General News
- It was so much fun to swap eclipse stories on Tuesday during the morning meeting!
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Ms. Lorrie did a terrifying job trying to “hide” birthday surprises from Ms. Ansley. Turns out, you can’t get anything past her (Ms. Ansley, not Ms. Lorrie, clearly!) Ms. Lorrie blames
COVID,Jamal, the solar eclipse for not being one step ahead this time! (Happy Birthday, Ms. Ansley!)
Reading/Writing Update
We started the week off on Tuesday using our P&P to fuel discussion about our class novel! We then read one more article about the CROWN act and black hair discrimination in Texas before launching into writing some quick opinion pieces on the topic. This round of opinion writing was quicker because Ms. Ansley did the research (ā la pulling and sharing articles on the topic) and Gammas jumped into drafting on laptops right away. We tried to get these done in just three days and made pretty good progress! On Thursday we did a sorting at activity based on the Academy of the Sun in our book. Gammas were randomly assigned to one of the four magical houses in the book: Emitters, Enhancers, Transformers, and Psionics. We had a lot of fun with this and most people ended up in the house they were most enthusiastic about by trading amongst each other. We started the process of percolating on what their power might be and how they might use it as protectors, as they do in the book. We’ll continue on with writing about this next week and create some illustrations to go along with them.
Math Update
Year 1 students started the week off learning how to plot ordered pairs on a Coordinate Graph. Normally, we might stick to Quadrant I (positive numbers) but many a Year 1 Gamma wanted a challenge so students had the option to graph in all four quadrants (if they craved a challenge.) We moved on to a measuring activity that allowed students to find the area and perimeter of real-world rectangles (great practice for ruler skills, too!) We ended the week playing an “Island Escape” game which allowed kids to combine all the week’s skills via a partnered game: coordinate graphing and finding area/perimeter of rectangles. Year 2 students were introduced to the concept of finding volume of 3-dimensional shapes. We practiced irregular figures and then studied the formula for finding volume of rectangular prisms (Volume = area of the base x height, or L x W x H for rectangular prisms) We ended the week making our own “Pet Polyhedrons”– giving kids a chance to practice finding volume and area and even experiment with calculation surface area. Gammas could select standard rectangular prisms or opt for a more challenging pyramid or triangular prism, giving them an option to extend last week’s lesson of finding the area of triangles.
Theme Update
We started the week off with a visit from a special guest: Ms. Lorrie’s brother. He is an orthodontist by trade, but has been doing lots of potting/sculpting as a creative outlet. (He visited the Gammas last year for a wheel throwing demo when we were studying ancient Asia.) This time, Dr. Salome (aka Mr. Nick) coached the kids through an activity to help them bring to life one of two types of sculptures commonly found in terracotta relics from the Nok culture of ancient Africa: a full-body kneeling figure or a sculpture of a head using artistic conventions common for the time/location. Normally, we might hoard these beautiful creations until POP but they are too amazing not to share now. Click here to bask in the lovely wonder! (If you prefer to avoid this spoiler alert, we are hopeful that these creations will be dried and fired just before POP! It will be a close call!) As the week progressed, we then took our previous research on Nok culture to create infographics posters–working in randomized small groups–to help provide deeper understanding of the significance of the archaeological findings that help us get an idea of Nok culture.
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