Math
Ms. Andrea’s math group launched our 3rd unit – devoted entirely to addition and subtraction. For the rest of the year we’ll delve into adding and subtracting with larger numbers, learning strategies and utilizing regrouping skills. This week we focused on fact families, aka number bonds. Given a number (example: 13) we came up with 2 additional numbers to create a fact family (example: 7, 20): 13+7=20. We also learned a new name for our sum: Big Daddy. Subtraction sentences always start with our Big Daddy: 20-7=13 or 20-13=7, for the example above. We got comfortable detailing many fact families, built some using snap cubes, and learned our first game of the unit (surprise, surprise, it’s about fact families).
The next strategy we highlighted was making a 10! We filled in 10 frames galore! Of course, it was also Word Problem Wednesday so we practiced reading and solving a story problem together as well. Finally, Ms. Andrea’s group wrapped up our Making a 10 strategy by practicing “borrowing” from one addend and subtracting the same amount from another to make our numbers friendlier to add. We also sorted number sentences based on their sum (10+1, 10+2, etc). This helps us with our fact fluency as well! 🤩
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Ms. Kelly’s math group is spending the next week and a half honing our addition and subtraction skills before moving on to multiplication. To spice it up a bit, we have added some extra tricky challenges that have provided just enough productive struggle to make the kiddos really work, but not too difficult that anyone would give up. AND the kiddos could attack the challenges from many different angles. Some drew pictures, others tallied, still others used standard algorithms. They were so proud to explain how they figured out the answers to the group and we all learned multiple ways one could achieve the same outcome. Minds are expanding!!
We have also been talking a lot about the relationship between addition and subtraction. Addition and subtraction are considered “inverse operations,” meaning they are opposite to each other; essentially, one operation undoes the other, like adding a number then subtracting the same number to return to the original value. We all remember fact families from Alpha and first year Beta. Well fact families still apply with bigger numbers! And doing the inverse of an equation can prove to you that you got the answer correct.
Reading
Book Club time!!! There was a buzz about the classroom this week! The first week of book club was a success! What the pictures don’t capture is the engagement of every kiddo- reading together, laughing at the silly parts, helping one another with tricky words, discussing the characters, and predicting what will happen next. It was a beautiful thing!
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Ms. Kelly’s spelling group focused on possessives and how a teeny tiny apostrophe can really make a difference in the meaning of a sentence! We discussed the difference between contractions and possessives and sorted various sentences into two columns and played a silly possessive sentence activity with friends.
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Ms. Andrea’s spelling group studied /ch/ and – our first trigraph! – /tch/. We learned how to tell which to use (tch only comes after a short vowel) and got new partners and spelling lists. For the rest of our short week we practiced applying the spelling pattern to help us spell many words with /ch/ and /tch/.
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Writing
This week we created new journals to help us step into the mind of someone during Colonial Times. We began by aging a brown paper cover, a process which required repeated crumpling and wearing of the material. Each Beta chose a name from the period for their Colonial Times persona. For our first entry, we imagined we were aboard a ship headed to the New World in late 1606 or early 1607. We detailed our experience on board and our feelings about the trip. Our next entry highlighted our initial response to the new land. The Betas are applying what we’re learning about the time, along with their vivid imaginations, when writing in these special period journals.
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Theme
We began Q2 with a mystery- the Lost Colony of Roanoke. The Lost Colony was an early English settlement on Roanoke Island (now in North Carolina). The colony mysteriously disappeared between the time of its founding in 1587 and the return of the expedition’s leader in 1590.
A colony consisting of more than 100 settlers under the command of Governor John White, sailed from Plymouth, England, in May 1587 and landed at Roanoke Island in July of that year. The settlers included men as well as women and children. They built houses on the island. Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the Americas, was born at the colony on August 18, 1587.
White soon returned to England to get more supplies for the colony. However, the approaching war between England and Spain prevented him from obtaining a ship with which to relieve the colony. By the time White returned to the island in August 1590, everyone had vanished. The only trace of the Lost Colony was the word CROATOAN carved on a post and the letters CRO on a tree. The group may have been killed by hostile Native Americans or may have split up and joined friendly tribes. Croatan was the name of a nearby island as well as of a local group of Native Americans. In any event, the mystery of the Lost Colony has never been solved.
We imagined what it would have been like to be aboard the Susan Constant, one of the three ships that set sail for the new land, from England, on December 20, 1606. The three ships first headed south to the Canary Islands. They then traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean Islands, landing at Puerto Rico for fresh food and water. From there, the ships headed north and finally, four months after leaving England, landed at Cape Henry in Virginia on April 26, 1607.
The trip was long, cold and cramped. Food was rotting, people were sea sick. It couldn’t have been a very pleasant experience.
We discussed some of the reasons why people decided to board a ship from England to Jamestown. Why would people leave their country and everything behind to live in a new land? Well, there are many reasons colonists came to America. Some settlers came to America to work. Most people were farmers and America had a lot of new land that hadn’t been farmed yet. A large number of people came because they wanted the opportunity to practice their own religion. People also came over because they wanted to own their own land. The land in America was very cheap and sometimes even free!
Coming to America was not an easy task. The settlers weren’t able to take an airplane and arrive the same day. Companies made money transporting settlers across the ocean on ships. Wealthy people would pay for this trip, but those who couldn’t afford it would become servants for the first few years to pay off their fare. The servants’ bosses would give them clothes, tools, and let you live in their house. Sometimes, they even gave the servants a small piece of land to have.
We created a Venn diagram to help us compare and contrast traveling in the 1600s and modern times.
AND… we began making our Peeps!
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