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 these grades, their results will be coming home the week before Spring Break. It will come with a cover letter explaining more in depth. 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.

We continued exploring connections in language with another type of cipher. We worked as a group to decode a pie cipher message. This cipher was extremely challenging for most of the students. I introduced lipograms to the students by reading E-MERGENCY! by Tom Lichtenheld & Ezra Fields-Meyer. By excluding just one letter from the alphabet, our understanding of our language is greatly compromised. Students had a lot of fun with lipograms. They had never thought about how powerful just one letter can be. Lipograms reinforce connections between letters, words, spelling, pronunciation, and meaning.

The picture below shows the proud faces of students that did amazing work on their recent geometry check-up! After looking over the graded assessments, we moved on to congruency. I explained that congruent shapes are the same size and shape. They caught on to the concept of congruency rather quickly, so we will be moving on to symmetry.

Students realize that much of Edward's journey is sad, but that he is becoming a better rabbit. He began his journey being beautiful on the outside, but not so pretty on the inside. He has become shabby on the outside, but he has learned to love. Students agree this is the most grown up book they've ever read. While most prefer it to Despereaux, a few students are still undecided. We've updated Edward's timeline and kept track of the stops on his journey. The students and I are journaling back and forth, and it seems they're getting into the swing of it.

I continually encourage this group to focus, follow directions, and ask questions, so I started our time together with a pep talk. I find HA students often freeze up when they are confused, so I like to repeatedly discuss things they can/should do so they aren't paralyzed in class when challenged. I was happy that a few students asked questions today! They're usually such a quiet group. We are building on the algebraic thinking skills we have been learning. Your students took some papers home from HA this week, you might like to ask your student to explain the math they did.

This week was spent introducing fairy tale Tic Tac Toe to the students. Picture a Tic Tac Toe game board, there are nine boxes. There are nine project options in fairy tale tic tac toe. Each student will complete three projects, possibly three in a row. They will work in partners or groups of three to complete the projects. Ideally, each project is with a different partner, but it may or may not work out that way. Fairy Tale Tic Tac Toe will take us several weeks. It may take us to the end of HA this year.

These kids love PEMDAS! While they haven't mastered exponents or fractions, they are getting some great practice/exposure! About half the students told me they do schoolwork periodically throughout the summer. I told them that this unfinished PEMDAS packet is a great thing to hang on to and work on during summer break. When the time comes to take this home, I'll encourage them to keep it and finish it. Such great practice!

We completed the Miss Moneybags reading and logic puzzles. The nephew did it! He stole his aunt's will and consequently lost 15 million dollars! Greed does not pay.

You may recall the students took a pre-assessment at the beginning of the year. Every single student failed it, but that is to be expected since they had never been taught the material. We reviewed to prepare for the post-assessment, and the students began working on it. They are excited to show how much they've learned about algebra in HA this year! Students will eventually bring home both assessments stapled together in a proud packet.

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