November 10, 2017 Updates

There are lots of things going on in our GT classroom this month!  Before I give you the grade level summaries, here are a couple of announcements:

  • Don’t forget the GT Parent Orientation scheduled for Friday, November 17th, from 7:30-8:30 am in the GT Portable (see flyer below)
  • It’s gift-giving season.  Looking for some ideas for your children?  Every Friday in November and December, I blog about great books and games for kids.  Here is a link to my recommendations from past years, as well as a link to the what I have posted so far this year.
  • Speaking of blog posts, I highly encourage all parents to watch the video I posted last week regarding the challenges gifted students need.  I will be sending this out to our teachers as well.

1st Grade GT has been talking about convergent thinking (looking for clues to find a right answer) and divergent thinking (creativity).  They learned a few convergent thinking games: Chocolate Fix, Set, and Sudoku.  They also used divergent thinking to design their own Macy’s Parade balloons.

In 2nd Grade GT, the students have continued to learn about adaptations, and imagined what our classroom would need to look like if we got a wild animal as a class pet.  They are also working on some problem-solving with an activity called, “Find the X-Tile,” and continuing with “Splat.”

3rd Grade GT students are continuing their studies of the brain.  They have also begun brainstorming topics for their group Genius Hour project.  It looks like we may be studying volcanoes!

The 4th Grade GT class made some awesome onomatopoeia sound effects using Scratch coding and Makey Makey this week as they discussed more types of figurative language.  Check out their Seesaw portfolios where they shared their performances!

In 5th Grade GT the students are preparing for the Curiosity Club Convention, which is scheduled for December 11th.  They are also reading The Giver, and discussing how it relates to current events.  During problem-solving stations, they played Rover Control, worked on Logic Links, and tried out Noodlers.

5th Grade Works on Character Floor Plans

This post is brought to you by Aubrie.  I also included some pictures from last week’s Rackspace field trip.

Today in G.T. we talked a lot about character, and what traits you have. We all did an activity where we wrote down five traits we have, and then we made a floor plan, with the traits as rooms.

We got to do Genius Hour, and the evil challenges as well. Kris and Connor did their Genius Hour presentation about airplanes, and several people will present in the next few weeks.

We also did Maker’s Studio, and Mrs. Eichholz gained another cool gadget, called the “Makey Makey”. The Makey Makey can make anything into a computer arrow, piano, or bongo. We experimented with Playdoh, bananas, and even people. *(There is a video of the tutorial attached below)*

Come back next week!

MaKey MaKey – An Invention Kit for Everyone – YouTube

3rd Grade Gets Feedback for Their Projects

The third graders read some more of Billibonk and the Big Itch today, which gave us the idea that the students might need to see the cafeteria problems they have been working on – noise and messiness – from a different perspective.  We decided that they needed to spend some time in there observing lunch from the adult point of view.  With clipboards in hand, they took notes during the 5th grade lunch period and discussed how some of their observations resembled or differed from what they had thought from the student perspective.

We were also very fortunate to receive some video responses to the students’ questions from last week.  A principal in Michigan sent us some answers that gave us some insight about how his school’s cafeteria works.  The students were really gratified to find out that his school uses circle tables in the cafeteria, which was one of the suggestions they found during their research to cut down on noise.  He also gave the students ideas for incentives that might encourage our own students to work on their cafeteria behavior. They took a lot of notes, and realized we need to do a little math next week so we can compare the number of students that sit in our cafeteria at one time to how many are in his during a lunch period.

Next week, we will be Skyping with a principal in Minnesota to learn more about his school’s cafeteria. The students are finding it very helpful to get a variety of perspectives!

Near the end of the day, the students worked with Cubelets using Legos donated by a 4th grader and the new brick adapters donated by the Castleberries.  They also explored the new MaKey Makey purchased for our class by a 4th grade parent.

4th Grade Presents Their First Genius Hour Projects

This post has been brought to you by Athasi.

Today in GT we had our first two Genius Hour presentations. The first one was a game show about photography, and the second one was a play about Mars. Also, we tested a new version of Hopscotch, a programming app. We were given challenges like “draw a circle” and “create a dance routine”. We also went more in depth with Multiple Intelligences. Finally, we started centers.We could choose from a lot of different things including the brand new Makey Makey graciously donated by Mr. Hoffstadt.