Vicki Romeo
Personal Profile
All About Me!
I have been teaching 25 years!!!! This is my 2nd year teaching 4th grade AIG students. This is my first class at UNC Pembroke so I can use as much feedback from all of you as possible. I am not married but have a wonderful boyfriend, a terrier dog named Priscilla, and a very fat cat Pumpkin. I am a huge Pittsburgh Steelers fan hoping we do well in the playoffs.
Hopes and Goals from this course
Some of the most challenging personal traits I have seen since working with AIG students has been their social/emotional needs such as perfectionism, gifted under achievers, handling failures and turning them into learning lessons, and social skills with others (gifted and not gifted). I have found these needs to be completely different from a regular classroom and hope to gain information and ideas from this class to help in these areas.
Changes
One change I have had to make has been to find novels that are at my students lexile reading range which can be into 7th and 8th grade but with topics that are appropriate for their age. Also finding novels with topics that touch on the special needs of gifted students.
Unique Teaching Strategies
One strategy I use specifically with AIG students is called Inquiry Based Learning. Briefly this is where students choose topics of their choice and research them and present them to the class. My role is coach---helping dig deeper, proofing, guiding, and suggestion giver.
The other strategy I use is closed or shared reading of difficult text. For example taking MLK's I have a dream speech and each day we do a little something different with the text such as vocabulary, language, tone, mood, and meaning, etc.