Quarter 1 – Week 7: Sept. 28 – Oct. 1
The Gammas had a busy and fun week, including a visit to the library where everyone enjoyed some time browsing and choosing new books. We are getting excited for our Hero Tea Party on Tuesday! We can’t wait to celebrate all of the amazing heroes we have learned about this quarter. A big thank you to Ollie’s mom for organizing our tea party supplies and to all parents who are contributing to make this special day happen! Next week is already the end of the quarter—how did that happen?! We have lots to wrap up and celebrate before we head into our next quarter. Parent conference sign-ups will be coming out on Monday, so keep an eye out for those!
Math
Gamma ones wrapped up our addition unit with some review and a check-in to show what we know. Then we jumped into subtraction with larger numbers and regrouping. The Gammas worked hard through some tricky problems and played a game to get extra practice. They are becoming subtraction pros!
This week, Gamma twos continued solving multi-step problems and practiced figuring out which operation to use when solving real-world problems. We also learned how to spot patterns in input-output tables, write an algebraic expression to represent the pattern, and use the pattern to find missing values. We also dipped our toes into multiplication and are excited to dive in even further as we start multiplying and dividing larger numbers in the coming days!
ELA
This week, we learned about the different parts of a friendly letter and why each part is important. We wrote a class thank-you note to Ms. Alexa for teaching us some great strategies for avoiding conflict.
Next week, each Gamma will write a personal thank-you letter to one of our everyday hero guest speakers. We will also practice using the writing process as we plan, draft, revise, edit, and publish our letters. Thank-you letters are a wonderful way to slow down, reflect, and show genuine gratitude for the people who make a difference in our lives.
Reading
This week, we focused on the important skill of summarizing. We learned what a summary is and how to identify the most important parts of a story without including all of the little details. We introduced the SWBST (Somebody Wanted But So Then) graphic organizer to help us organize our thinking and plan a great summary. We’ll continue practicing this skill next week and then learn how to turn our SWBST organizer into a well-written summary paragraph.
Theme
This week, the Gammas groups focused on one of the six heroes we learned about this quarter. Each group worked together to create a learning poster highlighting their hero’s most important contributions and what makes them a hero. Then each Gamma created a mini hero booklet featuring the heroes we studied. The booklets fit perfectly inside an Altoid tin, and everyone got to jazz up the outside with some fun crafts and creativity. We can’t wait to share our learning at our Hero Tea Party on Tuesday!
SEL💛
This week, we talked about the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset is when we believe our abilities are set and that we can’t get better at something, while a growth mindset means believing that we can learn, improve, and grow through effort, practice, and perseverance. We also talked about the power of “yet”—changing “I can’t do this” to “I can’t do this yet!” The Gammas came up with lots of examples of how a growth mindset can help us tackle challenges and keep going when things get hard. We loved hearing their ideas about how this powerful little idea can make a big difference in everyday life.