A huge thanks to those of you who have taken valuable time to share your thoughts and ideas about the things you like about our gifted and talented program at Werner and for sharing your areas for continued growth. I truly believe it is through this open communication that we will continue to refine all the elements of our program to allow for optimum growth for all students. If you have not taken a few minutes of your precious time, please fill out the survey before February 1st. Thanks! Please cut and paste the following URL to link to the live survey:
https://docs.google.com/a/psdschools.org/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDN2N25IeDJKWUJKNEhZWU1aenRKU3c6MQ
0 Comments
Mrs. Ufer's GT language arts students have established their class blog showcasing their classmates' writing. The kids would love to see and read your comments on their work. You can subscribe for email updates when the kids add new content, as well. (Please note there is a seperate email sign up for each blog page so choose which ones you are most interested in or sign up for them all!) Take a moment to go and check out the creativity at:
Welcome to the world of math notebooking! I have been working with all of my classes this year on creating their own math resource hidden inside a composition book. My initial goal was to give my math students a place to organize their new math vocabulary, create graphic representations of their thinking, practice problem solving, and process their mathematical thinking in words. I have been working to help them realize that math is a creative process, and these math notebooks have helped them realize that. Learning to use our math notebooks has been a work in progress all year. Learning to help them use their math notebooks has been a work in progress for me! A great resource I found over Christmas break, (from the wonderful Mrs. Runde I mentioned in my last post!) was the idea of making our math notebooks more interactive. Both the third and fourth grade classes have been creating graphic foldables to organize their geometry learning. These interactive foldables combine a little bit of artistic drawing with descriptions and real-world examples. You can see samples from both classes above. Now I am sure that there is a piece of learning that happens by simply creating the entry in their notebooks. But what thrills me the most is when they pull out their math notebooks (WITHOUT prompting!) and use their graphics or glossary or previous practice to help them answer a question or solve a problem.
My fifth grade language arts enrichment group has spent a lot of time lately working on poetry. We have been both reading and writing poetry. They spent a lot of time before Christmas break creating their own unique poetry anthologies to give to their families as a holiday gift. Upon returning from Christmas break, I had them write a poem about themselves that used some of their math skills. Over break, I saw this idea on another teacher's blog, Mrs. Runde (just to give credit where it is due!) Each kid was given 100 percentage points to spend on themselves in terms of their own characteristics (both physical and internal.) We then worked on illustrating them by embedding excel spreadsheets and pie charts. You can see a couple of examples of their work here. It was a fun combination of technology, creativity, self-reflection, and poetry. They shared their work with each other today. I had fun teasing them, "Would your mom agree that you are 5% responsible, or would we have to break it down into tenths of percents?" But I'll admit, there was a lot of honesty too (like the 3% messy!) Unfortunately, actual outcomes and expected outcomes don't always play out as we might hope as evident today to those of us who are Denver Bronco fans! My fifth grade math group has spent the last week of class experimenting to see just how to determine probability in mathematical terms but then also how experimenting to determine how reality plays out. Yesterday, we set up a carnival in class and students played games of chance in order to win tickets to turn in for a prize. Of the six "booths" set up, the probability of winning for each game ranged from about 10 - 60%. They had to play each game at least once and then they could return to any booth they wanted for the remainder of our play time - with the goal of course, to WIN! For these smart cookies, it didn't take long for them to realize that booth 1 and 3 held the most likelihood of winning. By letting them "play" with established expected outcomes and tracking actual outcomes, we have learned math and had some fun upon our return to work after Christmas break. And now maybe with their new-found knowledge, they'll be able to determine the probability of who is going to win tomorrow's play-off games better than I was able to predict today!
It has been a month since I have had a chance to post anything in our GT blog. Between the holidays and packing up my old classroom and unpacking in my new room, life just got a little crazy. We are two days back into the swing of things now, and I am trying to get settled in our new space. It is fabulous to have a little more room for the kids to spread out. There are a few projects left to make it complete (installing the SmartBoard and blinds,) but it is wonderful to have my own classroom for the kids to come and enjoy with me. Stop by when you have a minute and say hello and see it for yourself!
|
Tracey BeanWerner Elementary Archives
May 2018
Sign-up for updates: |
Knowledge Peak | Blog |