High Five-March
Supporting High Ability Students Through Our Five Goals
Pattern Review
This month we will do a quick review of patterns with student work examples. Next month we will focus on two new symbols.
*Please check out the end of the newsletter for PD opportunities*
Patterns are things we expect to repeat within a topic. A pattern can break without necessarily creating a problem. It makes things interesting.
Example Questions for ELA: What patterns were evident in the "Three Little Pigs?" How were the patterns broken? Which characters did the patterns affect the most?
Our goal for this newsletter is to learn how the thinking prompts can support student thinking and problem solving and for you to feel confident enough to try a question in your lesson.
Revisiting Patterns
We love to look for patterns in math! I stumbled across this suggested activity from Steve Wyborney in time for Leap Day and goodness did it meet the needs of my students. They were engaged, happy and talking about PATTERNS! The good news is that you can use this activity ANY time–Leap Day or not!
The idea behind the activity was to watch 29 one-minute video clips, with each clip revealing a different pattern. Students recorded the number that was to come next in each pattern on a recording sheet. The videos were self-correcting allowing all students to be involved. As we progressed through the 29 videos, we had to study the pattern on the recording sheet to make a prediction as to what the 29th final number would be.
This activity was challenging for third graders, but we worked through it as a team and in small chunks. Fourth grade on up should have no problem taking on this challenge independently–and best yet, it is already prepared and ready to launch in your classroom today!
How to Add Rigor with a Word Bank
Lisa Van Gemert, Gifted Guru, is a national speaker and advocate for high ability learners. Her website Gifted Guru has an area to sign up for newsletters with resources to differentiate for and challenge HA learners. She is also a co-author of the Gifted Guild's Guide to Depth and Complexity, the book for our book study last year and what we have been basing our newsletters on this year.
Her most recent newsletter talks about how word banks can not only be used for students learning English to scaffold instruction, but we can use word banks to challenge our gifted learners including our gifted EL learners!
Check out the example and picture below for kindergarten:
This color by shape activity asks the students to color the shapes according to the code at the bottom. It has lines beneath the images on which the students can write the name of the shape.
But how many kindergarteners can recognize or spell "trapezoid"?
Enter the word bank.
Look to the left side.
They can use the process of elimination to guess at the pentagon and trapezoid and octagon.
Other uses include:
- In an ELA lesson literary devices, give a word bank of lesser-known devices (I'm looking at you metonymy) in an identification activity.
- Consider giving blanks in the instructions and having a word bank to fill them in.
- Give them a piece of text with some words bolded. Give them a word bank of synonyms for those bolded words. They can then choose which synonym matches each bolded word.
Celebrate Pi Day
Here is a great activity for our high ability learners (and really all learners) to celebrate Pi Day on 3/14. Learn how to write in Pi-Lish from ByrdseedTV. You can sign up for his monthly newsletter on this site for puzzlements and curiosities to help foster creativity with your students. You can also try the origami simulator from his site by clicking on the picture!
There are no HA Office Hours for March
Spring High Ability Professional Development Opportunities
Kristie Speirs Neumeister, Ph.D. and Ginny Burney, Ph.D. from Ball State University are offering two workshops in May to focus on high ability education. Please see below and click the link for the details. Let Kim Jovic know if you would like to attend and if you would like virtual or in-person.
Virtual and In-Person Workshops: Attached please find two flyers-one for our workshop on how to infuse higher order thinking skills and problem solving into core content areas and one for our workshop on understanding and meeting the social and emotional needs of high ability learners. These workshops are available for either in-person or asynchronous, virtual participation.
High Ability Identification Committee
This meeting will last from 3:30-5pm, but you do not have to attend for the full time. I started earlier this year, so you can come at a time that works for you and your building schedule.
Wednesday, Apr 24, 2024, 03:30 PM
PTEC210
Screening Update-Kindergarten NWEA
During the month of March, the kindergarten academies are testing students who scored an 80th-95th percentile on at least one battery of the ability measure (CogAT) with the NWEA. The NWEA is our achievement measure for the high ability screening that is an adaptive measure so that we can truly see how students achieve. They take the test in Reading and Math. Once testing is complete, the last piece of the screening is teachers completing the SIGS teacher rating scale for students who score on the bubble of qualifying. Our identification meeting will be in April. Refer to the information above if you would like to participate and learn about the identification process.