I was out on a 6th grade GATE make-up field trip on Monday, but GATE Facilitator extraordinaire, Leona Alexander, was the guest teacher for the day. The career of the day was sociology. The students started by checking out a video about what society is since sociology is the study of society. They then learned about the elements of culture and created a circle map about their personal identity with the frame of reference, "I can appreciate people from all cultures." The students loved this work, and Mrs. Alexander said that they had fantastic discussions celebrating what makes them unique and how they can connect to others.

After recess, we had a very special guest, Dr Rebecca Som Castellano from BSU. Dr. Som Castellano taught the 1st graders about her career as a sociologist who studies people's relationship with food. The favorite part of the day was trying all of the different culturally-significant foods that she brought in!

For the last couple weeks, the students had been begging me to return to their coding and civil engineering work, so after choice time and lunch, they finished the day revisiting their work on CodeMonkey.com or continuing progressing through the Lego bridge engineering challenge levels.