Elementary

K/1st: Week of Dec 4

What’s Around Us?! This week in Alpha we learned more about Europeans that made first contact with indigenous people in North America. People have been living in North America between 13 and 40 THOUSAND years. The first Europeans to land on the continent were the Vikings and they got the idea to go west from stories they hears about strange fishermen in small seal skin boats landing in Ireland who indicated that they’d come from the WEST. The Vikings had the best technology for sailing so they set out about 1000 years ago and settled in Iceland, Greenland, and New […]

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Private kindergarten student proudly raises paper mache creation.

2nd/3rd: Week of Dec 4

Math – Ms. Andrea’s math group finally officially learned to subtract with regrouping! We call it: trading down. The Betas are off to a great start – so proud of them!! On Wednesday we solved many addition and subtraction story problems – with regrouping – independently and in partners. We came together at the end to explain our thinking. At the end of the week we practiced a couple of new strategies for adding triple digit numbers: using place value to break up the numbers (much like expanded form) and adding/subtracting from one number to make it easier to work

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Teachers and students pose for Winter Faire fun at community school.

4th/5th: Week of Dec 4

General News We are officially in “crunch time” to finish up projects a’plenty across all content areas. We are looking forward to putting it all together for POP in a few weeks! Reading/Writing Update We were busy bees in ELA this week with many projects on our to-do lists. We made covers for our biographies, finished up our family tree projects about the Birchbark house, and read chapter 7 and 8 of our books while completing comprehension questions and vocabulary for the book as we read. Ms. Ansley was doing reading check-ins all week so gammas were largely independent during

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Student stands beside life sized cut out of Tesla at project based school.

K/1st: Week of Nov 27

What’s Around Us?! We explored the Northeast Woodlands Region of the United States. The lands of deciduous forests, rivers and the Great Lakes are rich with natural resources. It was also the birthplace of one of the world’s oldest democracies. The beautiful book Hiawatha and the Peacemaker guided our discussions this week. It is the story of the Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse) comprised of five tribes, Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and the Seneca who agreed to end warfare among their people. The agreements they made with one another still stand today as a model of “Peace, Power and Righteousness”.

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Math work of first grade student at school that supports gifted and talented.

2nd/3rd: Week of Nov 27

Math – Ms. Andrea’s math group began the week by comparing addition problems with regrouping written in two formats: horizontally and vertically. We decided that they’re easier to solve when presented vertically. We practiced rewriting, regrouping and solving! Next we tackled double digit addition and subtraction, solving word problems with the aid of a numberline. They worked well with partners and totally nailed it. On Wednesday we enjoyed a well deserved game/catch up day! It feels SO good to tie up some loose ends (and play a little) as we near the end of the quarter. We closed the week

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Image of third grade girl becoming Egyptian queen at nontraditional school.