General News
- Part two of their Theme project is coming home on Monday! They will have two weeks to research their abolitionist. The research is due in class on Tuesday, February 18th. This is just research at home. We will be writing the speeches at school. They will have a couple more weeks to create the visual/art component, which isn’t due until Monday, March 3rd.
- We’re going on a field trip NEXT WEEK! We will be going to the George Washington Carver Museum on February 6th! This will be a docent led tour of the museum.
- We have a few cute Gamma traditions we look forward to doing on Friendship Day on February 13th! Gamma’s are welcome to bring in cards and treats for their classmates. We’ll be using the traditional decorated paper bags as mailboxes. 🙂
- February 17th is Family Field Day/President’s Day. There will be no school.
ELA Update
This week was all about finishing up our fiction stories and the laborious task of editing. Ms. Ansley played the role of publisher and editor! As each student finished their writing she went through and highlighted areas to be reviewed for CUPS (capitalization, understanding, punctuation, and spelling). Once that was all done they had the super fun task of making cover art, back covers, and about the author pages in Canva. These were then sent off to the publisher (Ms. Ansley) for lamination and binding. If your kiddo hasn’t quite finished typing up their story you should have received an email about how to access the story at home to get those final touches complete!
Math Update
In math, we continue to work on long division practice and kids are starting to get some serious skillz! We focused on the skill of making sense of a remainder. Kids were given this graphic organizer to help them see the different options: sometimes you round the answer up, sometimes you ignore the leftover and sometimes you divide it up into a fraction or decimal! (But NEVER with kittens or children, of course!) This skill really tests kids’ conceptual understanding of division (repeated subtraction) and since division is one of the four major operations is so important t hey feel confident and comfortable with this pesky-to-learn skill. Please be sure your kiddo is feeling more comfortable now that we have had some extra practice. In your inbox, you’ll see a message from last week containing some practice division sheets that will pay serious Gamma Bucks for anyone who sharpens this skill at home. In the picture section below, you’ll see some action shots from a fun game of “Trash-getball” we played to make division practice more fun.
Theme Update
This week we talked about some of the smaller, but no less significant, ways that enslaved people held on to and/or transformed their African culture under tremendous pressure to assimilate. Many of these had lasting impacts on African American and American culture in general! On Monday we explored songs and oral storytelling. Many of the songs from this period contained hidden messages about how to escape north. Ms. Emily (Charlie’s mom) popped by as a special guest speaker to share her knowledge about this and to sing for us! On Tuesday we talked about religion and how enslaved people blended christianity with West African religious elements. We watched video reenactments of a ring shout dance and a West African ceremonial dance and completed a venn diagram about similarities and differences we noticed. Wednesday and Thursday was all about soul food! Many classic and beloved southern American dishes originated from enslaved people’s cooking and blending of traditional African dishes and cooking styles with ingredients they could access easily and cheaply. In a few weeks we will be hosting a Gamma potluck lunch and will be inviting families to bring in one of the soul foods we learned about during our lessons. Let us know if you are interested in contributing to this!
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