I am so excited about the year ahead. I can't wait to meet you and begin to work with everyone to make the 19-20 school year the best year yet. You’ll want to bookmark this website! It holds nearly all the information you will need this year in order to have a successful year with your child. Through this website, you can:
keep up to date on the exciting happenings in our class .
access the team's assignment calendar.
access links to most on-line programs the children will be using for class so that you can help them at home if needed.
keep up to date on information regarding the gifted child through my gifted resources link.
I’ll be sending home a few forms through email regarding your child’s goals for school this year as well as the best communication options for you. You can look for that by the end of the week if you have not seen them already. After this week, I will do the majority of my correspondence via Seesaw, so please be sure your account is up and running! If you have any troubles, please let me know.
This week we will be getting to know one another. Obviously they know each other, but I’m excited to get to know them and for them to get to know me. We have a lot of fun activities planned.
We will also get right into our curricular work! In Language Arts, we will begin with a mini research project. We’re going to be talking about what defines us as people. We will look to our strengths as well as the challenges that have helped shape the people we are today. Each of the students will be given a person who also has had challenges they needed to overcome. We will be learning about those challenges and how they faced them, and then we’ll apply those lessons to our lives and take what we learn and see what it reveals about ourselves as we apply that to writing some poetry.
In Humanities, we are beginning a race around the world that focuses on geographic skills. While participating in the race, they will also be learning how geography affects our lives in general. They will use what they learn through the geography skills to create a travel website. Then through a problem-based-learning activity, they will plan and present the optimum place for the construction of an amusement park! The catch though is that the park cannot be in the United States! Students will work in pairs and will present their findings to a panel of judges. This is an extensive beginning-of-the-year project that will take a good 6 weeks or so to finish. As they begin their theme park development, it will be fun to discuss their ideas with them! Who will be able to build the best park?
Alongside the race, the students will read Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne. They will track the journey of Fineas Fogg, a Victorian Englishman, as he takes on a bet that he can indeed travel around the world in 80 days. Much of this reading will be done independently with small group and whole group discussions. We will be looking at their journey through a metaphorical eye! This will be a challenge for them for sure. As the story is set in Victorian England, the vocabulary is a challenge at first.
In a few weeks will also be starting our weekly Social Emotional Learning class with Mrs. Johnsen. This is sure to be a fun, learning time when we find out a little more about what it means to be a gifted child today and how to cope with some of the challenges that not only gifted children face but challenges that every child faces.
“Praise the effort (as well as the strategies, focus, perseverance and information-seeking) in relation to the outcome – with particular emphasis on learning and progress,” Carol Dweck.