The Gifted Guide
December 2019
White Elephant Book Exhanges-next week!
Third Grade finishes castle research!
I have stressed the importance of this project being their own thinking and design, using ONLY recycled materials and only getting adult help if it involves the use of a hot glue gun or something else a bit dangerous for a child (like using a box cutter for the cardboard). Please provide a space for them to explore and be creative! They may paint the castle if they wish. Just bring in whatever they have been able to make thus far tomorrow, with them being able to carry it themselves, and we will finish up in GT class tomorrow and prepare for presentations next week.
If your child is in Mrs. Mitchell or Ms. Garcia's homeroom, we will present from 9-9:40 next Wednesday, Dec 18. If your child is in French immersion or in Mrs. Wright/Mrs. Polanco's homeroom, we will present from 1:15-2:00 next Wednesday, Dec 18. Please let me know if you have any questions and please be willing to adopt a child whose parents cannot attend and invite them to present to you. Thank you!
Fourth Grade
Students were successful in researching, designing, and engineering earthquake proof structures in collaborative groups. This proved to be more challenging than they thought, since they had to stop sliding, shearing, falling, or crumbling of their structures and work collaboratively and cooperatively, which requires compromise and we all know that some of our rather competitive ones struggle with this! All in all, it was a success and they learned a lot from the exercise.
If you would like to donate items for our engineering projects, we need masking tape, large paper clips, large toothpicks, small Dixie cups, craft sticks, straws, and pipe cleaners.
We read both fiction and non-fiction articles and stories about natural disasters and doing come comparisons between different storms. Students wrote essays on whether animals could be depended upon to predict the weather as well. We also read about storytelling in the time of slavery and learned about modern slavery, which was surprising!
We did several simulations around the American Revolution and learned what it was like to be a colonist stilled ruled by the British government.
Fifth Grade GT
Students were successful in an engineering unit in science in which they collaboratively researched Cartesian divers and designed and built their own models that could retrieve objects off the "ocean floor". This was challenging and required lots of trial and error in order to achieve the goal.
Fifth graders have been reading about the Industrial Revolution, leaders of that time period, and then researching and participating in simulations surrounding the sinking of the Lusitania and WWI. We have had a lot of fun learning about this time period!
Passion and Compassion
I've had several questions about reading and technology lately and thought I would share some information about this. I've included some helpful websites you may want to check out if your child is asking for technology during the gift-giving season...Research does show that reading traditional print books is better for comprehension in young students, so I suggest only using and e-book when absolutely necessary or when traveling and you need to limit what you are taking. Most of you know how I feel about technology...limit it! I cannot tell you how much it is appreciated.
Here are some sites for you:
http://neatoday.org/2017/11/07/print-vs-digital-reading/
https://hechingerreport.org/evidence-increases-for-reading-on-paper-instead-of-screens/