Cassidy Gifted & Talented News
Week of January 16
Announcements
We have had several new PTP students/families join the group so I want to extend a welcome to them! I send out newsletters weekly so just scroll down to look for what is happening in your child's (or children's) area(s) of identification this week!
Reading
All Grade Levels: We are starting a unit on comprehension strategies. Students will all be setting up Reader's Notebooks either using composition notebooks (grades K-1 and some second graders) or a document in their Google Classroom (grades 3-5). In these notebooks, they will track their thinking (as well as take notes and record books they have read and books they want to read).
The strategies we are currently practicing/learning are summarizing, questioning, inferencing, and connecting. We are starting with fiction text, but will then move into non-fiction text.
Encourage your child to keep index cards or post it notes inside their books to record their thoughts while they read. If they are a 3rd-5th grader, they can also access their Reader's Notebooks from home through our Google Classroom. They will simply go to www.classroom.google.com and log in.
The strategies we are currently practicing/learning are summarizing, questioning, inferencing, and connecting. We are starting with fiction text, but will then move into non-fiction text.
Encourage your child to keep index cards or post it notes inside their books to record their thoughts while they read. If they are a 3rd-5th grader, they can also access their Reader's Notebooks from home through our Google Classroom. They will simply go to www.classroom.google.com and log in.
Math
All grade levels: In math, all grade levels will be working on explaining their reasoning and critiquing the reasoning of others in conjunction with the math content they are learning. Specifically, students will be solving word problems and working on restating and answering the questions and explaining what they did and why they did it. They will then share their work with others and use what they observed to inform how they might modify their work next time to continually improve.
Leadership
Leadership groups have been working on self-selected, independent study projects to explore the characteristics of strong leaders. Examples of student projects include conducting research on strong leaders, designing skits to display the elements of strong leadership, and conducting interviews with local leaders to find out about their views on leadership. We will also have several visitors from Fayette County 4-H coming to do some leadership programming with us.
General Intellectual
We have been working on critical thinking skills. Critical thinking is thinking about your thinking, while you're thinking, in order to make your thinking better. Critical thinking skills involve questioning, reasoning, and evaluating. Thus far, we have explored questioning and are now working on reasoning. All students have been exploring Scratch, a computer programming website that engages them in reasoning/logic/problem solving to design a program, and now they will begin designing a project that they want to create with Scratch.
Art, Creativity, Music, Dance, and Drama
2nd and 3rd Grade Art, Creativity, Music, and Drama group: We are working on creating a musical. Thus far, we have developed our storyline and we are in the process of creating our script, as well as our costume and set designs. This will be a long term, on-going project. We will have a performance of our finished product in the spring. If anyone is or knows any theater/drama/musical/set designing/costume designing/seamstress folks, we would love for you to join us and help us with the logistics of designing our sets and costumes! My contact info is below.
5th Grade Art: We have been working on self-selected, independent projects involving research on technique or art history combined with the creation of a piece of artwork. Is anyone a graphic designer or does anyone know a graphic designer? The students mentioned they were interested in learning about digital art and I would love for someone to share with us. My contact info is below.
Resources and Opportunities
Opportunities:
MLK Day celebrations for kids in Lexington: http://lexfun4kids.com/mlk-jr-day-events/