Convocations

The Gifted and Talented students from Hudson County collaborate on an annual poetry and art community connection project.  Inspired by the poetry of Langston Hughes, The Dream Flag Project is an annual poetry, art and community-connection project for students in Kindergarten through twelfth grade.  The third and/or fourth grade Gifted and Talented students read and study the poetry of Langston Hughes, particularly his dream poems.  They learn about the life of Langston Hughes and create an expression of their dreams in a poem. Each student will create a dream flag consisting of a dream poem and an artistic representation.  They write their own dream poems on letter-size cloth and decorate them.  This dream flag can be dedicated to a person or group of people.  The “dream flags” are connected together on a clothesline to create lines of hope, peace and diversity.  Students are invited to showcase their dream flags at a countywide poetry festival.  Topics covered in this unit include the Martin Luther King Jr, Harlem Renaissance and the Jazz Age time periods.

The Hudson County Academic Bowl has been designed to address the mission of the Hudson County Gifted and Talented Consortium by creating a unique learning opportunity for gifted learners that maximizes their talents and abilities.  Students compete against teams from other districts in a series of contests designed to demonstrate their extensive and varied range of knowledge.  Preparing for the event:

• Develops students’ ability to solve complex problems

• Increases critical and high-level thinking skills

• Provides a forum for recognition of students based on their academic accomplishments

• Increases self-esteem, team building and school pride

• Fosters collaborations and consensus building

• Provides opportunities for student to exercise and increase their public speaking and interpersonal skills

The Battle of the Books is a reading incentive program designed to encourage students to read quality award winning literature.  The Hudson County Gifted & Talented Consortium offers a Battle of the Books competition for students in 5th  & 6th grades.  The students select 3 to 4 of 15 books to read and come together in groups to demonstrate their abilities and to test their knowledge of the content within the books.  Our teams consist of 4-6 students and teams must be established prior to the event.  There are a total of 15 books that the team must read. The books change annually at times they repeat books from previous years.  Each student is responsible for at least three books. Students are provided with a memory jogger to refresh their memory before a battle. The completed memory joggers are kept by the teacher to ensure all 15 books are covered for the team. The books should be purchased at the end of the school year so they arrive by September.  The event is held in Harrison each  June.