9/8/25

Language Arts

We are in our first module of study, “The Power of Reading," where our guiding questions are:

Why do people read?
How can people get access to the books they want?
What barriers to book access might people experience?

We are working on identifying key details to help recount stories, using what we know about recounting a story to determine a central message, using different verb tenses, and having respectful class discussions.

Read more about the Module in English or Spanish.

See an overview of our lessons and suggested homework (spoiler alert! It's reading!) in English or Spanish.

Math

We've been working on using different strategies to be more efficient with addition. Some kids decompose their numbers into ones and tens. We also started adding on number lines to show how you can add numbers to get to a friendly number or how you can add friendly numbers first.

You can read more about Unit 1 here.

Through our Number Corner work, we've begun seeing equal groupings and writing multiplication equations. The kids have been surveying each other to gather data and organize it into bar graphs.

Addition Strategies

Decompose the addends into their ones and tens. Add the ones and the tens separately. Add those parts together.

Jump TO a friendly number (+1 because 20 is friendly), then jump BY a friendly number (+10), then jump the rest

Jump BY a friendly number (+10), then jump TO a friendly number (+1 because 30 is friendly), then jump the rest

Science/Social Studies

We started our first science unit about animals. We are learning about traits, selection, adaptations, and life cycles.

So far, we examined inner and outer traits of plants to determine which are related. We will continue our work with inheritance of traits and selection this week.

We have a classroom economy where kids earn points for doing their jobs, then use those points to pay rent on their chairs/table spots and can also choose to spend points in the class store.

Social-Emotional

We've been doing a lot of talking and practicing around expectations and respect. Especially with the advance to the upper grades and big buddies, the kids have had a lot of opportunities to move up to these bigger expectations.

We started talking about growth mindset in class in August and are continuing this work. We learned that "yet" is a really powerful word and that working on challenging things is one of the best ways to grow our brains.

As a way to learn and share different responsibilities, we are in the process of learning different roles for table members. So far, only the team captain role has been introduced.

The team captain gets materials, returns materials, is who gets extra directions to relay to their group, and is the only representative who may get up to ask questions.

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