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😲 ONLY 2 MORE 1st GRADE GATE CLASSES THIS YEAR! 😲
Our last day is May 12th.
1st Grade- April 28
1st Grade- April 28
This week the 1st graders learned about STEM connections to the medical field! They were introduced to the concept of morphemes and started to learn the meanings of some common medical morphemes. They were introduced to the following prefixes, suffixes, and roots:
therm: heat
bio: life
ology: the study of
ist: one who
pedi: child
itis: inflammation/swelling of
(Some students went above and beyond and also practiced neuro, derm, respir, osteo, cardio, and gastro)
The main project of the day was creating life-sized posters about human body systems. Students were assigned groups where they learned about the muscular, skeletal, digestive, respiratory, nervous, and circulatory systems, drew a poster, and share the purpose and a few fun facts about their system with their classmates.
5th Grade - April 29
5th Grade - April 29
I created a mini ecology unit to fill the rest of the year since students indicated on a survey that they would like to study something that had them spend a lot of time outdoors. I pulled from my masters work at the McCall Outdoor Science School and the Idaho middle school science standards to put together work exploring the questions "What is natural?" and "What is the relationship between humans and nature?" This should cap off our year's theme of Relationships nicely. Students should come ready to spend a lot of time outside again next Tuesday!
😲 ONLY 2 MORE 5th GRADE GATE CLASSES THIS YEAR! 😲
Our last day is May 13th.
4th Grade - April 30
4th Grade - April 30
This week the last wo 4th graders presented their hero's journey week and we jumped right into a mini unit on artificial intelligence and ethics! This week we focused mostly on what is AI and how does it work in simple terms. We are mostly working off a curriculum adapted by a BSD colleague. Her full slideshow can be found here. For this mimi unit students will not have access to interact with AI, though we will test it our collectively using the projector. We will however be discussing ethics of things like AI art and grading, bias data sets, exploring data collection, and understanding a bit of the impacts of AI on society.
Students should have taken away from this week's lesson that AI requires large data sets to find patterns. Those patterns are used to make decisions. For quality AI decisions, you need large quality data sets.
😲 ONLY 2 MORE 4th GRADE GATE CLASSES THIS YEAR! 😲
Our last day is May 14th.
3rd Grade - May 1
3rd Grade - May 1
I'm sure you've already heard all about this week's eye ball dissection! If you'd like to explore what almost all of the students experienced, you can check out this youtube dissection tutorial. They did a phenomenal job, and this class had the most participants that I've ever had for a dissection! I love the boldness of this crew!
Next week we will wrap up our vision and light unit and prepare to say goodbye until next year!
😲 ONLY 2 MORE 3rd GRADE GATE CLASSES THIS YEAR! 😲
Our last day is May 15th.
😲 ONLY 1 MORE 2nd GRADE GATE CLASS THIS YEAR! 😲
Our last day is May 9th.
2nd Grade - May 2
2nd Grade - May 2
Today was a giant work day for the 2nd graders as they designed and build Mars stations while considering a vast list of limitations and differences from life on Earth. Next week is the last week of GATe for 2nd grade! We will spend the day building the traditional blanket fort, reflecting on the year, sharing affirmations, and completing a few ful engineering and math challenges.
Donation Link & Amazon Wishlist
Donation Link & Amazon Wishlist
If you would like to help fund our tech needs, supplies for students, brain puzzles, etc, please click on the link below to donate to my Boise Foundation Account. You can also check out our Amazon Wishlist.
Secure quick link to the class Foundation Account donation page
Parent Lending Library
Parent Lending Library
The Boise School District has a Parent Lending Library to help educate, inform, and support parents as they raise gifted children. If you are looking for my information related to parenting gifted children, please reach out to Helga Frankenstein, GATE Supervisor, (helga.frankenstein@boiseschools.org) for more information.
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