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6th Grade - Aug 26
6th Grade - Aug 26
Today, the 6th graders started their Introduction to Leadership Unit. They will be seeking to achieve the following Learning Intentions:
Explain why leadership skills matter to one’s success now and in the future.
Participate in team and class tasks/challenges that require leadership practices.
Reflect and provide evidence on which leadership practices were used in the tasks/challenges.
Provide feedback with evidence to peers on which leadership practices were used in the tasks/challenges.
Determine the importance of communication when collaborating and parallel its role with leadership.
Develop communication skills through various team and class tasks/challenges.
Synthesize a unique leadership profile which includes leadership practices that stand out as strengths and are already being engaged in, and identify practices that need to continue to be developed and incorporated.
They participated in 3-5 leadership/teamwork challenges (based on whether they left for math class) and reflected and discussed each on. The students also developed their current definition for a good leader and got a sneak peek of the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership that we will be studying through this unit. The study will end with the students creating a personal leadership strengths profile and putting their strengths into practice.
Please check out your student's Book Creator portfolio to see how they reflected on the leadership/teamwork challenges and how they currently define a good leader.
This is a word cloud created by the class as a pre-assessment to see what they think are the most important qualities of a good leader. The larger the word, the more students though that was an important quality.
5th Grade - Aug 27
5th Grade - Aug 27
Today the fifth graders started the day with a phenomenal Question of the Day discussion. The prompt was "How would you describe to a friend what it means to be gifted or be in GATE?" The Red Team did a fantastic job facilitating a discussion that wove together personal experiences, past lessons on brain science, and social issues. A wide variety of student contributed, and we had to cut the conversation off early due to time constraints, so definitely ask your 5th grader about their thoughts on the topic!
We also started on the first big project of the year! The 5th graders will be writing, directing, filming, and editing environmental PSAs that will be shared with the Lowell video announcement team and other schools that have venues to share them. Today, students reflected on their interests and started to brainstorm some video topics. Then they learned how to write a professional email and drafted emails to be sent to 16 professional environmental educators and scientists across the Treasure Valley asking for ideas of valuable PSA topics to share with K-6th graders. I will send those emails out on the students' behalf, and hopefully by next week, we will have a ton of great ideas for PSAs suggested by the pros!
Click through the photo carousel below or click the post to view directly on Instagram.
Click through the photo carousel below or click the post to view directly on Instagram.
4th Grade - Aug 28
4th Grade - Aug 28
This week, the 4th graders participated in a lot of academic discourse. We started the day with today's Question of the Day, "How would you describe to a friend what it means to be gifted or attend GATE?" Our Question of the Day format is to first journal for 3 minutes on your own, then share with your table team and synthesize your ideas on a vertical whiteboard, and then hold 10 minutes of academic discourse. The 4th graders did a fantastic job discussing this topic from a few different angle and we had to finish the conversation before they were even finished! So be sure to continue the conversation at home with your 4th grader.
Next, we started the first unit of the year that also aligns with our theme of the year, Ethics. The students' preassessment was to write a letter to a friendly alien named Zolorb and explain to him what it means for something to be "fair". You can find your student's response on their Book Creator portfolio at this link. When parents check their student's portfolio, it really helps with student accountability, so don't be shy about taking a peek at their work from the day!
The second activity in our ethics unit was to "strongly agree", "agree", "disagree", or "strongly disagree" with the following phrases and then defend their point.
There is always a right and wrong choice in ever situation.
If I beleive something is wrong, then it is wrong.
If you break a rule/law, you should always be punished.
Next week, the students will be gin looking at ethical dillemas and learning some of the vocabulary for this unit.
3rd Grade - Aug 29
3rd Grade - Aug 29
This week, the 3rd graders started their introductory unit for the year, thinking about the year's theme, Transformation. We started a day with the Question of the Day: How would you describe to a friend what it means to be gifted or attend GATE? This was a tricky question for a lot of our class, so we wil lbe following up in the coming weeks with some lessons that further dive into this topic. Today, the students settled on the idea that everyone has gifts and talents and "gifted kids" tend to have multiple big gifts and talents. Being "gifted" doesn't mean that you are better or smarter than everyone else but that your brain works differently than most other kids your age. GATE class is a good place to get extra challenge in areas like deep thinking and extra practice in areas like teamwork and practicing failure.
We then got started on a Transformation introductory unit. The students started by playing "It looks like a ____, but it's actually a ____" where they had to imagine new purposes for common household items. For example, "it looks like a spoon, but it's actually a magifying glass!" Then the students were given the creative challenge to create a skit where they fall into a giant pit and msut escape using only a random assortment of household supplies and their imaginations. The students bravely performed their skits and practiced giving positive feedback after the performances. We tried to add a reflection to their Book Creator portfolio, but we had a few technology delays, so we will wait to share portfolio work with families until next week.
Click through the photo carousel below or click the post to view directly on Instagram.
Click through the photo carousel below or click the post to view directly on Instagram.
2nd Grade - Aug 30
2nd Grade - Aug 30
Today was a day of firsts! We started out with our first Question of the Day of the year. This is a daily ritual where the students are presented with an open-ended question concerning a topic that relates to life as a GATE kid. The students spend the first 3 minutes journaling and thinking about the question individually. Then they spend 5 minutes sharing with their table group and synthesizing the information onto a large vertical white board. They spend a minute checking out their classmates' boards and then engage in 10 minutes of academic discourse. Once table team starts and facilitates the discussion using our academic discourse guidelines.
Today's Question of the Day was, "How would you describe to a friend what it means to be gifted or attend GATE?" We will be continuing discussions in this vein of though for the next few weeks, but today's big take away was that being in GATE doesn't mean you have all the answers; it means that your brain thinks differently than most kids your age.
Another first was that we got to start the first day of our Fibonacci Unit! Since the theme of the 2nd grade year is Wonder, we will be spending the first quarter diving into these mysterious numbers and fractals in general. The students accessed their prior knowledge about patterns and then discovered the pattern of the Fibonaccci sequence. They were then challenged to use their addition strategies to continue the sequence as high as possible in about 20 minutes. Every student was engaged and excited to extrapolate their addition knowledge into 3 and 4 digit numbers!
We finished the day by getting onto Book Creator to create this year's digital portfolios. However, some of the students' struggled a bit more than I thought they would to remember the process, so that gives us a good place to pick things up next week! Next week, hopefully the smoke will have cleared out and we can also get into the school garden for a Fibonacci scavenger hunt.
GATE Parent Survey 2024/25
GATE Parent Survey 2024/25
Please fill out the following survey, which includes an opt-out media release.
Please fill out the following survey, which includes an opt-out media release.
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.
A Special Note
A Special Note
Some of the district's other pull out GATE programs serve higher-need communities and aren't able to secure many funds for their programs due to the nature of voluntary donation systems. These teachers regularly pay for project supplies out of their own pockets. If you feel led to donate, please consider blessing these deserving students and teachers by giving to their programs. A few Lowell families donated to these programs last year, and they made a huge difference! Lowell family donations were actually the ONLY donations Garfield received last year. Thank you so much!
The programs most in need are [GARFIELD/GATE/TUCKER,KATIE], [PIERCEPARK/GATE/ALEXANDER,LEONA], and [MOUNTAINVIEW/GATE/WELLER,LYNNETTE]
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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