Elementary

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.

K/1st: Week of Oct 27

Happy Halloween Everybody! What’s Around Me? This week, Alphas learned that it took humans hundreds of thousands of years to get to North America. They traveled on foot following food. We laid out 10 rulers. Each inch represents 100 years. The first pencil marks where we are today…the second marks 1925…the screwdriver marks 1825…the final pencil marks when the first Europeans landed in the Southwest. The other 9 and a half rulers (or 11,400 years), North America was inhabited by the ancestors of the PaleoIndians who arrived during the Ice Age. Alphas knew that humans, as well as all living

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Middle school students work with kindergarten student at halloween carnival at micro school in Austin.

3rd/4th: Week of Oct 20

We are so excited to have our Gammas back for quarter 2. They seem rested and ready to go! Although we are sad to leave the Vikings, our study of plants and animals is sure to be a lot of fun. We are looking forward to an amazing quarter! Math We kicked off this quarter by continuing our work on multiplication. The students enjoyed playing games to strengthen their skills this week . Gamma ones have been learning different ways to represent multiplication like arrays, area models and skip counting. Gamma twos have been honing our two by two digit

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Elementary students work with earth worms at private school in Austin.