We started our K-4 Microschool at the end of August, and September 2024 was a blur! A new year is always exciting, crazy, and fun. This year, we welcomed several new students, and jumped into our new routines and schedule right away! This month had beautiful weather, and among enjoying outside time, our students started learning about forces and motion (Newton’s Laws!), explored the concept of being “bucket fillers,” and our Tuesday crew started reading the novel, The Wild Robot, with plans to see it in theaters upon completion! From connecting with friends (both old and new!) to building our ‘wall habitats,’ this month was one for the books!
Monthly Highlights:
- Sensory Mondays — Our “Gala” (Monday) Crew kicked off September with a series of sensory activities, including shaving cream spelling, scratch-art penmanship, and Bear Bingo (among others). The goal of these activities is to engage multiple learning systems and make learning more hands on. The shaving cream was a big success, too, for both learning and playing together!
- The ‘Hero’ Project — Started in September, our “Slice” (Thursday) students launched on a two-month Social Studies project where they were not only ‘show & telling’ their own heroes—family, sports/music or otherwise—they were actively researching and taking notes on heroes from different time periods and areas of history (for example civil rights heroes, women’s rights heroes, medical heroes, etc.). This was not only fun and engaging, but it also challenged our students to practice their summarizing, paraphrasing, note-taking, and organization skills!
- Pit & Children’s Lit *Fall Dates* —We officially began our fall series of our children’s book reading (with Styles!🐾), which was great because we got to read a bunch of ‘back to school’ books and provide another ‘touch point’ between home and school.
“Gala” (Mondays + Wednesdays):
- Phonics, Spelling & ELA (English & Language Arts): With a week under our belts, we *officially* began all of our learning units! September kicked off our Spelling Packets, which are weekly spelling activities that include Rainbow Writing (copying words with different colored tools), Unscramblers, Spelling Stairs, and more, including exciting sensory activities like writing with shaving cream or practicing penmanship with scratch-art tools! In addition to our spelling packets, we started phonics activities, with a focus primarily on short vowel sounds and CVC words.
- Math & Reasoning: A big focus of this month was building skills around counting, sorting, number sense, addition/subtraction basics, and mathematical reasoning. We play a lot of math games, including ‘Bear Bingo,’ which is all about number and pattern recognition (and is a ton of healthy and fun competition, too!)
- STEM/Social Studies: This month we did a mini-unit on weather, specifically clouds and their names/shapes. We also learned about different animal habitats, where they are, what they’re called, and why animals live in different areas.
“Slice” (Mondays):
- English & Language Arts: Our process for our Monday “Slice” crew is to work on different aspects of the writing process in a whole-group format, followed by independent work. By slowing down areas of writing, we’re better able to meet individual needs while moving our students forward in their own organization, note-taking, and idea generation! This month’s focus was on determining the main idea of writing and adding supportive details. We also worked on organization, and using tools (like our highlighters or simple note-taking) to help focus on the most important and relevant aspects of both what we read and write.
- Math & Reasoning: In math, we’re breaking down the steps of double-digit addition and subtraction by focusing on moving right-to-left, sharpening our skills for ‘borrowing’ (or ‘stealing’ as we call it) as well as ‘carrying’ numbers, and using keywords to know what type of math to do (ex: ‘in all’). We’re also doing games where students are challenging one another in their math skills!
“Honeycrisp” (Tuesdays):
- English & Language Arts: September kicked off our FIRST (!) novel of the year, The Wild Robot. Our students were super excited to start reading and working on their activity packets. We worked on building vocabulary, synthesizing information, summarizing our reading, asking questions, journaling about what we read, making connections from the book to our lives! Students also worked on weekly independent reading and comprehension questions to support their out-of-class learning.
- Math & Reasoning: We jumped right into multiplication in September 2024, challenging our students to think about multiplying in different ways and with different tools (repeated addition, arrays, number lines, etc.). Our Tuesday crew really enjoyed the hands-on element to help them visualize and conceptualize what multiplication really is.
“Slice” (Thursdays):
- Morning “Slice”: Our “Slice” mornings are structured by two primary activities: (1) Our Reading Comprehension, which is a one-page passage coupled with specific questions that we analyze together as a group using SQ3R (a reading strategy to help identify important areas of the text), and (2) Our “Around The World” Math where we work on upper-level math questions together. This is followed by ‘stations’ which are targeted, multisensory activities (math or ELA) that allow students to strengthen their skills in a gamified format.
- Social Studies: In Social Studies this month, we launched our ‘Hero Project’ and began studying different heroes across different genres/areas of history: civil rights, women’s rights, worker’s rights, etc. We also did a ‘Show & Tell’ of our own heroes, which included sports heroes like Jackie Robinson, all the way to family members.
- STEM: Force and motion was the big focus of September 2024! We learned about different types of forces, what happens with force on Earth vs. space, motion, Newton’s First & Second Laws, and even participated in a class-wide ‘Tug-of-War’ competition to learn how balanced/unbalanced forces can impact the outcome of the game!
Other September 2024 Updates:
- “Bucket Fillers“— Our Tuesday crew read a book about being a ‘bucket filler,’ which is essentially being someone who supports and encourages others. We did a read aloud and art activity related to this concept, which really helped to set the stage for our older students to be welcoming, inclusive, and supportive of their classmates (including our new students!)
- Snap Circuits — We spent a “brain break” working on Snap Circuits, which is a game/activity that’s all about connecting different pieces together to make (kid safe!) electricity! Our students really enjoyed this hands-on activity and did a great job taking turns and being patient with one another’s process.
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