CJ meeting one of the hermit crabs! Our foster pets for the week (thank you Ezra!)
Water, water, everywhere…
This week, we investigated what many rocky seashores offer…shelter and food for some of the world’s most adaptable creatures in the intertidal zones. (oh! how we wish we had tidal pools to explore in our neighborhood!) The ecosystem hangs on for dear life as the tides ebb and flow….and what creates tides?
Small but mighty, the pull of the moon’s gravity creates 2 high tides and 2 low tides on earth each day. Even more so, twice a year the sun’s alignment creates a spring tide for exceptionally high and low tides.
Then, alphas took a look at the pocket of seawater where the ocean meets land: tide pools! We created a base of rocks and water to serve as home for the ocean critters.
Alphas learned that “Euphotic” means “good light,” which gives you a clue about this layer of the ocean. 90% of the life in the ocean is in this layer…1/2 of the air we breathe comes from this layer. So just exactly how do we get over half of our air from this part of the ocean? One oxygen producing plant stands out as being incredibly important, PHYTOPLANKTON! These microscopic plants serve as the base of the oceans food chain, and without them all of your favorite sea creatures would be hungry. We traced phytoplankton and realized how intricate, geometrical, and beautiful they are.
We continued to explore the beautiful and strange creatures that can survive such turbulent conditions in tidal pools. Alphas were delighted to learn that sea anemones aren’t bound to the ocean floor and octopuses make great friends! We made sea urchins, nudibranchs, sea stars, barnacles, crabs and placed them right at home in our tide pool
VOILA!
This week in Math…
Ms. Emma’s Math Wizards…
Learned how to graph! We started off by collecting data using our silly monster cubes. How many times did you roll each monster? We learned that using tally marks sure does make counting easier…
Then we compared all of our data to find which monster the entire class rolled the most! Fangle and Squishy were the top contenders.
Then we journeyed around the school on a “tally walk” to collect data about the kinds of supplies our school has a lot of. Backpacks and scissors were in abundance!
Each student made their own survey question and graph to accompany the data. What is your favorite flavor of ice cream? Chocolate for the win.
We spent the remainder of the week meeting the fact families. Students even became mail delivery people when making sure that each slip of mail (equations) made it to the right fact family’s mailbox!
Ms. Kim’s Mathletes…
Alphas went on a Shape Safari! We walked through halls, library and resource room in search of shapes…
Everything we see and touch has a shape of some kind. Shapes have similar characteristics — we call shapes that have straight lines, “Polygons.” Alphas did a great job drawing shapes that WEREN’T polygons.
…and those that WERE!
We had a lot of fun learning how to play Frosty Penguin Doubles! Boy are these kiddos getting THESE math facts down pat!
This week in ELA…
Ms. Kim’s group…
…wrote a LOT! We read a book about a wacky bird called Wordy Birdy, who LOVED to talk so much she rarely listened. It led to a conversation about writers of poetry and how they looked and listened to the world, and were excited to elevate what they found by using words in interesting ways. Wordy Birdy used descriptive language, and she also shared thoughts about things she liked and things she didn’t; we did too.
We hate fighting and meanness, too, Sienna!
We also read a book called A Quiet Place, about how ”quiet” is such a lovely and important gift to give our imaginations. We got pretty excited about sharing where our best imaginary quiet places were and what they looked like.
We also read our own books, worked on our handwriting, learned some new high-frequency words, and practiced spelling them with a new spelling game.
Ms. Emma’s group…
Explored riddle poems! Alphas learned that poets use all of their senses to describe things and oftentimes use their words like clues. Students had fun guessing the answer to riddle poems about school, then creating their own “guess my feeling” poems.
We played a game to practice -nch words…
Shared our sea creature poems from PnP…
Thought VERY hard about what color a feeling might be, how it might taste, and how it might smell..
Then we met Nelly the noun tiger and Ally the adjective alligator! These two friends helped us play a fun version of hot potato and practice modifying the meaning of a noun with an adjective.
In Other News…
Happy Birthday Jack! The alphas love how silly you are and loved the delicious lollipops.
Admiring the crustaceans…
