Body and What it Means to Support Young People | Podcast
In the latest episode of the My Legacy Podcast, hosts Martin Luther King III, Arndrea Waters King, Marc Kielburger, and Craig Kielburger welcome Dr. Gabor Maté, physician, bestselling author, and one of the world's leading voices on trauma and its effects on the body. For educators who work daily with young people carrying invisible histories, this conversation speaks directly to why students behave the way they do, and what they most need from the adults in their lives. Dr. Maté makes clear that behavior that looks like defiance, withdrawal, or disruption is often a survival response to pain the student may not even have words for. Many of the students in your classroom have already learned to push down their emotions in order to feel safe, at home, in their communities, or in school itself. Understanding that context does not mean excusing harmful behavior. It means responding to what is actually happening beneath it, which is often fear, disconnection, or an unmet need for safety and belonging.
TECH TIPS
Student Cyber Security Awareness | Focused Ed | Download Here
Canadian teachers have developed free cyber-security awareness lessons for students ages 8-11 and 12-14 based on Fortinet’s Cyber Seven Strands. The materials include:
- Teacher's Guide
- Lesson Plans
- Customizable PPT Templates
- Multimedia Assets
- Student Handouts
These lessons would be valuable to prepare students for safe use of digital technologies as summer break approaches. All materials are available for download at the link above.