General News
Next Wednesday (November 15th) we’ll be taking a short field trip to the library to see a guest speaker (an indigenous storyteller at the Windsor Park branch location.) Thank you to our parent chaperones! (It’s a simple event but we sent a planning document to everyone who reached out to transport kiddos. Thank you!) We’ll depart AHB around 10:30. If weather permits, we’ll plan to eat picnic-style outside after the storytelling and return to school around 12:45.
Reading/Writing Update
This week we worked hard on wrapping up drafting our biographies in our notebooks and some Gammas got started typing up their pieces. Weeks of hard work researching are starting to come to fruition! We also started our class novel study this week and read the first two chapters of The Birchbark House by Louise Erdich. Gammas will be assigned chapters to read at home and be expected to come to school ready for book discussions on certain topics and days of the week moving forward, but for this week we just enjoyed diving into the novel and getting to know the characters. We filled out a family tree for our main characters and used clues from the text to describe their personalities. We also learned some new vocabulary words and practiced determining the meaning of a words via context clues in the text. We then learned how to use a dictionary (for those who didn’t already know) to check to see if your guesses were correct!
Math Update
In math, it was all about fractions again this week! Year 1 kids learned how to simplify fractions by looking for common factors in the numerator and denominator. We applied these skills to ‘uncrack’ a recipe riddle and then used our calculations to concoct the cookies on Tuesday. The cookies did not get burned by Ms. Lorrie (Hallelujah!) By week’s end we learned how to compare fractions by making a common denominator and played a class jeopardy game to practice all our new fraction skills. Year 2 students started officially multiplying and dividing fractions. We learned how to find a fraction of a set and then how to find the reciprocal of a fraction in order to divide. We worked on a mural project that was super fun–kids worked with partners to create a Gamma-inspired mural and we applied our fraction computation skills to figure out how much paint we would need to create them.
Theme Update
In theme, we are doing a deep-dive research project based on specific regions of North America. Students spent the first day exploring the map and an information booklet that explains the different cultural experiences in each of seven regions (housing, transport, food, etc.) Students filled out an interest form and were placed in groups of 3 to work together on a research project that will culminate with an interactive presentation video. Students will use this interactive research library to research their topic and can decide if they want to go broad (ie, explore many aspects of a specific tribe) or narrow (ie, explore ONE specific creation myth from that region) Students have been directed to not use any images from the Canva library and instead will create their own unique art (we’ll scan it to upload it to our presentations) and/or will include images from vetted sources and will learn how to cite an image properly for copyright purposes.
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