Gabbing With the Gifted-Thursday, 2/6/2014

We were running late and these were done really quickly. 

Group 1-"Thunder Kats"
CBL Challenge- To work to improve morning snacks. 

Group 2 -"Gummy Bears"
CBL Challenge- To prevent and eliminate bullying on Oneco's campus.

Group 3-"Gifted Wolfpack"
CBL Challenge- To promote students spending more time appreciating nature. 

Gabbing With the Gifted-Tuesday 2/4/14

Third graders discussing their Challenge Based Learning (CBL) Project.

Their Challenge Aha Connection Board is what the group uses hold their Guiding Questions and answers. This board is helping us track of what we have learned and still need to learn before proposing possible solution.

  

Each class period the students are ask to write in their reflection journals.  Today I gave them the following prompt:

Eighteen teachers took your survey and we learned a lot. Please explain two or three things you learned from the survey and how that information will help lead us to a solution.

The Return of Gabbing With The Gifted

A couple of years back we use to have a Podcast Series entitled "Gabbing with The Gifted" where my students and I would briefly record a conversation at the end of most class periods. I felt it was a great way review and a wonderful way to let the community know what we did during class. Today I decide to pull the idea out and amp it up just a bit using PhotoBooth. The new and improved "Gabbing With the Gifted" will be quick one take videos with little to no editing. 

Monday, 2/3/14
Kindergarten and First Graders

Here are the two anchor charts used to guide students in deciding if a character is a hero or not. I have found that if I start with the character traits frayer and then move to the attributes T-chart students have an easier time using the text to justify their decisions.

January 2014 Newsletter

Dear Parents,

We are all busy exploring topics here on Oneco’s Campus that we feel we can make a difference with meeting the needs of our students. We are exploring these topics through Challenge Based Learning. With Challenge Based Learning, students are required to work collaboratively to solve a real world problem. The students work on variety of academic skills and many higher level thinking skills. The framework to this curriculum consist of the following:

-Big Idea: a broad concept that can be narrowed down by asking a questions and exploring its different aspects.

-Essential Question(s): Comes out of the Big Idea and helps identify what is important and helps narrow down the topic and define a manageable idea.

-The Challenge: Comes out of the essential question(s) in students are asked to create a solution that can result in a measurable action or actions.

-Guiding Questions: These questions are generated by the students and are based on what they need to know to solve the problem.

-Guiding Activities: Activities to help students solve their answer the guiding questions and gather.

-Solution-Should be student generated, require student , thoughtful, clear, concrete and publishable in one form or another.

Throughout this process students use many academic skills and will be documenting and responding to their process in their reflection journals and in their Interactive CBL Notebook.

Also, we will continue to have weekly “Mind Joggers”, which are brief (5-10 minutes) weekly creative and critical thinking activities to begin class with. An example might be: Tell how many ways you can communicate a hundred. These activities have proven to help us all expand our thinking.

It is a true honor to work with all your children and thank you once again for sharing them with me.  As always, if you have questions or concern please contact me at 751-7018 Ext. 2049 or snyderf@manateeschools.net. 

Thank you, 

Frances M. Snyder

Educator of the Gifted

Comparing and Contrasting CBL and the Scientific Method

Oneco's Science Fair is tonight and the school is abuzz with excitement. In honor of this event, I thought I would ask my fourth and fifth grade gifted students to compare and contrast Challenge Based Learning Process and the Scientific Method. We started out with a T-Chart, but went on to writing in our reflection journals. Below are just a few of those responses. 

October 2013 Newsletter

Parents-

We had a good time this quarter exploring literature to discover the attributes of a  hero. Students read several different types of literature from comic books to biographies for this exploration. Students were asked fine=d evidence from their reading to prove that these hero attributes exist. We have had some wonderful discussions about what character/hero attributes we find admirable. 

Our primary groups are exploring different community heroes and how each of them meet  the attributes we have discussed (integrity, helpfulness, smart, brave, selfless). These students will then find different ways to say thank you to those heroes for their contributions to our community. 

Our intermediate classes are venturing out with their first Challenge Based Learning (CBL) Project. We are busy exploring issues here on Oneco’s Campus that we feel we can be heroes to overcoming. According to the Challenge Based Learning: Classroom Guide, “CBL is a collaborative learning experience in which teachers and students work together to learn about compelling issues, purpose solutions to real problems and take action.” We have used the CBL Framework in the past, but this year I am enhancing this process by working to make the students more responsible for their own journey through each of these projects or challenges. Students will be documenting and responding to their process in their reflection journals and in their Interactive CBL Notebook.

Also, we are up and running with Rock Our World. We have been learning from our global collaboration team and have had several video conferences with California, Michigan and beyond. At the same time creating music using the Apple Software GarageBand and completing a few art projects as. 

 The following is a supply list. For those of you who have not I would like to ask again that you send them in. The three things in bold are the things we are in the most need of at the current time. 

Supply List

-2 Composition books

-1inch three ring binder

-2 ream of white copy paper

-4 sharpened pencils

-glue stick

-8 AA batteries (Energizer, Duracell and Marks Brands preferred)

 As a reminder, I have an open door policy and if you have any questions and/or concerns please contact through email snyderf@manateeschools.net. Thank you for the continued support!

What a START!!

We hit the ground running this year and we are off to a great start. We began exploring our year long endeavor of learning to be heroes/heroines. As we begin, we felt that is important that we all have a clear definition of what qualities it takes to make a hero/heroine. Our first step will be to identify noteworthy attributes that we find similar in our heroes/heroines. We began our exploration we pulled out a variety of different genres of literature with strong heroes/heroines.  Students will then identify and record text evidence for the different character traits of each hero/heroine using a Frayer Model. After, we have had time to read several different heroes/heroines we will go back through our Frayer Models use the evidence recorded to create a T- Chart that will compare and contrast these traits. From that list we will then make a master list of heroes'/heroines' attributes and start brainstorming on ways we can live the attributes out. At that point, we will begin to explore ideas for our first Challenge Based Learning (CBL) Project.  CBL always adds such electricity to our laboratory and we are looking forward to starting that process!

Finally, this past weekend I got the great news that we will again be participating in the global collaboration project  Rock Our World. This fall's round is entitled "Deck the Halls" and is focused on brightening up our community through art. Oneco's Gifted Laboratory is totally looking forward to meeting and working with our friends from around the globe.