General News
We will be out of the building traipsing around Austin on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week visiting houses of worship. We’ll be visiting a Buddhist temple, Hindu temple, and Catholic church on Tuesday. On Wednesday we’ll visit a Jewish synagogue and a Muslim mosque. The Hindu temple and Muslim mosque have requested “modest attire” (no bare shoulders or knees) so remember to wear long pants and your AHB t-shirts on both days.
Reading/Writing
We started out the week going over our homework (aka sharing our beautiful picture book creations). These students have gotten so good at giving positive, specific feedback to peers! Later in the week we spent more time analyzing the Emily Dickinson poem “Hope is a Thing with Feathers” with discussion questions about metaphor and purpose. We discovered that this poem was written during the American Civil War in response to the war! Later in the week we came up with our own abstract metaphors for different emotions and animals to compare them too. We brainstormed adjectives for the animals and emotions and thought about where they might live. We did a quick turn around project and finished our poems by the end of the week!
Math
Year 1 kiddos dove into the area and perimeter of rectangles (we are a little ahead in this group! Yay!) We explored by borrowing Ms. Amanda’s stash of meter sticks and went to work measuring rectangles around the room to create challenges for other students to tackle. It was very hands-on and fun! At week’s end, we busted out the “Beaver Bot”—a jigsaw for kids donated to the Gamma class–to create our own artistic rectangles out of cardboard and calculated both area and perimeter! Year 2 kids made some super amazing circle graphs from the ground up (this is above level, for sure!) Partnered groups took surveys around the school, converted our fractions to decimals/percentages and then used proportions to find the interior angle measures for our circle graphs! Super cool math was happening and I’m so proud of these nuggets. Both groups took their end-of-quarter check-ins so we can enjoy the field trips next week without crunching TOO many numbers.
Theme
We were lucky to host two amazing guest speakers this week. Mr. Harold Liebowitz–a former UT professor of biblical studies and archaeology brought to us by Sally (Daisy’s mom.) Ms. Lorrie instantly fell in love with this interesting, witty man! Next, Lauren (Bennett’s mom) gave us an inspiring talk about the Bahai faith and followed it up with a community art project to demonstrate unity and the importance of being a protagonist in our communities. We felt so lucky to have them both! We explored Christianity this week, as well, ending the week with a compare/contrast of all three Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) Next week, we’ll tie up all our artistic creations on Monday and then head off to some lovely field trips Tuesday and Wednesday. Next Thursday, Deltas will present their independent religious studies projects to the class. This will be an informal, celebratory sharing–nothing scary or formal.
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