February at GAP School!

Yellow Mushrooms with Emily and Virginia

The Yellow Mushrooms have been enjoying all the weather that has come our way in this past month! Snow, rain, or shine, our Yellow Mushrooms have taken February by storm!

In ELA, the Yellow Mushrooms have been continuing to work on building their skills as readers. By exploring sight words, they start to see them in the books they read. As we continue to focus on a letter each week, we dive deeper into phonics rules. While reading an awesome book series: Phonics Adventures, we have learned that Yy is a chameleon! It has its own special sound but it can also take on the sounds of ‘e’ and ‘i’. Another book from this series is: Phonics Adventures The Whiny Case of the Blues. In this book we learned about Aa’s whiney sound when it encounters an ‘m’ or an ‘n’. Another rule of phonics we dove into was the "bossy r" rule. By playing active games together, we explore the sounds vowels make when they accompany an r. Tracking our reading with pop-its is a class favorite! 

In math, we have been working really hard on reviewing story problems. We have been practicing solving the story problems in different ways, using manipulatives, and even standing up and performing different story problems. We also have introduced the idea of fractions. We have learned that the numerator is the number of sections selected, and the denominator is the number of sections in all. We have practiced our learning with pizza problems- because what better way to study fractions than with pizzas?! Although the first grade standard is just to study halves and fourths, the Yellow Mushrooms have blown their Educators away with their ability to go further, looking at eighths, sixteenths, thirds, and even 32nds! They continue to make connections, share strategies, and work very hard during math time. 

Yellows have also launched their project for Community Day! We have begun exploring "Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then" in order to explore narrative story writing as well as summary. We have decided to include math as a component in our story! Stay tuned to find out more! 

Red Hamsters with Lauren

This month, the Red Hamsters’ cursive handwriting practice has continued. Most everyone is now able to write their signatures! We’ve been working extra hard on word problems lately. The Red Hamsters have become more confident when solving problems on their own. 

In Math, division has been introduced to all. Everyone knows that it means that we break a number into equal parts. The Learners have been applying their new division work in their word problems! They were able to draw themselves pictures to support their process as needed. Showing the steps in math work has been a focus this month. Everyone is beginning to better understand how, when we look back at math problems we’ve completed, it is so much easier to remember our steps and thought process when they are recorded.

In Language, there have been many opportunities to practice our parts of speech through personalized Mad Libs-style activities, games, and group work. We continue to revisit the names and functions for each part of speech we’ve learned as we add new ones to our list. We’ve recently been spending more time with homophones! We’re diving into the differences between homophones, homonyms, and homographs, and are using our knowledge of root words and prefixes as we do! 

This month, the Red Hamsters have been learning about various African cultures and about Black History here in America. We’ve been exploring some African folklore and learning about the art of oral storytelling. Storytelling has been something that each of the students have taken to in a personal way in our time together this year. Their appreciation for the artistic layer of passing stories down through generations in a way that can be remembered is palatable! They found it so interesting that that is the way that history was passed through time for ages prior to written history. 

We’ve been working with different perspectives this quarter. We have practiced what it might be like to step into an indigenous person’s perspective and the ways it might contrast from our modern perspectives. It was impressive to witness the Learners “transform” as they role played an indigenous person for five minutes in the woods; they were very present! We discussed what differences we think there might be between the way that modern people attune to the details and nature and how a native person might’ve; the Red Hamsters noted that it was an essential survival skill for people living off of the land to be both patient and fully present.

As always, we are so grateful for every day we spend together here in this special place!

Silver Serpents with Furn and Elijah

Happy February Silver Serpent families! Can you believe we made it through all those snow days? We hope you enjoyed the time by staying cozy, filling up on some warm food, and partaking in the winter fun! But be honest—didn’t you and your Silvers get a little stir-crazy? We definitely did! Comment below with some of your favorite snow-day pastimes and memorable moments. 

          For the Serpents this past month, we worked hard to LEVEL-UP across the board. As we prepare to close out our third quarter in March (What?! Already?!), we are kicking our academics up a notch. For SEL, we’ve started investigating more advanced concepts. What is stress and how can we manage it? What are emotional bids? Why do we do them and how can we best respond to them? How can we take proactive steps to help us in challenging situations? We’ve even dipped into more complex discussion topics aimed at societal awareness, like “If you can have the whole world always follow one rule, what would it be and why?” The Silvers—little philosophers, they are—reflected, debated, and thrived off these conversations. We encourage you to extend these discussions at home by picking your Learners’ brains about debatable topics and challenging them to extend their thinking! These are excellent ways to practice not only our class discussion expectations, but also to help them articulate their thoughts in response to complex ideas.

          As for how we’ve leveled-up in ELA, we’ve been diving into harder Word Study activities and working on interviews for our Community Day project! On Word Study Wednesdays, most of our Learners are able to start and complete their work independently. This shows class growth in our ability to read and comprehend written directions, which is a skill we are constantly working on together. It’s exciting to see the Silvers spend less time getting started, and more time doing their work while remaining focused and independent. Between spelling, matching, defining, comparing, contextualizing, and using their new words, the Silvers are truly becoming Word Wizards!

          For our Community Day, the Silver Serpents are conducting interviews to learn more about the personal stories of GAP School Learners and staff. By selecting interviewees, brainstorming discussion topics, refining questions, practicing interview techniques, and reviewing peer work, we are learning to expand our view of the writing process into a broader, multimodal process of literacy. How we read and write shapes how we investigate the world, and interviews are an excellent way to expand our insight. We will be excited to share our digital and written products later this month!

          In math, the Silver Serpents are truly rising to the challenge. Currently, we are taking on decimals. By moving slowly through new concepts in place value, strengthening our understanding with more intensive practice questions, and familiarizing ourselves with basics of the tenths place and place value comparison through a variety of decimal-themed dice and card games, the Silvers are impressively showcasing their expanding number sense. 

In science, we started off February working on our weather unit! Silvers came up with a wall of questions to prepare for our Q&A with a National Weather Service meteorologist, and when we met with her, this preparation paid off! We spent an hour virtually learning about severe weather and had all of our burning weather questions answered. How lucky were we to have had such an opportunity! After reflecting on our experience, we used our knowledge of extreme weather to help us problem-solve a scenario involving severe flooding. We then analyzed postcards from a “Gramma” who has been traveling the world and sending us notes about the climates she’s experienced. Silvers are continuing to develop a sense of the globe’s climate zones, and this is a super fun way to reinforce this. We finished off our weather unit with a review game. 

Next for science, we started learning about life cycles! We started by brainstorming life cycles we know, as well as those unfamiliar to us. We talked about what features all life cycles have in common, and how some life cycles are really crazy (look up the Lancet Liver Fluke if you dare…). Silvers were extremely excited to find out we are incubating chicken eggs during this unit, and we did some science reading-comprehension to help us prepare for this. 

The Silvers learned about basic taxonomy and helped create a "tree of life" before learning about how animals within certain classes have more similar life cycles than animals in other classes. Amidst all this life cycle learning, we started our Learner-made egg hatching scrapbook, problem solved some incubation issues, and learned about embryonic development of chickens. We also started brainstorming our independent life cycle projects to be revealed at Community Day. We are looking forward to more life cycle learning come March!

Emerald Elk with Corrie and Luke

February was full of math discoveries and connections for the Emerald Elk! Middle school Learners explored ratios, rates, and proportions with practice problems and by connecting math to nature. They observed ratios in Kinser’s Creek, compared animal speeds, and used unit rates to predict travel times. Proportional reasoning came into play with measurement conversions and percentages, including converting distances and comparing values in word problems. Fifth graders focused on decimals by learning strategies to solve equations and real-world connections. To understand more about place value, they converted meters, centimeters, and kilometers. Learners enjoyed playing math games like "Decimals War" to compare values of decimals from the tenths, hundredths, and thousandths places. In addition, they learned strategies to add, subtract, and multiply decimals. Next up, they will learn strategies to divide decimals. February showed us that math isn't just numbers — it's a way to understand the world around us. We can't wait to keep exploring and learning as spring approaches!

In ELA, February saw the Elk hone their prior skills and develop new ones as well! Our middle school Learners continued their Shakespearean studies with a bravery and tenacity that could only be compared to a Henry V before the battle of Agincourt! They began writing their own sonnets by following a set rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter, while also conveying their message using metaphor, allusion, and imagery. For this project, they also investigated the historical context of Shakespeare, exploring such topics as the Roman catacombs, Renaissance-era medical practices, serfdom in Elizabethan England, and even what spy-craft looked like in the 1500s! Finally, stay tuned for a Community Day project that utilizes Elizabethan construction methods and local materials! 

5th grade Elk pressed onward with their study of poetry and storytelling, with an added emphasis on spelling over the course of the month. Each week, they studied a new spelling rule and tested their knowledge the following Monday. To practice spelling things that were truly foreign, they took turns making up nonsense words, following various rules, and presented them to classmates to try out. Then, in moving toward a Community Day product, the fifth grade Elk pondered how they could all come together and tell the same story from different perspectives and using different formats. And what better way to do so than a good old-fashioned “who-done-it?” All we can say is: bring your magnifying glasses for Community Day.

SEL with Janelle

This month in SEL our overarching theme across all grades has been integrity. 

The Yellow Mushrooms have welcomed opportunities to have cozy campfire circle conversations and reflections on how kindness, inclusion, and fairness tie into integrity. They embraced listening to audiobooks on these topics and then sharing their observations. A highlight this month was learning a new version of musical chairs. We called it inclusive crazy creeks. Instead of a person having to sit out when they didn’t have a seat, other Learners invited them to share. Our big win was pairing down to 5 seats from 13! This flock really embraced this theme and they’ve grown even closer as a result. 

The Red Hamsters took a closer look at learning how honesty, inclusivity, and the power to choose can contribute to integrity. We took a look at the penny and a few stories about "Honest Abe". They very excitedly did penny rubbings to add to their learning tool box as a reminder to use honesty in the classroom and home to build integrity. This group thrives on movement for learning, so we have been using some time to explore team building games, like human rock paper scissors, to continue to strengthen these skills. They have also been excited about reading a book called “What Would Danny Do?” where as the audience they get to experience the outcome when Danny makes a kind choice vs. an unkind choice. 

The Silver Serpents have worked diligently to look at how to understand themselves and the difference between negative and positive stressors. How they manage stress can help them support their peers with integrity. They completed a learning activity called "Take Five" in which they identified five things they can do to manage their stress at home or at school. Some Learners opted to bring their "Take Five" home as a visual reminder, while others chose to leave them in their Learning environment. We also flipped this to "Give Five" to highlight ways they can give to others around them during stressful situations. We wrapped this month up with a look at sportsmanship as an indicator of integrity and how they can incorporate this valuable skill at home and in team environments in the community.

The Emerald Elk continue to thrive on using games to increase their awareness of emotions, integrity, and teamwork.  They worked in small groups to brainstorm possible ways to create a GAP School escape room experience as a means of understanding inclusiveness and the various types of contributions needed to solve a problem. They also dove into a closer look at sportsmanship and what qualities display integrity in team sports. 

Knowledge Seekers and Projects with Ryan and Max

The month of February started with learners in all flocks taking on a Valentine's STEAM design challenge. In the spirit of Maker Days, it has always been a tradition at GAP School that Learners build their own Valentine mailbox. The process is built around design constraints to encourage our creativity and design skills. This year, our Emerald and Silver flocks had to meet several design constraints requiring Learners mailboxes to stand on four legs, hold one kilogram of weight, and include a door that opens and closes. Yellow and Red flocks had to include an opening that was big enough to hold large valentines, include decorative elements, and imagery of their flock mascot. Everyone got really invested in their designs. Mailbox highlights included 3D hearts, toothy pizza boxes, a dragon, a trash can, wind resistant lids, and so much more!

We squeezed in some early garden planning and knot tying as the shortest month of the year wrapped up. Learners looked at time tables for seed planting based on "last frost date" for the Charlottesville area and then drafted calendars for when we should put seeds into our garden beds. Later this year we will begin planting seed starts as well. Our knot tying will also continue through the spring as we work to develop this particular skill. Knot tying is great for fine motor work, following multi-step directions and the sense of accomplishment from finally learning a knot.

Our Maker Days continue to show all the creative ways our Learners can express themselves. We had a flurry of cooking projects including chilli, cheese puffs, and some Gyoza! Younger learners are collaging, creating "bark armor," Ewok spears, marble runs, and sculpting with clay. Learners of all ages are working through long term projects such as bow making, a catapult, boomerangs, apothacary projects, sewing blankets, whittling projects and so much more. As always, Maker Days are a highlight for our community.