Larry Alert!!! Larry Alert!!!
We gave Larry back his boot — along with a lot of really kind notes of love and appreciation, and what does he do? He hid all the composition books from Ms. Kim’s group and put all the math manipulatives into the Language Arts’ shelves, and all the handwriting and fine motor activities into the Math shelves … What are we going to do?!
Water, water, everywhere…
This week, we learned about whales! Thanks to Malin’s lovely Blue Whale, Alphas knew that they were not only the largest whale in the sea, but the largest animal ever to live on the planet! They knew they used baleen to filter feed on krill. We talked about how toothed whales and baleen whales shared attributes, and they evolved from a land animal that resembled a small dog! That dog-like creature was a better hunter in the water than on land, so its body adapted over millions of years to live 100% of the time in the water. Dogs are mammals and whales are too: they have hair, give birth to live babies, mamas feed them milk, and they are warm-blooded. We compared these magnificent beasts to fish – there were similarities and differences…
Nice whale, Jude!
So just how does a warm-blooded animal survive the freezing-cold water? BLUBBER!
Speaking of swimming, whales (and Alphas) have some cool moves other than swimming…
Spyhopping…
breaching…
logging…
flipper slapping…
lobtailing…
We learned that whales are very important to the ecology of the ocean. Their poop provides nutrients for zooplankton and phytoplankton – but the coolest thing of all is that the way they swim so deeply in the ocean disrupts the decomposed detritus on the ocean floor; as whales move their huge bodies towards the surface, they wind up dragging that composted material with them! Marine biologists call this the “whale pump!” It is how nutrients from one part of the ocean become available to all parts! Whales are kind of the heart of the sea.
Every day this week, the Alphas worked on building a life-size model of a narwhal. We stuffed it, and it took up so much valuable real estate that only half the class could work on it at a time!
After getting the narwhal safely docked until Ms. Kim and Ms. Emma can hoist it from the ceiling, we decided to check out just how a blue whale compares to a narwhal in size…
Reeder and Susie hold a blue whale-length of string between them!
Alphas running laps around the length of a blue whale…
Here’s a link to the video capturing the magic in real time :)
This week in Math…
Ms. Emma’s Math Wizards…
Practiced their quick math facts with sprints! They did a wonderful job at remaining calm under the pressure of a one minute timer. Each day they were able to see themselves improve and even began asking to do it again!
We also continued working with graphs, both creating and interpreting data from them. Goldfish makes this really fun!
We dove into the world of fractions with purple pizza…
And with 8 shoes. How many have laces? ⅞ How many have green on them? ⅜ How many are slip on? ⅛
We went to number bootcamp and seriously practiced writing our numbers facing the right way…
We played “Salute” to work with missing addend problems…
Ms. Kim’s Mathletes…
The last two weeks, we’ve continued to explore geometric solids/3-Dimensional shapes and expand our understanding of fact families. WOW, did these Alphas work hard! It is no easy feat to nimbly switch from adding to subtracting, nor is it easy to see the patterns buried in addition and subtraction problems.
This week in ELA…
Ms. Kim’s group…
The last two weeks have been “blend-tastic!”
AND another big “WOW!” to all the Mad Alpha Poets who wrote such fantastic color poems for their P&P!!!! Great work, friends.
This week, we explored “concrete poetry.” We learned that concrete starts wet and formless, but when it dries, it is rock-solid and forms into whatever shape it was poured into. Concrete poems use words to create an image of the poem’s subject.
Trees, kites, dragon eggs, squares, SPINNING!!!! We have some amazing poets here in Alpha!
Ms. Emma’s group…
LOVES the library!!!!!
They also LOVE sharing their P&P…
These poets worked wonderfully on alliteration!
And added these pieces to their poetry journal collection..
We also worked on the suffix -ed, practiced our lowercase alphabet, had a spelling check in, and learned a few new high frequency words.
In Other News…
Happy Birthday Ms. Kim!!!! Alpha’s know you are the best teacher ever and make everyday more magical.
Fun at Recess!
Ms. Emma, will you put this in the newsletter?
