Snowflakes

For our last week of school before winter break, we spent time studying snowflakes. We read the book Snowflake Bentley and learned about the man and scientist who spent his life studying snowflakes. We also made our own pretend snowflakes out of borax and pipe cleaners. This allowed the students to practice measurement and observe different phases of matter.

Winter Party

Today was the winter celebration and the end of the semester. Our class made fruit and yogurt parfaits, and snacked on pumpkin bread and mimi muffins. Students made snowflake picture frames, and were given pictures I took earlier this week outside in the snow.
Thank you to all of the parents and guests who came and helped or sent in donations. I wish you a safe and happy holiday season, and I will see you in 2009!

Today was the winter celebration and the end of the semester. Our class made fruit and yogurt parfaits, and snacked on pumpkin bread and mimi muffins. Students made snowflake picture frames, and were given pictures I took earlier this week outside in the snow.

Thank you to all of the parents and guests who came and helped or sent in donations. I wish you a safe and happy holiday season, and I will see you in 2009!

GT is NOT...

I found this article online that outlines some of the myths about giftedness. I thought it was very interesting, and extremely relevant to the children I teach. I will link to the article, but I wanted to post some of the more important concepts. It was difficult for me to just pick a couple main points. They were all so good!

~"GT is NOT extra work to fill extra time. Rather, it IS an intellectual enhancer to fulfill potential. These kids don’t need “more of the same” or busy work. They don’t need you to keep them busy or quiet with more worksheets or extra credit. They want and NEED to learn! And that means providing them with opportunities for work and learning that are at THEIR readiness level – not at their age peers’ readiness level."

~"GT is NOT a test of what the kid does know. Rather, it IS an opportunity for the kid to go beyond – into what he DOESN’T know."

~"GT does NOT address only academic needs. Rather, it ALSO addresses social and emotional needs and validates gifts and talents. We do these kids a disservice if we provide them with an opportunity to accelerate their learning (skip a grade in Math, for example), if we haven’t previously and also provided them with opportunities to learn the social and emotional skills that will enable them to successfully tackle and conquer that challenge. Additionally, some of these kids can be crippled by perfectionism, procrastination, and high expectations. Pursuing and fulfilling their talents and potential will mean needing to learn how to overcome, or at least manage, those kinds of issues."


http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/unwrapping_the_gifted/2008/07/that_mythological_place_of_is.html

20th Castle Coin

Today was our second Castle Coin celebration. The students are doing a really good job of following the Mary Castle expectations. They voted to have a movie and popcorn celebration this afternoon. Keep up the good work everyone!

Cover a Flat

Students learned a new Menu Math game this week to help them practice their place value skills. The game, Cover a Flat, is played like Race for a Dollar, and consists of students using dice and trading their small pieces (cubes) into a rod (10 cubes), and ultimately into a flat (10 rods).

This unit will help students internalize the concepts needed to master double digit addition in January.

Gingerbread Glyph

This month we are learning and reading many of Jan Brett's books. One of the stories she wrote is called Gingerbread Baby. We made our own gingerbread people following a glyph, and I think they turned out really cute. Students also wrote about their glyph, and I was very happy to see that they used proper capitalization and punctuation. Even the second grade teacher Ms. Dorsel, commented on how impressed she was.

December Math: Place Value

Our new unit of study in math workshop this month is place value. We will be doing a lot of work in our math journals as students work to explain their ideas, and not as many worksheets. Today we talked about patterns on the 0-99 number chart. We will be filling the chart up over the next few day using clues from other numbers already in place. Today we used different strategies to place new numbers such as skip counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's. We reviewed how you can skip count by tens starting at any number. For example 2, 12, 22, 32, 42, etc. We also praticed telling what number is in the ones and tens place.

As always, we will continue to work every day with daily math review (minute math), timed tests for computation, mental math, and calendar. We will also be learning new menu math games this week to reinforce place value skills.