Elementary

2nd: Week of Nov 10

This week in Math we wrapped up our current unit by devoting a day to solving story problems with missing addends. We took our unit test on Tuesday and celebrated Wednesday with a game day. On Thursday we took our pre-test for the next unit, which delves deeper into addition and subtraction by introducing regrouping and working with larger numbers. We finally started Book Club this week!! The Betas are rocking it, per usual. They seem to be really enjoying their books, whether they’re learning about wolves with our first-ever nonfiction book for book club, reading about Tooth Trouble while […]

2nd: Week of Nov 10 Read More »

Elementary student works at table in well lit room at micro school.

K/1st: Week of Nov 10

Welcome to the stage of Influence! “Influence” is the second stage of group development. We know we’re there when students’ sense of safety and trust in their peers allows them to contribute more and more to the group. This includes disagreeing with one another, which naturally leads to conflict. During this stage, our focus as teachers is on supporting students’ sense of worth and agency. We work on identifying triggers and guiding students to treat them as cues for curiosity rather than moments to react harshly. For example: “When something doesn’t feel right, before getting angry, check with your friend

K/1st: Week of Nov 10 Read More »

Kindergarten students play tether ball together at private school in Austin.

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

3rd/4th: Week of Nov 3 Read More »

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,

2nd: Week of Nov 3 Read More »

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

K/1st: Week of Nov 3 Read More »

Two kindergarteners lay on paper at project based school.