Elementary

2nd/3rd: Week of 10/21

Math Ms. Andrea’s math group launched our 3rd unit – devoted entirely to addition and subtraction. For the rest of the year we’ll delve into adding and subtracting with larger numbers, learning strategies and utilizing regrouping skills. This week we focused on fact families, aka number bonds. Given a number (example: 13) we came up with 2 additional numbers to create a fact family (example: 7, 20): 13+7=20. We also learned a new name for our sum: Big Daddy. Subtraction sentences always start with our Big Daddy: 20-7=13 or 20-13=7, for the example above. We got comfortable detailing many fact […]

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Second grader works on writing at micro school in Austin.

4th/5th: Week of 10/21

General News It was so lovely to be back together again after fall break! We had a quick but action-packed week. Remember to look over science fair materials and due dates and add them to your calendars, as we are moving quickly through the scientific method. Testable questions (Part I of the packet) are due in class on Monday! Next Thursday, on Halloween, we’ll head to Shipe Park in costume (optional, of course.) Please be mindful of our Alphas and be sure that our costumes are Rated G on the scary scale. Thanks! ELA Update This week in ELA we

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Fourth grade student holds up spelling word at hands on school.

K/1st: Week of 9/30

Alphas are prepared for anything! This week in Our Big Backyard… We started with ice. As ice melted we saw that it became liquid and as it got warmer it transformed into vapor! And presto! We learned the 3 states of water. We talked about how heat and cold affect the different states by speeding up or slowing down those tiny little water molecules. We created droplet art and left the drops on tables. When we came back the next morning the droplets were gone! Where did they go? Some of us thought that they had been absorbed into the

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A board with vowel sounds at private school in Austin.

2nd/3rd: Week of 9/30

Math – Ms. Andrea’s math group practiced skip counting by 100s (forwards, backwards and mentally),, compared SO many numbers! We used our <, > & = symbols, and practiced reading inequality sentences. . We built numbers in the hundreds and thousands using place value blocks and played a riveting game of I Have, Who Has matching place value block cards to cards with the same number written in standard form. Next we learned a new game in which we compared two numbers written in expanded form. Everyone agreed that it’s easier to compare numbers when they’re stretched out because you

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Second grade student holds reading cards at GT school in Austin.

4th/5th: Week of 9/30

ELA Update This was finally the week where we finished our novel! On Monday we had a discussion about the very exciting culmination of events in chapters 16 – 18. We also took some time to do in-class reading of the book together this week for the first time. Chapters 19 – 21 are so important for character development and we needed to know how things ended up for our characters to thoroughly and accurately analyze them. Reading these chapters aloud together in a voluntary popcorn reading was a blast because we got to feed off of each other’s reactions

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Fifth grade student points at tv screen at STEM school.