High Ability Update

The Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) measures students' learned reasoning abilities in three areas most closely related to success in school: verbal, quantitative and nonverbal. If you have a student(s) in kindergarten, second or fourth grade, their results came home Monday. NWEA is the other pathway to being identified as high ability or having the potential to being high ability. Looking at your child's NWEA reports will allow you to see how their data is trending. They took the NWEA test in the fall and winter and will take it one more time this school year. I've included Duneland's High Ability link below if you want to know more about what High Ability looks like at the elementary level and beyond.

While there are two pathways into High Ability (CogAT and/or NWEA), there's a tendency to worry when your child may not do as well on CogAT as expected. CogAT is an aptitude test which shows the potential. Below are sample questions from each of the three sections of CogAT, to help you better understand what students are being asked. These questions are not taught exclusively at school, nor are they something you need to supplement at home. It's simply not a test you study for. These reasoning abilities start developing at birth and continue through early adulthood. Since it is a developmental skill, the student's age percentile is used for comparison to students of the same age.

NWEA is the achievement test which all students take three times a year. There's a great opportunity to support your child's learning based on their NWEA scores. In addition to supporting what's going on in the classroom, you can encourage students to go on Edmentum (AKA Exact Path). Many students are familiar with it already! It's a program they access through Clever. Edmentum gives your child what they need to work on which is directly linked to their most recent NWEA scores. NWEA is a great measure for high ability identification because it will give students above grade level questions as they correctly answer. For our achievement measure we use the grade level percentile. If you have questions about Edmentum, your child's teacher will be able to help.

Who: Currently identified HA students in grades 1st-4th for the 22-23 school year

What: 15 days of Time Travel to Ancient Egypt in Summer School

Why: It's such a fun learning environment where many return each year!

Details on when and where coming soon!

*There's a reading and writing focus, yet all math students welcome!

**We are flexible with camps and vacations should you not be able to attend all 15 days.

The random reverse cipher the students worked to decode this week may have been the most challenging cipher of the year. The sentence was written backwards with random spaces between letters versus words being properly divided. The students certainly strained their brains to figure out the meaning of the sentence. I hope the students gained an appreciation for proper spacing between words.

Wumbers by Amy Krouse Rosenthal is illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld (the author of our last book E-mergency!). The book was writ10 by Amy and has gr8 illustr8tions by Tom. If you can read the previous sen10ce, you are 1derful with wumbers. Wumbers aren't in10se, but they cer10ly make us stop and think b4 we speak. The students were el8ed when they were able to read wumbers.

Our introduction to symmetry was brief, because we missed class Thursday due to the author's visit. While this group recently grasped the concept of congruency rather easily, I have a feeling that symmetry will be more challenging. We started our symmetry study by folding paper, and we will use mirrors and other manipulatives after break. Students always enjoy using mirrors in math, so I'm sure you'll hear about it when the time comes.

Edward's journey ended in the best way possible! He and Abilene were reunited after being apart for approximately twenty years! It was a long journey with ups and downs, but our main character experienced tremendous personal growth. After we finished the book, the students wrote in their journals and updated their prediction trackers. While some students predicted Edward and Abilene would be reunited, nobody had predicted Abilene would be an adult and mother at the time they found one another. After being broken, Edward was taken to a doll shop. While he was there, Edward was repaired by a talented doll craftsman & sat on a shelf for sale for many years. Abilene and her daughter walked into the shop, and Abilene's daughter chose Edward as her own! My quick summary of the ending does not do the book justice, it was a beautiful ending. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel study with this class!

We continued to play the review game BYNGO (blue, yellow, number, green, and orange). Reviewing a few algebraic concepts at once is incredibly challenging, so we played the game very slowly. Many of the word problems required the students to slowly read them three times. There were many problems we worked through as a group. Besides being great review, the BYNGO game challenges students to switch gears from one problem to another. I am happy to say the students embraced the challenge and persevered!

Since we are on our first fairy tale tic tac toe project, students are very much on a learning curve. They are realizing I have high expectations and that they are totally capable of meeting and exceeding the expectations. I am continuously checking in with each group to give them the nudges and guidance they need to do great things. Although they are being challenged by the caliber of work, they are enjoying the project. The students are learning that although some of the projects involve students doing different tasks, the concept needs to be collaborative. For example, if someone is illustrating, they are still helping develop the written portion. In order for each group to produce the best work possible, they need to have a meeting of the minds. Next week, students will begin their second project.

Students worked in pairs to answer "think deeply" questions. The questions they answered required them to have an understanding of Egyptian math symbols and the differences between the Egyptian face-value math system & our place-value math system. As you know, writing explanations in math is something we work on repeatedly in HA math. Being some of our students are new to HA math this year and the entire group of students has a wide range of writing skills, it is beneficial for them to have some peer time answering these difficult, multi-step questions. I'm happy to say they were a hardworking, well-behaved group this week!

We started our time together by finishing the hardest mystery crossword ever! After that, students were thrilled to finally start our novel study. The Westing Game is a complex story with a large cast of characters. I gave the students some sheets/graphic organizers to track the characters and clues. We did a little reading, but it won't be until after spring break that we put on our detective hats and submerse ourselves in the game. Serious sleuthing is in our future!

It’s so rewarding to see a group of students feeling good about themselves! I passed back the students graded post-assessments. They all did a wonderful job applying the algebra they learned in HA this year. After discussing the post-assessments, students took home their proud packets. Please keep your eyes out for a bright yellow proud packet and ask your student to tell you all about it!

Email: kapeterson@duneland.k12.in.us
Location: Jackson Elementary School, North 400 East, Valparaiso, IN, USA
Phone: 219-983-3680