Beta

2nd: Week of Nov 10

This week in Math we wrapped up our current unit by devoting a day to solving story problems with missing addends. We took our unit test on Tuesday and celebrated Wednesday with a game day. On Thursday we took our pre-test for the next unit, which delves deeper into addition and subtraction by introducing regrouping and working with larger numbers. We finally started Book Club this week!! The Betas are rocking it, per usual. They seem to be really enjoying their books, whether they’re learning about wolves with our first-ever nonfiction book for book club, reading about Tooth Trouble while […]

2nd: Week of Nov 10 Read More »

Elementary student works at table in well lit room at micro school.

2nd: Week of Nov 3

This week in Math we learned many strategies for solving subtraction problems! Several carry over from our repertoire of addition strategies – such as fact families. We learned how to turn missing addend problems into subtraction problems and use tools like numberlines to help us find the difference between numbers. In phonics this week we learned exceptions to the closed syllable/short vowel rule. Specifically, we learned about word chunks: old, ost, olt, ild and ind. Let me tell you, these kids hit their Thursday dictation out of the park!! I am so proud of them. Our sight words were: both,

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Elementary student creates lever at STEM school in Austin.

2nd: Week of Oct 27

This week in Math we focused on strategies that we can use when adding numbers. After reviewing “Friends of 10” and the zero rule, we moved on to doubles and doubles +1. The aim is twofold: for Betas to understand the relationships between numbers in fact families and to develop fact fluency with addition and subtraction facts to 20 so that they don’t have to exhaust their brainpower solving smaller problems. Soon, we’ll learn to solve more complex problems and it will be beneficial for students to be able to draw on their fact knowledge or use mental math. In

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Three elementary students pose for halloween picture at school with small class sizes.

2nd: Week of Oct 20

We kicked off our Addition & Subtraction Unit by learning about (and using snap cubes to create models of) fact families! We reviewed the commutative property of addition – it does not matter which addend comes first. We then used our sum to create matching subtraction sentences within the same fact family. On Thursday we worked so hard flipping addition problems to create groups of ten. 10 is such a friendly number to work with that once we formed a group of ten, adding the leftovers to it is easy peasy. In phonics this week we studied possessives. We learned

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Two elementary students display math work at STEM school.

2nd: Week of Sept 29

We are closing in on Quarter 1! In math we continue to compose, decompose, and compare numbers to the thousandth place. Next week will be a mix of skip counting practice, game days to reinforce place value concepts, and our second unit assessment! Here we come!! It was a busy week in phonics this week! We learned about twin letters: consonants that are doubled following syllables with short vowel sounds. Which consonants should we double, you ask? Silly Zebras Love Fries (s, z, l, f). We also learned that if twin letters come after an “a,” the vowel sound is

2nd: Week of Sept 29 Read More »

Elementary student points to white board at private school in Austin.