BES GT LEADers September News
Learning Experiences for Academic Discovery
Lori Kirkhuff
Email: lori.kirkhuff@gcisd.net
Location: Bransford Elementary School, Glade Road, Colleyville, TX, United States
Phone: 817-305-4920
Twitter: @BESGTLEAD
WELCOME to GT LEAD
Welcome to Mrs.Kirkhuff's Gifted & Talented Class. It is a privilege to teach these future leaders and innovators! My goal is to create an environment for learning that allows my students to discover their unique talents and encourage them to make a difference in the lives of others. Our lessons this year will focus on effective communication and the need to be self-regulated learners, skilled problem solvers and collaborative workers. Students will be encouraged to ask questions and experience empathy. As we prepare these leaders of tomorrow, we will be infusing technology and the arts into our class. I am so excited to be at BES this year!
Upcoming Dates and Events:
Oct. 12th-.......District Meeting - GT LEAD Classes Reschedued
Nov. 16th .......Kindergarten Parent Information Night for new Applicants
6:00-7:00pm PDEC Bldg. Panther Den
Nov. 17-Dec. 8...... Nominations for Kindergarten
Dec. 12th .......5th to Middle School Parent Information Night for current LEAD students
6:00-7:00 PDEC Bldg. Panther Den
First Grade News: Contributions
Our general theme for first grade this year is "Contributions". Our LEADers have been busy identifying personal strengths and traits that make us unique learners. We read a book about a character named Michael that was different from his other classmates and we analyzed his struggles to get others to see things through his perspective. Next, students looked at their interpersonal skills and compared those to the character's traits in the book and used technology to share the comparisons.
As we continue to identify our strengths, students are analyzing how these traits can contribute to others around us. We began this week by looking at our personal stories and events in our lives that contribute over time to developing who we are as special individuals. Students will be using metaphoric and symbolic images to help share their stories with others in the upcoming weeks.
Developing Deductive Thinking!
LEADers in Action!
Second Grade News : Systems
Our theme this year in second grade will be "Systems". We explored this concept by looking for examples of systems around our school. They were soon amazed to discover that almost everything could be a system as we used flexible thinking to think of systems in different ways. This thinking led us to creating generalizations about systems that will guide us through the year as we dive deeper into this concept. The generalization statements we created were:
* systems can interact with other systems
*systems can follow rules
* systems have parts that are interdependent upon one another
* systems have parts that work together to complete a task.
Students were then challenged to select an example of a system to research and then prepare for a class debate. This week they participated in a Tournament of Champions Challenge where they presented evidence on how their systems met our general standards. As each team advanced to the next round, we analyzed the facts presented and students received feedback on their presentation skills during the debate. Believe it or not, but the winning team put together a compelling argument for a ballet slipper!
I think we have some future lawyers in this group!
Wow! This is where the teachers eat!
Systems are all around us!
Making connections!
Third Grade News: Power
"Power" is the word of the year in third grade as the students began looking how effective leaders use this power to effect change. We began our journey by looking at our interpersonal skills. Each student completed a personal strength assessment and received a summary that was used to set learning goals for this year. Ask your child to share with you their top five strengths!
This week we started our new project on "Effective Leaders" as students began to grapple with these questions:
* What makes someone an exceptional leader?
*How does power influence leaders?
* How have leaders changed over time?
We will visit the library next week to check out a biography on a leader they would like to research and begin analyzing the qualities that make them a good leader. Over the next few weeks they will begin gathering evidence, creating a presentation and preparing for a class debate where they will argue their case as to who is the ultimate leader!
Each research team will also be challenged to choose an express of art to represent and share something about their leader as we begin to infuse the arts into GT LEAD! Looking forward to developing good research and debating skills with this talented group as they become self-regulated learners!
Multiple Perspectives!
Collaborative workers in action!
Skilled Problem Solvers!
Fourth Grade News: Exploration
Focus: developing a growth mindset, personal strength assessment, goal setting, oxymorons, analogies, using technology to create and share information and analyze, evaluate and create a 3-D model of 5 top personal strengths
Fourth grade LEADers began exploring their personal identity as they completed a strength assessment online. Ask your child to share their top five traits that contribute to their identity and about their goals for the year. Students then learned about oxymorons and selected their favorite mistake in order to analyze the lessons learned while reflecting on how this experience helped them grow.
Having learned about the identity, symbols, and lure of Texas in the 4th grade social studies curriculum, we began to expand our knowledge of symbolism while studying the Statue of Liberty. They were surprised to learned of the hidden symbols within this monument and the significance meaning behind each of the details. Next week, students will be building a 3-D monument of themselves and using metaphoric symbols to represent their top 5-7 strengths from their personal assessment to express in their design. This project will focus on "Identity" as the students learn to analyze their interests, strengths and learning skills. We will review good presentation skills and students will be sharing their projects with the class.
Beyond our four walls!
Developing collaborative workers!
Com-munication is key!
Fifth Grade News: Change
This year in fifth grade LEAD we will connect our learning to the theme of "Change".
We began the year analyzing our own identity as each student completed a personal strength assessment. We discuss that our identity changes as we experience new things and that we must commit to being life-long learners.
In all LEAD classes this year, we will begin our journey of infusing art into our lessons. To get our creative juices flowing, we learned about a boy and his father that created food puns for each of the 50 states. (example: Swiss Cheese + Wisconsin= Swissconsin!) The original Foodnited States was an Instagram project co-created by a father and son and was our inspiration for this project. After reviewing how puns and analogies are used to enhance our writing, the students took on the challenge to create a literary pun with part of their name and a food. Next, they created a forced analogy to connect this creation to something about their personal identity and illustrated this for a final product to share with others. Ask your child to share with you what they created for this project.
As we begin to extend our learning from the classroom, we recently learned how the strategy of Mind Mapping could be used to sort and display information. Students participated in an online course to research this strategy and practiced using a step by step approach. They are now taking what they learned and their strength assessment results to create a mind map of their own identify. Since many of your students are learning that they are visual learners and how symbolism can help them retain information, this skill will be very useful as we start research projects in the next few weeks.
Mind Mapping
Did you know that LEAD is the "sauce of creativity"?
Research is the Key!
Personal Strength Assessment
5th Grade Scholar holding a tutorial on a new App!
We have a Voice!
Infusing art in GT!
Finding our Identity!
I have a voice!
PARENT'S Corner
Want to know more about raising a gifted child? Check out these resources!
Perfectionism
In Rosemary Callard-Szulgit's book, Perfectionism and Gifted Children, she states that the number one social and emotional issue gifted children deal with is perfectionism, due to their high intelligence and talents, and that they can typically see more than one solution to a problem. She points out that gifted kids struggle with a finishing point, as they are fully aware more could be done. Many times, these students will avoid new experiences (or committing to one final solution), due to their fears of failure, and they are therefore concerned others will view them as inadequate.
GCISD Advanced Academics Website
What's Going on in GT LEAD? Stay connected with our GT Smore News!
Websites to explore and learn more about Gifted Students!
SAGE: Supporting & Advocating for Gifted Education (GCISD parent group)
https://www.facebook.com/gcsage
NAGC: National Association for Gifted Children
TAGT: Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented
Mensa
SENG: Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted
TED: Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world
Searching for the perfect book to meet your needs or interests?
● Prufrock Press: http://www.prufrock.com/
● Great Potential Press: http://www.giftedbooks.com/
● Free Spirit Publishing: http://www.freespirit.com/
Please see the GCISD Advanced Academics web page for a full list of links to resources for parents of gifted students!
Duke University TIP Program
The Duke University Talent Identification Program (Duke TIP) is a nonprofit organization that has served over 2.8 million academically talented students in grades four through twelve since 1980. Each year, Duke TIP enrolls nearly one hundred thousand new students in its talent searches. TIP's talent searches help these gifted students assess the extent of their abilities with above-level testing, recognize them for their achievements, and provide them with a variety of enrichment benefits. TIP also offers accelerated face-to-face and online educational programs to more than eight thousand students each year. In addition, TIP is constantly conducting research into the educational, emotional, and social factors impacting the lives of gifted children, then sharing this research and related advice with educators, parents, and the greater gifted community.
Duke Tip Link;
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