We have had some fun decorating and making our classroom showcase who we are. Fifth graders created math pendants that tell facts about themselves in number form. We watched a Sesame Street music video (I know they are a little old for that, but who doesn't love Sesame Street?!) and thought about who are we are as students, athletes, and human beings. The "I am" window is a work in progress as I have not seen all of my groups yet this year and want to have them add to it. Fifth grade math began our first unit of curriculum this week. We have begun with a number sense unit covering various topics that will feed into our entire year of math. This week we refreshed our memories about prime & composite numbers and factors & multiples. We also began to explore greatest common factors and least common multiples, and chatted about why this is useful (fraction work especially.) Yesterday they learned how to find the prime factors of a number. One of the important ways I like students to record their learning in my class is to keep a math notebook. We create visual displays to help organize new concepts. The notebook becomes their own math reference throughout their time in my class, and they get to take it home at the end of 5th grade as a great memory of everything they learned in GT math. Below are some examples of work the 5th graders did in their notebooks this week: Fourth grade math students have begun exploring geometry vocabulary and naming rules. I forgot to take pictures, but yesterday we had fun outside with sidewalk chalk reviewing all that we have learned so far about lines, line segments, rays, and angles. The conventions of naming each of these is probably the biggest challenge (remembering to use two letters for all lines/line segments/rays and three for angles and not forgetting to label them appropriately. We'll continue this work next week by exploring quadrilaterals and all the quirks that come with that study (squares are always rectangles but all rectangles are not squares; a square is a rhombus but all rhombi are not squares.) One last note for next week, PSD is looking at adopting new math currriculum for the next school year. I am on that adoption committee, and we have meetings all day next Wednesday and Thursday, September 16 & 17, so I will be out of the building. Have a great weekend!
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Welcome (or welcome back to returning families) to the 2015-2016 version of Three for Thursday - providing you with updates on Mrs. Bean's gifted and talented classes. Fourth and fifth grade are off to a great start. Third grade will be beginning their studies with me later in September after we complete the identification process. Please make sure to add Tuesday, September 22nd, to your calendars. I would love to see you at GT Back-to-School night in the media center at 6:30. If your child is newly identified, I will be sharing information about that process and how the ALP (Advanced Learning Plan) process works. If you are returning, I'll be sharing specifics about how my classroom works (homework, expectations, and learning outcomes.) Please come! Fourth and fifth grade math students have both been hard at work for over a week already. Both classes have been doing very similar work thanks to Dr. Jo Boaler from Stanford University. Dr. Boaler created the "Week of Inspiration" for grades 3-8 to begin the year with lessons that teach them about how their brains work and learn math, and her lessons encourage problem solving and pattern-finding in math class. What I love about her message, that has always been a key message in my class, is that making mistakes is a GOOD thing! A lot of GT kids are perfectionists, and many of them don't even like to try something if success is not guaranteed. Another message these first two weeks has been that we value different ways of looking at a problem - both different solutions and different solution methods. Mathematically, we have looked at patterns in the 100's charts, patterns in visual representations of numbers, patterns in Pascal's triangle, patterns using Fibonacci's sequence, and more. Fourth graders have persevered to solve these challenging tasks and worked on their partner and group problem solving skills. Fifth graders have had a chance to learn some very high level math. Examples include learning what a factorial operation is (ask them about problem solving using 4-4's) and learning to apply algebra to solving quadratic function (ask them about the "cases" problem.) Below is a quick video of Dr. Boaler sharing some of the brain science behind mistake making (this is the adult version - the students saw much more kid-friendly version.) As for fourth and fifth language arts students, we have kicked off the year with some great reading already. Fifth graders are working on their first novel for literature circles. Everyone is reading a book by Carl Hiassen. All of Hiassen's books are set in Florida and share the same "kids saving the environment" theme. Whether the characters are saving alligators, owls, or fish, my students have a chance to learn about how kids can make a difference in the world in a year where much of their science learning will be about ecology, with a culminating trip to Eco Week. They also learn how to lead and be part of a group discussion about quality literature through our lit circles. Fourth graders have taken on the challenge of reading a short story by O. Henry called "The Ransom of Red Chief." Vocabulary and language make this story a great challenge for gifted students. We will to look at the use of irony through this and other O. Henry stories. We are also looking at how perspectives affect a story. We'll continue to look at how authors use perspective to tell a story from a certain character, how our perspective shapes our understanding of a story, and how they can use perspective to make their own writing better and more interesting. I am looking forward to a great year of learning and growing with your students this year. Hope to see you on the 22nd!
I was lucky enough this summer to be selected as a grant recipient to attend Honeywell's Educator Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, just last week. It was an AMAZING experience where I got to learn a lot and meet teachers from all over the world. If you are interested in finding out all the details and see videos and pictures of my experiences, head over to my teaching blog and read all about it:
http://traceyteacher.weebly.com/blog/official-day-one-of-educators-space-camp-2015 Seven "brave" 5th grade girls joined me for the last 6 weeks of school on Fridays at lunch/recess to learn to play the guitar. They wanted a chance to perform for their 5th grade celebration and so they performed "Brave" by Sara Bareilles. And they did an AMAZING job! Great way to end the 2014-2025 school year!
http://www.teachertube.com/video/5th-grade-graduation-brave-387462 Here are a few last minute things to close up the 2014-2015 school year: Our first place winner at Werner Elemenatary for our Math Olympiad competition was 5th grader, Evan Lanham. Evan answered 20/25 problem solving challenges correct during the course of the year. He received his trophy last week. Many other students also received awards for scoring in the top 50% of the students in the nation who competed. Congrats to everyone who participated this year! I took a bunch of pictures from Eco Week last week. 5th grade families wanting to check out those memories can access the pictures a couple of ways. First, you can go to the photo page on this website to view them. Or you can access my Shutterfly classroom site using the link below: http://traceybean.weebly.com/photos.html https://wernerelementary.shutterfly.com/pictures/11 HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!!
Either this week or next, you will be receiving a giant manila envelope with your child's ALP (Advanced Learning Plan) final progress report. Included will be rubrics completed by either your child's homeroom teacher or myself. You will also find self-reflections from your student about their own growth this year. In addition, there are copies of the mid-year progress reports that you should have received in January. Each child is required by the state of Colorado to have an affective goal (a social/emotional area for growth) and so you will find the checklists and reflections related to that too. Finally, please make sure to look at the white pages on the front which is the actual ALP that was written in October and emailed to you. Look at the bottom of each goal sheet (one goal sheet for each area of identification - math, reading, and/or creativity) because you will find a detailed write up about your child's final goal progress. (I have attached a quick picture of the box you should pay close attention to so you don't miss the most important information.) Final projects and units are coming to a close in my groups. Here are a few quick updates: 5th grade math - We finished our unit on ratios and rates with a test last week. They also completed the Stock Market Game and turned in their reflections on their learning from that experience. 5th Grade language arts - This group is finishing our final lit circle this week based on Tuck Everlasting. They have also been adapting children's books to be plays that we will perform for the kindergartners the last week of school. 4th Grade math - Fourth grade finished up a weight, capacity, and volume unit last week and took our last test of the year. Next week, we'll be learning finacial literacy through my own version of the Game of Life (jobs, rent, groceries and more!) 3rd Grade math - This group has just finished a unit on measurement including volume, capacity, and measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode) and coordinate grids. We'll finish up next week with a few fun lessons on probability. 3rd Grade language arts/creativity - The final literature circle of the year will be on Tuesday when we finish up Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms. We also have creativity monsters to finish up. A HUGE thank you to the students and parents who helped make teacher appreciation week at Werner so amazing!! I love working with your students, and I so appreciate you entrusting me to teach your children. The letters and gifts this week were beyond generous and definitely reminded me that my time and energy are valued. Thank you, thank you, thank you!! First off this week, I want to thank the 5th grade math students who joined me (and the parents who allowed them to joins me) at the Mighty Math Minds Tournament. The kids did a great job representing Werner. They worked hard, behaved well, and performed amazing. I was most impressed at the teamwork the kids exhibited. Those students who were a part of the fun were: Haleigh G, Ashton S, Joseph F, Sofia L, and Cameron C Megan J, Brennan S, Baden T, Rachel C, and Evan L Charlotte G, Andy P, Peter G, Holly D, and Jackson G I took a bunch of photos of all of the deep thinking that went on last night. Click on the photos page to see more. http://traceybean.weebly.com/photos.html While 3rd grade and 4th grade math students were PARCC testing a majority of the week, 5th grade math students were working hard on our last unit of the year focused on ratios, rates and proportions. We have been having fun with activities called "Three Acts." These are a series of three videos that require the students to look for math and make connections as we watch three different videos that together tell the whole story. We have solved problems related to ratios of ingredients in recipes, rates of jumps for world record jump roping, and scaling ratios for paint mixing. Today we explored the idea of using unit rate (rate per 1 item) to solve a challenge. Students were asked to assess a carnival poster advertising ticket sales to find the mistake (if you analyze the prices you realize that there is no consistent ticket price and that strangely buying the largest amount of tickets costs the most per ticket.) After we explored the given poster, the students were asked to remake the poster in a way that would encourage people to buy more tickets. Below are a couple examples of students' work, as well as the original poster. This week I had a chance to check in with all of the GT students on Monday on their progress towards their affective goals. Students reflected on their individual goals and shared how they felt their year went. They answered questions about where they felt growth and where they felt they needed continued work. You'll be getting copies of these reflections, as well as the updated ALP (Advance Learning Plan) with teacher comments in the coming weeks. Academic goal reflections will be included too. Goal areas were: 3rd Grade - Peer Relationships 4th Grade - Study Skills & Organization 5th Grade - Healthy Risk Taking Wednesday, May 6, is the 2nd annual Mighty Math Minds Tournament for Poudre School district elementary students. There are 15-5th graders joining me to create three teams that will compete. We will be meeting at 3:45 in the Werner parking lot to carpool over to the tournament. We should return to Werner at about 7:00pm. A pizza dinner will be provided. I cannot wait to report in next week's blog about what amazing problem solvers our Werner Wildcats are (cause I know they will represent us well!) If there was a theme this week, it was guest speaker. The first guest speaker we had was my author friend Tim Northburg. Mr. Northburg visited the 5th grade language arts students to talk about the process he has gone through to self publish his book Zebulon Quest: The Sword of Fire (available on Amazon now.) He also shared with the kids strategies and suggestions for editing and revising their writing to complete a quality product. I asked him to talk about this because elementary students have a tendency to jump right into writing without having a clear plan and then not wanting to re-read or re-work their product (it was perfect the first time, wasn't it?!) Mr. Northburg sharing how many rewrites he has been through with his book was an eye-opener for the students. Third grade language arts/creativity students had a chance to hear a guest speaker today too. Mrs. Unfug's father, Dr. John Hendrix, came to share with her reading group and mine. All of the kids had read The Green Book, which was a story about a group of people who leave Earth to try and colonize another planet. Part of their challenge in the book was to learn to grow seeds into edible crops on the new planet. Dr. Hendrix worked at CSU before his retirement from plant sciences. In the 70's, Dr. Hendrix worked on plant growing experiments that went into space. He shared with the kids the challenges of using growing techniques from our planet in a zero-gravity environment. The kids got to glimpse just how challenging it would be to try and bring the book we read to life and think about just some of the problems we have to solve if we truly want to head to Mars and beyond. It was a bit of a crazy week in my world this week with two days of substitutes so I could attend district trainings. I am thinking I should have had a substitute blogger this week to share what went on in my classroom! I'll do a quick update for math and language arts kids and let you get on with your weekend planning... Oh and by the way, the answers to last week's rebus puzzles was: Camera - c + can = American Ant + Ark + Sick - S + A = Antarctica Third grade math just completed our unit on long multiplication and division work. We are in the middle of another unit on measurement that covers the concept of volume and other measures of capacity and weight. We have one more unit on probability and that will get us through the end of the year. Fourth grade math just finished up a unit on fractions, decimals, and percents and the conversions necessary to switch between those three ways to represent numbers. The class did GREAT on our last test and you should see your child's copy in their Friday Folder (unless they decided to fix their mistakes.) This week we began a very short unit on symmetry and isometric geometry (think rotations, reflections, and translations of shapes.) We'll also throw in the concepts related to negative numbers (since that is the reflection of the number line.) Fifth grade math students are continuing to check on their stocks and make trades. We have about 2 more weeks of money making! We are finishing a unit cowering number concepts like negative number operations, order of operations, graphing inequalities, and basic algebra. The test for that will be on Tuesday. We'll wrap up the year with rate/ratio work and some probability fun. Language arts/creativity students are hard at work just like the math kids in my class. Here is a quick update on what we are up to... Third grade language arts/creativity kids are reading "Horton's Miraculous Mechanisms" for our literature circles and creating magazine monsters with descriptive paragraphs during our creativity time. There are some crazy creatures that were begun this week. Can't wait to see how they look when we wrap up this project next week. Fifth grade language arts students are reading "Tuck Everlasting" and having great discussions on whether living forever is a good thing or not. We have also begun the process of writing/adapting children's picture books into plays that we will perform the last week of school for kindergarteners. This week, the 5th grade language arts group presented their learning from our nonfiction reading and research unit. After interruptions in our work time due to PARCC and the musical, we finally had a chance to have our learning sharing time. Students were allowed to pic a research project of their choice, find a minimum of three resources, conduct interviews, and choose a presentation method (video, poster, speech, etc.) Topics ranged from space exploration to studying the chemistry of baking. Other students researched the life of famous people like Amelia Earhart. Two students research careers they are interested in like special education teacher or game board designer. The photo below shows our class playing the game that our future game designer created. It was a great chance to see some of the passions that these students have for learning when they are allowed to explore their own choices. Now that my language arts time is combined with students identified in creativity, I try to designate time in the week for exploration and learning related to both areas. For my third grade students, that means we spend our time on Thursdays learning about what it means to be creative and experimenting with our creative brains. Today we talked about part of being creative is being able to look at something common or usual but seeing it in a new way. To challenge our brains to think differently, we had fun with some rebus puzzles. Below are two examples that the students solved today. See if you can determine the phrase/word that is being portrayed through these puzzles (answers in next week's blog!) Fifth grade math students need to remember that Mighty Math Minds Tournament forms are due by Wednesday of next week. We'll be competing at Bethke Elementary on Wednesday, May 6. I would love to have your child join us for the fun (and the pizza!) |
Tracey BeanWerner Elementary Archives
May 2018
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