General News
We’re all still adjusting to the new schedule of upper school! This week we added in flex time, where the kiddos rotate through the upper school teachers after lunch for different short blocks where they play math games, learn technology skills, and talk about social emotional learning topics.
We have a new Delta joining our school family next week! Welcome Lia to the year 2 group!
Reading/Writing Update
This week in ELA we introduced a new method of going over our homework where we check everything together in class. The kiddos seemed to really enjoy this! Though time consuming, they turn it in with a strong idea of if they are turning in a ✔️➕, ✔️, or ✔️➖. On Tuesday we read part of the book where Tree-ear starts getting meals as part of his apprenticeship and made our own “peasant meal” together as a class. We had rice, cucumber, carrots, soy sauce and kimchi and enjoyed it in gourd bowls with chopsticks, just like Tree-ear does. This was a huge hit! We spent the latter part of the week learning about and researching the way the class system dictated food habits during this time in history. We closed out the week doing a quick creative project where we designed our own menus with traditional Korean food organized for the aristocracy, artisans, and peasants!
Math Update
It’s so great getting into our true math rhythm this week! I’ve been joking with the group that they must have spent the summer at Math Camp because they seem to be tackling their number-crunching with an enthusiasm not normally seen so early in the year. Year 1 kids explored place value from the billions through the thousandths. (Last year, we stuck to the hundredths!) We named, compared and rounded decimals and explored place value via concrete models and number lines. At week’s end, we played a whole-group game (students vs. teacher! Much fun!) Year 2 kids explored integers–whole numbers and their opposites! We learned about absolute value and began discussing next week’s task: adding and subtracting negative numbers! At the end of the week, we crafted number lines (from 15 to -15) so kids could invent number line riddles using vocabulary associated with positive/negative numbers.
Theme Update
Theme has been so much fun! The kids grabbed their new passports and chose Delta Airlines (buh-dah-dum!) to depart for North America! Like last week, we explored the continent using the five themes of Geography so kids can enrich their understanding of these somewhat abstract concepts. We had a whole-group discussion defining “culture” and students then set off on a gallery walk to explore the five themes of geography as it applies to North America. Next, students were partnered and given a mystery destination scratch-off sticker to find out “Where in the World” they were travelling! Once a country flag was revealed, partners set off to research their given country via an interactive image on Whippermathers.com. The teachers realized that many research sites made for kids insult the kids’ intelligence (painfully juvenile content) while upper level research hubs can be overwhelming. We opted to create some short narrative sheets (again, organized along the five themes of Geography) giving kids some useful (curated) information about their country. They were free to dive deeper on any topics of interest learned about from the information packet. The week’s learning culminated in a totem pole making activity. Kids’ selected four cultural symbols (2 donated from each partner) to create an icon representative of that important aspect of their country’s cultural, political or environmental landscape. We made some super-neato artifacts we can’t wait to show you! Next week, we’re off to South America! ¡Vámonos!
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