Elementary

3rd/4th: Week of Nov 3

Wow! This week really flew by. These Gammas impress us every day with the knowledge they have and their eagerness to learn cool new things! Math Gamma ones wrapped up multiplication by solving and creating word problems. We will be setting our sights on division next week, but please keep working on memorizing those basic facts. In Gamma 2 we learned about factors and multiples and played “Factor Captor”. Our week was rounded out by learning the rules of divisibility which will help as we tackle long division. ELA This week Gammas read several fables and learned the characteristics of […]

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Elementary teacher works outdoors with group at school with small class sizes.

2nd: Week of Nov 3

This week in Math we learned many strategies for solving subtraction problems! Several carry over from our repertoire of addition strategies – such as fact families. We learned how to turn missing addend problems into subtraction problems and use tools like numberlines to help us find the difference between numbers. In phonics this week we learned exceptions to the closed syllable/short vowel rule. Specifically, we learned about word chunks: old, ost, olt, ild and ind. Let me tell you, these kids hit their Thursday dictation out of the park!! I am so proud of them. Our sight words were: both,

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Elementary student creates lever at STEM school in Austin.

K/1st: Week of Nov 3

Scarlet demonstrates what the CVC word “beg” means… What’s Around Me? This week, Alphas learned that one reason we have deserts across the globe has to do with mountains – like the ones in the Pacific Northwest! We call this phenomenon the shadow effect. Half the Alphas act out mountains and the other half use cottonballs-clouds to rain on the land… Most of the rain falls on this side of the mountains…the other side of the mountains doesn’t get much rain at all – which contributes to the desert region of the Southwest… A diagram of the “shadow effect…” We

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Two kindergarteners lay on paper at project based school.

3rd/4th: Week of Oct 27

Worms, radishes, tadpoles…oh my! Our classroom is teeming with life! What a fun week for our Gammas. We have worn many hats these past few days: gardeners, actors, and scientists. To top it all off, we enjoyed an exciting Halloween fair and parade on Thursday. It was so fun to see the cool and creative costumes. Math In Gamma 1 we played games to strengthen our knowledge of basic multiplication facts, and then moved up to two by one digit multiplication. They are picking it up quickly! In Gamma 2 we wrapped up our focus on multiplication by completing an

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Elementary students look at science project on window at STEM school.

2nd: Week of Oct 27

This week in Math we focused on strategies that we can use when adding numbers. After reviewing “Friends of 10” and the zero rule, we moved on to doubles and doubles +1. The aim is twofold: for Betas to understand the relationships between numbers in fact families and to develop fact fluency with addition and subtraction facts to 20 so that they don’t have to exhaust their brainpower solving smaller problems. Soon, we’ll learn to solve more complex problems and it will be beneficial for students to be able to draw on their fact knowledge or use mental math. In

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Three elementary students pose for halloween picture at school with small class sizes.