Last week's GATE class was a day full of troubleshooting, reflection, and celebrating hard work! The 6th graders should each have their video project, reflection, and self-assessment on their Book Creator Portfolio, so please take some time to check out their work, what they learned, and how they think they did.

This week, we tied up loose ends with videos and reflections and got started planning their last FIVE DAYS OF GATE! We had a long tough discussion regarding our senior pen pal project. The program coordinator at Arbor Village seemed to have too tough of a time collecting pen pal letters in a timely fashion and getting them back to us at Lowell. We actually have yet to receive a first letter from our pen pals, which is a huge bummer. The group discussed and voted, and decided that it was best to cancel our second trip to Arbor Village in order to spend more time researching, presenting, and planning for our Study of the City student-led field trip on the last day of GATE, December 12th. We still plan to send holiday cards to our pen pals, and we hope to hear back from them at least once!

Field trip, you say??? You heard right! The last few GATE classes will be spent researching and planning for the final day of GATE, which is an entirely student-led field trip around Downtown Boise. The students have each already selected a topic to research and present on, and some students have already reached out to community members and local business seeing if they could assist them in their research or even take part in a portion of our field trip. The students will be synthesizing their practices of wisdom to communicate, schedule, navigate, and plan a trip that explores and celebrates what makes Boise unique!

We will need 3-4 chaperones to join us on Monday December 12th. Chaperones may either meet us at Lowell to catch the bus downtown at 9:30am, or they may meet us on the steps of the Capitol at 10am. We will follow the students' itinerary around downtown until we are picked up at the Capitol again at 1:15pm in time to get back to Lowell. Email Ms Gabrielli if you would like to join. Preference will go to guardians who have not chaperoned a GATE trip yet and email me first.