October 2025 at GAP School

Yellow Superstars with Emily

The month of October has been a celebration of success for the Yellow Superstars!

In ELA, learners have been applying their phonics knowledge as they learn to read and write independently. As they recognize and decode CVC and sight words, learners are blending words they read and segmenting sounds they hear while writing. In the practice of nature journaling, learners are starting to practice writing multisyllabic words. We cheer each other on as we build confidence in reading and writing!

In our book study, our readers can confidently identify front cover, back cover, title, and title page. They can also identify the author's job, illustrator's job, characters, and setting. Our newest addition to story elements has been theme! We are learning to discuss and identify themes by exploring short stories together. 

In math, we wrapped up our place value lessons! After learning last month how to form numbers and skip count by 10's, we dove into place value in order to learn how to read, write, and identify numbers that we see. We used base ten blocks as manipulatives to help us visualize and count before writing. As learners nature journal, they can now write meta data with confidence and independence! We practiced counting by ones by moving our bodies hopscotching. We also use a 100's chart to visualize numbers as we count. 

In science, we have been exploring the world around us! After seeing some amazing Golden Orb-Weaver spider webs during exploration, we decided to use our "spidy-senses" to peak into the world of spiders! We grabbed our spiderweb key and jumped into action as we discovered webs throughout our school space! Misting webs with water allowed us to see their details up close for nature journaling. After exploring their home, we read facts on the Golden Orb-Weaver. As a class, we then discussed that some spider species do not weave webs! One of these spiders is a flock favorite, the jumping spider. We read the story Jumper, The Day in the Life of a Backyard Jumping Spider to learn more about them! Learners loved acting like jumping spiders during play afterwards. We continued our research on spiders by starting a non-fiction book on spiders together as a class. Here we distinguished the difference between fiction and non-fiction, reflected on facts we already know about spiders, generated questions we have, and set a goal to answer those questions together!

Red Rubies with Virginia and Sapna

October was a busy month for the Red Rubies! We have enjoyed watching the leaves change colors and making our first fire of the school year! We loved having our families come to Community Day to see all of the amazing things that we have been working on. We hope to dive even deeper into asking questions and exploring our world as we move further into the year!

In ELA, we are writing, writing, writing! Using both our ELA notebooks and our nature journals, we are practicing writing by using the sounds and spelling patterns we know. Often we do this without asking an educator for help! It is okay to make mistakes- it helps our brains grow! The confidence in our writing as a result has grown tremendously, and so many of us want to write stories outside of brain blast! Writing stories, whether using words or pictures, is a source of enjoyment for many of our learners- encourage those things at home as well! We have also finished our read-aloud book, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Although many learners commented that the book had some sad parts, they agreed it was important for Edward’s character that he experienced sadness in order to grow. Look out for Edward Tulane projects that we are working on for next Community Day, as our next big idea is "Journeys Big and Small"! We are also working on structured literacy, phonemic awareness, and sight word knowledge. We are so proud of our growth so far this year in reading!

In math, we have been focusing on addition. There are many strategies that we have learned about to help us solve problems. 

1. Manipulatives: Learners can use tangible objects to represent the numbers they are working with. Learners can always use rocks or sticks around them to work through problems. 

2. Fingers: When adding two numbers, learners can take the greater number and continue counting up, keeping track of how many times they count on their fingers.

3. Number Bond:

4. Tens Frame: On a physical sheet with ten boxes, learners can place red/yellow double-sided chips. Each color represents a different number, and they can see how many away from a multiple of ten their number is. 

5. Number Line: similar to the finger method, learners start with the bigger number and use the other number to jump that amount of times and see which number they land on.

6. Standard Method: They have been working on place value. When we stack up our numbers, they should align with the correct place value. We start from the left and move to the right, carrying as needed.

   
   

Ask your learner which is their favorite method to use; this helps give wonderful insight into the child, their preferences, and skills. If you are practicing addition at home, ask or remind them which strategies they can use! Other concepts we have learned are rounding up and down with the fun rhyme: “0 through 4 stay on the floor, 5 through 9 climb the vine,” greater than or less than with the hungry alligator, and decomposing numbers based on their place value with our favorite school decomposer, mushrooms. 

In science, we wrapped up our plant unit. Our final project, to give back to trees for all the gifts they give us, was making pine cone bird feeders. We also made nature boats to act as a floating seeds, and then dispersed those seeds down the creek! The kids have such kind and thoughtful ideas to make the world a better place. We have been loving observing the leaves turn beautiful fall colors. As the seasons change, we have been wondering why the leaves change colors and fall. One day, we observed our shadows at different points throughout the day and witnessed the sun's different positions in the sky. We learned about how the Earth orbits around the sun, and rotates around it’s invisible axis at a tilt.

Silver Sparrows with Furn and Elijah

Much like our native sparrows, now returning to our fields and forests for the colder months, the Silver Sparrows have welcomed fall with open arms! It’s clear that we’ve established some awesome routines together that help make our days predictable, engaging, and productive. One routine that we’d like to spotlight this month is our morning routine.

Notably, we start our mornings strong with clear routines and expectations. As soon as the sparrows get into our class space, we start on our stewardship jobs. On Mondays, we choose new jobs. Throughout the week, we take ownership of our job, whether it’s harvesting sticks for fires, groundskeeping to tidy our space, inventory management to organize and restock our class supplies, acting as librarians to take care of organizing and cleaning the Book Bus, or as educator assistants helping with anything that needs doing.

Then, we have quiet time. During quiet time, learners have the opportunity to read, draw, write, and catch-up with each other quietly. This early, independent time allows learners to ease into the day and start it how they want: friendly connection, quiet creativity, or calm reading. We find that learners are able to focus better for group meetings when they’ve had time to exercise some agency in their mornings!

Next comes our morning meeting, the key tone-setting portion of our routine. We LOVE morning meeting in the Silver Sparrows! We follow a predictable structure that invites our learners to participate and kickstart our day. We first do our greeting and mantra. By saying these together, we break the ice and alert our minds to the goal of doing our best. Then, we invite a learner to read the weather and moon phase. This step helps us understand what our day will FEEL and LOOK like around us as we move through it. Next, we read our morning message. We curate our message to whatever needs attention that day, typically sharing praise, encouragement, gratitude, goal-setting, reflection, curiosities, and announcements. We invite learners to read the message aloud (which they really get excited about doing) and actually respond to it. Finally, we practice and introduce topics in ELA and math of the day. This fun, easy, low-stakes time to review key concepts or “soft-release” new ones helps the Sparrows get into an academic mindset. While it feels like a game, we are actually recalling skills in bite-sized chunks to cement connections in our brains. And instead of taking extra time during brain blast to dive into tricky concepts, we may also explain something new or tricky during morning meeting to make it feel quick and less taxing.

Moreover, in ELA this month the Silvers have been exploring the concepts of active reading. We asked: What is an active reader? How do I read actively? What questions do active readers ask? We learned that active reading can look different for different people, but it is always a way of interacting with and reflecting on the texts that we read. Active reading is staying engaged! Together, we came up with a list of active readers' traits and questions that they ask to stay engaged with a text. We will be reflecting on these traits and using these questions while we grow as active readers!

We also practiced active reader skills by reading short nonfiction passages, as pictured below. First, we read the questions and underlined key words and phrases. We also read through answers to help us pay close attention and “hunt” for evidence efficiently. Next, we numbered our paragraphs to make sure we could easily locate evidence in the text. Then, we read each paragraph, highlighting information (and interesting tidbits or reactions) that support the answers to our questions. Additionally, we put short words and phrases next to each paragraph to help us recall the main topics without having to read everything again. And finally, we answered our questions with evidence that helped us identify the BEST answers and eliminate distractors! Overall, as we continue developing as active readers, we will practice this process with different kinds of texts! I love how we can almost feel our brains growing when we use these skills.

In math, we began October by wrapping up our addition and subtraction unit, though we’ll continue to revisit and strengthen those skills throughout the year. Our focus has been on building strong number sense within the base ten system to make mental math feel easier and more intuitive. Next, we dove into multiplication! Using arrays, visuals, and real-world problems, learners began to explore multiplication concepts in meaningful ways. We learned about the distributive property (breaking numbers into parts) to help us multiply using facts we already know, such as skip-counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s. From there, we built on this foundation to start learning other multiplication facts. Through songs, stories, games, tips, and lots of practice, our Silvers are growing in both skill and confidence as mathematicians. As we move into November, we’ll continue reinforcing these ideas, continue multiplying multi-digit numbers, and start exploring division and fact families—exciting steps in our mathematical journey!

In science, we started the month preparing our Human Impacts Map Features. Learners synthesized what they’d learned into clear main ideas that they shared proudly at Community Day. Through our theme of “impacts on land,” we explored watersheds, weathering, erosion, and deposition, investigating how Earth’s surface changes over time. These discussions naturally led us to wonder about how scientists understood the world before humans were keeping written records. From there, we transitioned into studying fossils and stratigraphy—a class favorite! Learners have loved exploring this topic through skits, fossil observations, and strata investigations. We wrapped up the month with a spirited Science Quiz Bowl, where teams had the chance to show off what they had learned and celebrate their scientific thinking.

Emerald Eagles with Lauren

The Emerald Eagles have been devoting a portion of each day to activities that bolster our community, spread kindness in our flock, and expand beyond! In these sessions, we continue to explore the many ways that we are alike and different, appreciating our diversity. There are many interests and preferences that the learners have found that they unexpectedly have in common! This time has been valued by all members of our flock!  

In Math, the Emeralds have been moving from working with equivalency in fractions and decimals to comparing and sequencing their values. They are also working on making our ‘improper’ fractions ‘proper.’ The seventh grade learners are beginning to look at ratios and proportional relationships. We are seeing what those intervals look like when they’re graphed. The Emeralds are becoming more confident adding and subtracting fractions with either the same or dissimilar denominators. They have also been simplifying their final answers using the Least Common Multiple and Lowest Common Denominator. Some of the learners are even beginning to multiply and divide fractions as well! 

In Language, the Emeralds are developing their questions and research for their thesis work. Additionally, we are examining common story arcs. We try spotting them in various book plots, from our novel study to our read-aloud books. We’ve identified and compared the 5 W’s (who, what, when where, why) and the H structure for our plot decoding and they’ve recreated story elements with their own twists! The Emeralds are becoming more familiar with the types of sentences and how to enrich their sentences with more complexity. 

In cultural class, we are working on our study of the elements and are honing in on our deep dive into survival skills. The survival skill booklets that each student is drafting were inspired by our class read aloud books, Hatchet and Winter. This project is in the research phase, as the learners find discrepancies between their hypothesized methods and the ‘tried and true’ survival skills written about in our many manuals from the GAP School library. It’s clear that the Emeralds have an abundance of knowledge about our property here and that they feel at home during conversations about ‘surviving’ here! 

SEL with Janelle

Big feelings are a normal part of growing up! For children in kindergarten through second grade, learning to recognize and manage their emotions are important life skills. At this age, kids are beginning to understand what they feel, why they feel that way, and how to handle those emotions in healthy ways.

In SEL, kindergarten through 2nd grade learners are exploring emotions through stories, classroom discussions, and social–emotional lessons. Our big emphasis is that all feelings are okay—it’s how we respond to them that matters.

Examples are:

• Naming emotions like happy, sad, mad, scared, and calm

• Recognizing feelings in others

• Using calming strategies such as deep breathing, counting to ten, or taking a short break

• Solving problems with words instead of actions

• Making color/emotion connections on the flags around our classroom areas 

  
  

These skills help children build empathy, confidence, and stronger friendships.

Families play a big role in helping children manage emotions. You can support your child by:

• Talking about feelings daily. Ask questions like “How did that make you feel?” or “What can we do when we’re upset?”

• Modeling calm behavior. Show your child healthy ways to handle frustration or disappointment.

• Reading about emotions. Books like The Color Monster by Anna Llenas or When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry by Molly Bang are great conversation starters.

• Creating a calm-down space. A cozy corner with books, coloring supplies, or a stuffed animal gives kids a safe spot to relax.

  
  

Helping children understand their emotions builds the foundation for empathy, confidence, and resilience. When families and schools work together to support emotional growth, kids learn to navigate the ups and downs of life with kindness and confidence.

In addition, kindergarten through 7th grade learners have been working on weaving the subject of "caring" into class culture. All learners have participated in a kindness/compliment bracelet activity that connected each flock of Learners through a spider web of compliments that ended in the community building task of cutting and tying on each other's bracelets. 

In the Yellow and Red flocks, we’re practicing kindness towards ourselves and others. In the Silver flock, it’s about caring as it relates to friendships, problem-solving, and seeing others’ perspectives. In the Emerald flock, learners are exploring independence and identity. We have open conversations to help them feel supported.

At every age, a few moments of connection — a chat, a smile, or a listening ear — make a big difference. Together, we’re helping GAP School learners grow as caring, resilient humans, ready to thrive in every part of life. Please never hesitate to reach out with any questions, comments, or reflections your family may have.

Projects with Max

October Projects had Learners continuing to explore our big idea "GAP Culture Is.." through the lens of examining and making masks. In September, we got curious about masks from a variety of cultures and used October to begin to design our own masks. Learners were given the prompt "How can you make a mask that represents GAP culture?" to launch their curiosity about what defines our school. We took time to consider creative materials use, created design criteria for each flock, and did our first project proposal of the year.

We took a brief pause on our mask creation to welcome an expert guest in foraging and mycology, Gabrielle Cerberville. Gabrielle joined each flock on a woodsy wander to look for all the amazing mushrooms in the woods around school. We found a tremendous variety including the example of a species that Gabrielle had ever seen! October is a fantastic time to go looking for mushrooms in the Charlottesville area. The best timing is to wait 1-2 days after it rains.

As October closed, we completed our masks, had our first week of Maker Days, and established fire safety criteria for each flock. Learners practiced fire safety and building fires.

Moving forward, Learners can expect to alternate weeks of specific projects that explore our big idea and weeks of maker days. We are so excited to see what will be created this year.