New Quarter, New Table Team!
We have been sharing what skills and talents we bring to our new buddies, as well as things we like to do, want to do, and don’t like to do. We are figuring out how to take turns sharing fun and not-so-fun tasks, and how to remind each other of our responsibilities in ways that aren’t harsh or hurtful.
What’s Around Me?
What happens when we go from land in any direction? Eventually, we reach the ocean…
WATER, Water Everywhere…
This week, we “walked” to the Gulf of Mexico. The first thing we noticed was sand. We took a good look at it and built models of rain on a mountain to watch how water and gravity work together to create a shoreline of sand.
Alphas created accordion books illustrating the anatomy of our Texas beaches.
We learned that the Colorado River, which flows through Austin, carries sediment from the land it passes through, so the Gulf along Texas is full of minerals all the way from Northwest Texas, where the river starts, down to Matagorda Bay! We live HOURS away from the Gulf of Mexico, so it seems that what we do here might not have much of an effect on the ocean, but Alphas discovered that any trash or toxic chemicals that fall on the ground can wash into our creeks and rivers to eventually dump right into the ocean!
Alphas littering their mountains with “trash” and “motor oil…”
We worked in Tableteams on specific parts of a beach that we will put together as a big diagram.
In Math…
Ms. Emma’s Math Wizards…
Explored money! We learned the value of money when reading “Bunny Money”, then used our magnifying glasses to inspect the strange numbers and symbols on US coins. Each day, we tackled a new coin, compared our mint marks, and applied our knowledge of its value with a few games.
“Coin Flip” provided fun practice with graphing and understanding likelihood. It’s strange how even if the coin landed on heads five times in a row, it still has a 50/50 chance of happening again!
Penny Nickel Tic Tac Toe…
Once we felt confident with the values of coins, we did A LOT of counting change. This is a great introduction to the concept of multiplication, and also really solidifies their skip counting abilities.
Sorting our class coins…
Ms. Kim’s Mathletes…
This week, we talked about our goals for the New Year. This is the quarter we dig into shapes! We started by exploring lines and discussing what makes a shape different from a line…
Another Quarter 3 goal is to gain confidence and fluency in adding and subtracting…
And our Big Goal for Quarter 3 is to train our hands to write all our numbers in the correct direction – so a part of our math time is dedicated to Alpha Number Bootcamp!
Alphas practicing subtraction skills by determining which number is greatest, then subtracting the smaller number and documenting it in our new composition books!
We love playing “Subtraction Boxes!”
Creating closed shapes using points and a straight edge…
In ELA…
Ms. Kim’s group…
This week, Alphas talked about our New Year’s goals for 2026, which include getting really good at writing our lowercase letters using correct strokes. Everyone is pretty excited about eventually learning how to write in cursive, and the way we teach Alpha-children how to make lowercase letters will help them to easily make the leap to cursive! We learned a few new digraphs and some new high-frequency words, AND we started pondering what in the world POETRY is. One of our goals for Quarter 3 is to figure this out as we compose our own poems
“ck= one sound at the end of a syllable or end of a word!!”
After comparing a funny penguin story with a nonfiction book about penguins, Alphas write a list-poem about penguins…
Alphas composing a list of all the amazing things their pencils give them… like the power to create giant bananas…
Alphas reading together after their first “book-shop” of the year…
Ms. Emma’s group…
Began our journey into the wonderful world of poetry! We learned that authors use poems to play with words. They may also use literary devices like rhyming and alliteration to make extra silly poems. Each week, we will explore a new kind of poetry and add our own version to our poetry journals. We started with a simple list poem! We made a few class poems based on our stuffed penguin and one about Bigfoot. Many felt inspired by food from a collection of poems out of “The Burger and the Hot Dog”.
Then onto our nonsense words. These silly words build crucial decoding skills and force students to apply their phonics rules. We played nonsense bingo….
Made nonsense on our “computers.”
And even wrote nonsense on chalkboards!
In Other News…
Happy (½) Birthday, Whelan!!! Alphas know you are the kindest to your friends. Thank you for sharing donut holes!
And some friends we celebrated before the break that never got their newsletter spotlight….
Happy (½) Birthday, CJ!!! You are a friend to all and an incredible soccer player.
Happy Birthday Malin!!! EVERYONE wants you on their table team. Thank you for making a special pavlova for the Alphas to enjoy.
Fun at recess, especially when there’s a fort!
