General News
Happiest of birthdays to 66% of our Delta team! : ) Thank you for the birthday love to Mr. Steve & Ms. Ansley. Special thanks to Meagan Noble and Navassa Hilbertz for whipping up many sweet treats so the Deltas/Episolons could celebrate together. Speaking of treats, next week is Iowa testing.
We are looking for volunteers to provide snacks and/or “work the booth” for a short period on Monday – Wednesday. Those of you with STAAR PTSD, please note that this is a much more casual affair (shorter testing windows, shorter test, etc) We had a ‘bubble’ party to get the kids familiar with standardized test forms before next week. (Mr. Steve provided bubbles/music!)
Next week is Ms. Lorrie’s last week. (sniff, sniff!) Be on the lookout for an email coming soon about a little picnic pizza situation we’d like to host next week on Thursday. We are so grateful that Jessica Skinner’s passion is math education and she is willing/able to take over the ship during this time.
ELA
The Delta’s are doing great with our new homework style, in which we practice writing our responses in more formal, complete sentences with grammar and punctuation integrated in. We are trying to develop these somewhat archaic skills of handwriting, grammar, and longer stamina for writing coming more naturally! We used some class time this week to practice for the IOWA test next week by getting used to the formatting of the questions and organizing and orienting ourselves between going from the workbook to the bubble sheet. There were quite a few people who said “wow that was easier than I thought!” Music to an ELA teacher’s ears!
Math
The BeaverBot (best invention ever!) got put to serious use this week as both classes were building their creations to explore hands-on application of area, surface area, and volume. We created “buildings” of Bramblewick village and a crazy cast of characters who live in this fictitious village! Both groups had the option of making their design with whichever shapes they were brave enough to craft. Many students made more upper-level designs using trapezoids, triangular prisms and even circles! It was a messy (fun!) and a productive week. We’ll get the room back to normal before next week’s Iowa testing.
Theme
The classroom transformed into a full-fledged investigation site this week, complete with a “crime scene” surrounding the untimely demise of Alfred Wegener’s 1912 theory of Pangaea. His ideas had been “mocked to death,” and it was up to our student detectives to solve the case! Armed with evidence of continental drift—fossil matches, shifting landforms, and clues hidden in Earth’s crust—students worked in teams to piece together the story. As they analyzed and debated the findings, they built compelling arguments to prove that Wegener was, in fact, correct all along. It was a lively blend of science, critical thinking, and courtroom-style persuasion, with plenty of “aha!” moments as the mystery unraveled. Delta students were assigned their topics (based off of last week’s choice sheet) for the Quarter 4 project in which Deltas will be creating a demonstration to teach other students about a specific topic relevant to earth science. In class, we explored the layers of the Earth (quickly! As Year 2 Delta students learned a bit of this when we explored Geology year before last) and dove into plate tectonics using models (And by models, we mean Milky Way bars!) We’ll move into the rock cycle next week (knowing that class will be cut a bit short due to our schedule for Iowa testing!)
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