Happy Thanksgiving

I hope that all of you will enjoy this week with your families and spend some special time together.  I am very thankful for the opportunity I have to be your child's teacher.  I consider this job an important responsibility and privilege, and it is a truly rewarding and enjoyable part of my life.  I am grateful for the trust you have in me to teach your gifted child, and I am so thankful to be able to work with such thoughtful, kind, creative, talented scholars.  Happy Thanksgiving to you and your families!

Weekly wrap up 11/11-11/15

Although this week was a short week it was jam-packed with learning and fun.  Here are a few highlights:

-On Friday the scholars took the Trimester 1 final math exam.  I have just finished grading them and I am very proud of how well they all did!  I will be sending the test results home in their Friday Folders this week. This test is a good overall indication of what you can expect to see on your child's report card for math, so I know that you will all be very pleased.

-On Wednesday we had some special visitors.  Your child may have mentioned to you that some teachers came to visit our classroom.  These are teachers from our district who are looking for ways to teach their GATE-identified and highest level learners appropriately.  I was happy to have them come and see how we do things in room 8!

-On Friday we did an art project to match our turkey descriptive writing.  These will be hanging in the classroom so feel free to come in and take a peek.  Each month I save one writing & art project to use for a a special memory book that your child will have at the end of the year as a keepsake.  The turkey art will remind them of all the learning we did (and the fun that we had creating it) in November.

**Please note:  Next Friday is the last day before Thanksgiving break and there are a few different things going on that day.  We have a schoolwide spirit day, which is optional but fun.  Your scholar may dress in sports clothes to celebrate Sports Day.  These can be clothes from a favorite sports team (including hats) but please don't wear any special equipment such as soccer cleats.  This Friday we will also be taking our Reading Theme Skills Test for theme 3.  The best way to prepare your child is to make sure that they get enough sleep and eat a healthy breakfast.  Finally, believe it or not, this Friday marks the end of the first trimester.  It's hard to believe that a third of the school year has already passed!  Our year has been going very well and we will all have so much to celebrate next week during Thanksgiving break.

Weekly Wrap Up 11/4-11/8

This week the scholars really rose to the challenge of the patriotic symbols research report.  This is a chance for them to investigate a part of the social studies curriculum more in depth and create a detailed report to share what they learn.  I am grateful to my GATE colleague Mrs. Rodermund for creating this fantastic project.  They are working together in table groups to research a different patriotic symbol that was chosen by their team.  I modeled the research techniques using Mount Rushmore.  The different topics chosen by the scholars were the White House, the Bald Eagle, the Great Seal of the United States (that group was very disappointed to discover that it was not the sea animal kind of seal!), the Star Spangled Banner, the Statue of Liberty, and the American Flag.
Using books I gathered from the public library, our school library, my personal collection, and internet research that I printed out ahead of time, the scholars took notes to answer important questions about their topic.  They had to determine why their symbol was significant, who chose/selected/built it and how that process was carried out, how their symbol may have changed over time, and to describe their symbol in detail.  In addition, they gave their personal opinion about their symbol and drew a cover illustration for their report.  Here are just a small sample of those illustrations:

The scholars were truly excited about the project and dove into the research eagerly.  I know you will be very impressed when you see their final reports.  I have some fantastic pictures to display in the classroom of the scholars collaborating on their research and literally putting their heads together to find the answers to some tough research questions.  I felt extremely proud of them all!!

In addition to our social studies project, we wrapped up our unit 4 addition strategies and took our test on Friday.  I hope to send the results home next week.  This week in math we will be reviewing and taking our Trimester 1 final exam.  Overall our class is very strong in math and your child does not need to worry.  However, I do ask that they make sure to get enough sleep and eat a healthy breakfast before big tests like this one.  Here are a few examples of our work with missing addends.  Yes, 1st graders are using variables now (and not just in GATE), oh how times have changed since we were 6 years old!

Here is some of our work from language arts.  We have been using the GATE icons to "frame" a story in a larger context.  Since it's still early in the year we have been consistently using the icons for Language of the Discipline (specialized vocabulary important for that story or topic), Big Idea (the author's message, the theme, or a generalization about the story that can be supported with evidence), and Unanswered Questions (things we still want to know about the story or topic that cannot be answered by looking at the book).  Here is how the scholars applied the GATE frame to a story we read called Seasons:

In addition, we have been practicing Multiple Perspectives, one of my personal favorites.  It helps the scholars to understand that there is more than one way of looking at a topic and that different viewpoints can provide insight.  For this assignment I asked the scholars to independently choose a season and tell me what they liked about the season.  Then they took the opposite viewpoint and explained what they did not like about the season.  I also asked them to highlight their evidence words.

I hope you enjoy seeing their work as much as I do!

Free UCI GATE Webinar series

I know this is hard to view, please email me if you are interested and I can send you the information.  It's a series of 4 free webinars regarding gifted learners.  It's intended for both teachers and parents of GATE students.

Weekly Wrap Up 10/28-11/1

This was a very fun and exciting week in room 8.  I'll stick to the fun highlights for now.  The scholars had a fantastic time at the Halloween Parade, we created Eric Carle inspired leaf artwork, and we met with our big buddies to do a Thanksgiving craft.

In addition to our descriptive writing, we have been working on opinion writing and this week we incorporated a Halloween theme.  Here are some of the scholars' opinions about what my costume should be (and their reasons WHY):

These were so fun and definitely made me laugh!  I showed them to some of the other teachers and a fellow GATE teacher commented that the devil drawing was a perfect example of the content imperative "paradox."  We have some very talented little artists in room 8!

Here are a few of our other opinion writing thinking maps from this week:

Making the Eric Carle inspired leaves was a fun new project that the scholars and I enjoyed.  This week we had an "Eric Carle Reading Club" where the scholars could sit and read great books like "The Grouchy Lady Bug" and "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" while small groups met with me to create their painted paper.  Each scholar created two different pieces of painted paper with multiple layers of paint.  We also experimented with using different tools such as combs, sponges, sponge brushes, and different sized paint brushes to achieve different effects.  After our painted papers were finished, we traced leaf designs on them.  The scholars had total control over their creative design, so each leaf collage looks very different and they are all beautiful!  These will be hanging up in the classroom throughout the month of November, so here are a few sneak peeks before they eventually come home:

Please check your scholar's Friday Folder for the green conference note and their Unit 3 math test.  In addition, the PTA has announced that the "I <3 Ethan Allen" shirts have finally come in and should be distributed some time this week.  I know many of you have been wondering about this!  

Finally, I wanted to thank all of you who came to the Halloween Parade.  I know how difficult it can be to take off time from work, and your children were very excited to see so many of you there.  Baby Sebastian had a wonderful time meeting the scholars as well!