September

Hello all!

We are now a little over a month into our gifted program .

Third- and fourth-grade students of the gifted have been learning and employing best practice classroom procedures and getting used to routines.  They have grown more comfortable working with each other.  Consequently, students have collaborated successfully to move marbles from the blue "Boohoo" jar to the red jar and are on their way to earning their first good behavior celebration.   Please continue to support your children in making good and healthy choices in the classroom during gifted block.

ELA -

Third- and fourth-grade students have been placed in small groups and assigned ELA jobs.  We have started our ELA Around the World journey with our first stop being Sweden.  Students have been introduced to Astrid Lindgren - a world-renowned writer from Sweden who is best known for authoring children's literature.  Third-grade students are reading Lindgren's children's novel - Pippi Longstocking (originally published in 1945) and completing related learning activities.  Fourth-grade students are reading Lindgren's fantasy book - Ronia, The Robber's Daughter (originally published in 1981) and completing related learning activities.  Both literature pieces showcase strong, boisterous, and interesting female protagonists who are of similar ages to our gifted students.  We will spend the remainder of this month reading and studying these international pieces of literature.

Math -

Third- and fourth-grade gifted students are being exposed to math warm-up activities including Make the Date, Create the Expression/Equation, and Red, White, or Blue.  These math exercises empower students to apply what they already know to new learning and use logic and deductive reasoning to problem solve.  These activities  function to prime students for more complex math learning that happens later in the block.  After third- and fourth-grade students were pre-assessed for math knowledge, they started working in our Beast Academy math curriculum.  

Third-grade students will soon be placed in small math groups to facilitate collaborative learning.  Third-grade students have begun learning about shapes starting with angles - right, acute, obtuse and triangles - equilateral, isosceles, scalene and completing related learning activities.   Students have learned how to navigate through angle labyrinths by determining  which path gets them from Point A to Point B as defined by a route of specific angles (i.e. acute).

Fourth-grade students have been placed in small math groups to facilitate collaborative learning.  Fourth-grade students have been introduced to math strategies that help them multiply big numbers with zeros in them such as 22 x 20 =  and 500 x 200 = ?.  They have learned mental math strategies to help them compute quickly and easily what half of 74 is or determine what number is produced when 47 is doubled.  Students have learned about the Commutative and Associative Properties of multiplication to provide helpful strategies to multiply numbers such as 6 x 4 x 5 x 2 = ?.

 Critical Thinking and Creativity - 

Students have been exposed to fun and engaging learning activities that access and empower higher-level thinking skills including analyzing, synthesizing, creating, and problem solving.  Working independently and/or in small groups, students have produced and sometimes presented to classmates their demonstrations of creativity applying fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration as showcased in related work products.  Ask your kiddos to talk about their Dot Art and Invent Your Own Contraption (third-grade) work products, and their  Line Art, The Cereal Challenge, and Chore Improvement (fourth-grade) work products.