Elementary

4th/5th: Week of 9/9

General News ELA Update This was an extra fun week in ELA! In addition to our usual Monday P&P recap and literature discussion circle, we also split our time between persuasive writing about the benefits of spending time in nature and crafting hornbooks (like the kind Kit gives to Prudence to teach her how to read in our book). A classic Puritan hornbook is very simple and no frills – not very fun to craft – so many chose to make fancy ones that would have been more likely to be owned by wealthy Loyalists or people living in England. […]

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Fifth grader presents with fourth grader at school with mixed ages.

4th/5th: Week of 9/2

General News Operation Ms. Lorrie’s Birthday Surprise was a huge success! There were cookies, cupcakes, cards, and more! We worked in secret on an interactive writing exercise throughout the past two weeks during ELA class and presented her with a “spooky” and hilarious story about sardines (complete with illustrations) during her “unbirthday” ceremony, as well as a framed poster that she loved. You can read the story here! ELA Update For a short week we sure packed a lot in! In addition to working on our interactive writing piece for Ms. Lorrie this week, we also worked on our class

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Fourth grade student works on computer at STEM school.

2nd/3rd: Week of 9/2

Math – Ms. Andrea’s math group continued working on ordering numbers in the hundreds. We talked about the clues that help you find the bigger or smaller number (hint, hint: we used place value!). Then we reviewed tally marks and practiced making tallies for some numbers past 100! On Wednesday we tallied the classroom!! (Almost) EVERYTHING! On Thursday the Beta 1s did an excellent job of figuring out various skip count rules (ex: +2, +5 or +10) for many series of numbers and continued the pattern. Then, we played a new game called Fill to 100 that involved a spinner

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Third grade student tests static electricity at project based school.

K/1st: Week of 9/2

This week in Our Big Backyard… This week we expanded the circle of our community from Hyde Park to ALL of the neighborhoods in the Austin area. We explored maps that cartographers made to see where we all live. We all drew a portrait of our homes. Then we considered…what do neighbors do for one another? Some of our ideas and experiences are that neighbors help, protect and have barbecues. We thought about all of the jobs and helpers in our community…firefighters, trash collectors, police officers, mail carriers, doctors, nurses, teachers, bus drivers, etc. Then we made our Peeps! A

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Kindergarten girl reads in front of class at school with small classes.

4th/5th: Week of 8/26

General News ELA Update This week we gained some important historical context to help with our understanding and comprehension while reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond. We talked about the Patriot vs. Loyalist conflict during this time as well as different cultural and lifestyle components of the 13 colonies. We then partnered up with a classmate to design our own 14th colony. In order to make a colony we had to consider who was funding our colony, how we would get there, what our religion would be, and what kind of trade and commerce we would engage in, and if

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Teacher works with fifth grade boys at school with small class sizes.