General News
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving break! Don’t forget that Winter Faire is just around the corner–check your email for sign-up/details!
ELA Update
On Monday and Tuesday we worked on learning the difference between a simile and a metaphor, as well as the author’s purpose for using these literary devices in their writing. We worked through several examples of similes and metaphors and then went hunting in our genre study books for examples. Moving forward after Thanksgiving break we will start focusing on these kinds of literary devices as well as story mapping, character creation, and writing our own fiction stories. On Wednesday we lost most of our ELA morning to the science fair (worth it!) and on Thursday we used the morning time to wrap up some awesome puppet pals theme creations.
Math Update
The highlight of math this week was deciphering some cryptic equations (fraction operations) to decode a NYT chocolate cream pie recipe. Year 1 kids solved fraction problems involving converting improper fractions to mixed numbers, simplifying fractions, generating equivalent fractions and adding/subtracting fractions with like denominators. Year 2 kiddos applied their amazing skill at multiplying and dividing mixed numbers. (This is technically a 6th grade skill and they are sparkling!) Once our number crunching was finished, we went to work in the kitchen to create our sweet masterpiece. (Spoiler alert: It came out really delicious!) Science Fair and Shipe Park thwarted a little of our math minutes, but luckily both groups are ahead of the game.
Theme Update
Our week was devoted to learning about cellular respiration (and comparing/contrasting it to last week’s skill of photosynthesis!) It gave students a chance to really “digest” last week’s learning and we have many enthusiastic scientists in Gamma this year (which make lessons that much more fun!) The beginning of the week was spent in whole group learning and then we branched out into individual research. Mid-week we shifted to the application phase. Kids were grouped according to their topic preference and then created/directed short “infomercials” about their process of choice using an app called “Puppet Pals” What made it extra lovely was that all the “art” was kid-created with watercolors/oil pastels/markers and scanned so our electronic projects have that ever-loved soulful quality we like to produce when making art-filled projects. Look forward to seeing these creations at POP!
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