General News
- The clothing swap is coming up next week! Bring old clothes and get new clothes in the community hall on November 5th and 6th after school!
- We will be having a lockdown drill on November 6th. We will coach and reassure students with age-appropriate information. We say something like “this is practice in case an unfamiliar person was ever in the building. We stay silent and safe together until administration tells us it’s okay to move about the classroom again.” We like to let parents know when these drills occur in case your child wants extra information or reassurance at home.
- Part 2 of their science fair research is due on Monday, November 4th! Last week they came up with testable questions and got feedback from teachers! They are looking great, overall!
ELA Update
This week in ELA was a blast! The enthusiasm they have shown for the new genre study has surprised and delighted their ELA teacher! Gamma’s were impressed with the reorganization of the classroom library and it piqued their interest anew for self-selecting books. We heard a lot of casual conversation in the mornings discussing books! On Monday we went over the new homework and found out who will be in our book clubs for this first round of books and they self-selected books from the library. Ms. Ansley told them it is a-okay to “judge a book by its cover” when you’re browsing a large selection of books, as long as you also read the back cover and a few pages to make sure it’s a good fit for you. We also talked about the importance of not reading books that are too hard for you but that during this unit it is okay if the book is a little easy. We are shooting for a high volume of books being read and strong comprehension! Gammas were excited to learn that this unit is very social. On Tuesday and Wednesday we alternated between time spent reading and time spent discussing. We have guided questions for discussion each day. This week we talked about the characters and setting and perhaps the conflict, if it had been introduced. We did some sketches of setting and characters to share with our book club members to add even more to the discussion.
Math Update
It’s all about fractions in math class this week. We are using all sorts of manipulatives to make this abstract concept more concrete: fraction strips, tiles, pattern blocks, and electronic fraction models. The kids in both groups are doing fabulous! Year 1 students are continuing to explore how to simplify and generate equivalent fractions. We took a creative challenge in Canva where kids were tasked with making their names in the form of a fraction riddle (as seen in this week’s P&P!) We ended the week with a jeopardy game to review. Year 2 students refreshed their fraction know-how from last year and began exploring multiplication with fractions (namely, with finding fraction of a set) They completed a short but silly “General Store” activity that Ms. Lorrie made when insane from quarantine. (This group missed one day of math due to our whole group reward party!) We’ll continue to multiply fractions next week, building up to multiplication with mixed numbers and maybe even some division!
Theme Update
This week was all about classifying living things! On Monday we started off with a simple review of the ways scientists classify living things – vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, and fungi. On Tuesday we introduced the classic taxonomy system – domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. These lessons were especially fun because we got to spend a lot of time talking about and researching animals and Gammas love animals. We used a few different resources to choose one animal or plant we love a lot to research its taxonomy and why it is classified that way. We then made mobiles to display. On Wednesday we took our new knowledge and got creative by pretending we were scientists and had discovered a new species. We based these fantasy creatures off of real living things so we could classify them somewhat accurately. We then came up with our own scientific/species names, thought about habitat, diet, life span, physical adaptations, and sculpted our fantasy creatures from clay. It was a fun week for the animal loving scientists in the room!
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