Elementary News – October 2023
October was a month full of learning, events, and the preparation for the holiday season. We began our month with inviting our grandparents and grandfriends in for a sweet time of activities and breakfast. Thank you to all who came!
We rounded out the month with our parent-teacher conferences. It was a great time for parents and teachers to connect about what students are learning, and what is happening in the classroom.
This month, second graders reflected on their Deep Hope (that they will keep growing in knowing Jesus and showing God’s love), and focused their discussions on ways to show God’s love to others, and why God wants His followers to do that. They showed His love by sharing their Donut Day games with third grade, and by making a huge thank-you card for the middle school worship team. They couldn’t stop there, so they decided to reach out even more with God’s love by inviting other classes to sign the letter second grade wrote together. These activities helped students deepen their understanding of the Community Building role God has called us to play in His story.
In Bible, second grade learned about locating books of the Bible in a “regular” Bible this week. This is a skill they will keep building on throughout the year. They read and discussed The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11), the story of Joseph (Genesis 37-46), and several devotions from their devotional. Second graders did amazing learning the books of the Bible, and even compared several children’s Bibles and figured out how they differ from grown-up translations.
Second grade math is wizzing by! They learned and practiced two-digit addition and subtracting, doubles facts up to 16+16, and compared numbers to see how they relate. Students have built so much confidence with the 9+ facts and with doubles+one facts (if you know 7+7, then 7+8 is easy).
Their science studies focused on collaborating in engineering and design. Second graders continue exploring these concepts as they work to build increasingly complex designs for specified purposes. They learned about the scientific method and applied its principles to design and carry out experiments. They attempted to grow mold and experimented with preservatives to slow the oxidation process in apples! After three weeks, the bread still had no mold! By popular demand, they read another Zoey and Sassafras book together, and which inspired them to develop some experiments about plant growth which will happen next month. This was all in addition to their learning about tadpoles, frogs, autumn, and changing leaves, too!
Second graders collaborated to create a story map to identify narrative story elements and summarize the text of their daily book study, discussing the theme of friendship. They learned about the terms dialogue and quotation marks and how to use them. Students also had the opportunity to share a read aloud with first grade, which allowed them to use their knowledge of narrative elements to tell their guests about what had happened so far in the story. For their next book study, second graders collaborated to create a life cycle map and wrote their own paragraph about the life cycle of a tadpole, complete with a title and detail sentences. They talked about the similarities and differences between a few of their books, and collaborated on a timeline of stages of tadpole development, and compared that to the life cycle diagram they previously created. Students wrote a list of tadpole traits and new information, and wrote about how the author and illustrator work together to provide information.
Third grade completed a fun Mystery Science activity where they learned all about seasonal weather patterns and how past weather data can help predict what the weather will be like the following year. For this activity they focused on snow storms. After learning about air pressure, paper airplanes, and what happens when you manipulate air, third graders just had to try some experiments. Mrs. Davis is working on planning a day for them to do just that!
They continued their learning and review of lower and upper case cursive letters. They have done such a great job taking their time while writing and making improvement in their penmanship. They got a chance to practice their penmanship while they wrote their own narrative story.
Students learned how to do addition in expanded form, as well as in standard from. Then they learned the magic of the Commutative Property before moving on to subtraction. They marveled at how you can change the order of numbers while doing addition and the sum will stay the same.
This month third and fourth grade went on their first field trip to The NH Audubon. They went on a nature walk, and learned some fun facts about nature. They had a blast!
Fourth grade reviewed their practice of writing letters and words in cursive. They also began their first informative writing piece all about natural disasters. In order to do this, students learned about primary and secondary sources, how to write better sentences, how to take proper notes while researching, learned about where volcanoes pop up around the world, and talked about why some volcanoes explode and some don’t. Wow they have learned a lot!
In math, fourth grade did some review, learned new addition and subtraction strategies, and worked on estimation and patterns. They took their first math assessment this month! They are pros at solving word problems now.
The Adopt-A-Cow journey with first grade continued this month. Fourth graders began with writing what they knew and what they would like to know about cows. Then they worked with their first grade buddies to learn about the body and habitat of a cow. We cannot wait to see how this Formative Learning Experience (FLEx) concludes in the coming year!
Some more fun things fourth grade worked on this month were holiday cards for the military, reading through Exodus and Leviticus, learning how to be good Earth Keepers in the fall season, and testing their reflexes. They learned all about how the brain controls the body, and just had to test it out.
Way to go elementary! We can’t wait to see what you accomplish in November.
