High Ability Update

Who: Currently identified HA students in grades 1st-4th

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!

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 next week. It will come with a cover letter explaining more in depth. Fourth grade is working on finishing up a couple makeups. 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.

Thank you to the PTO for putting on such a nice family game night on Thursday. It was so nice to see some HA students and families outside of the school day! I enjoyed meeting some parents I had never met before!

Rather than reread E-Mergency! by Tom Lichtenheld & Ezra Fields-Meyer, I showed the class this trailer for the book to refresh their memory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hve4DenyATU. Tom Lichtenheld was inspired to write the book after he stumbled upon Ezra Fields-Meyer's Alphabet House video on You Tube. Ezra was a child when he put the video on You Tube, and he and Tom Lichtenheld had never met. Here's a link to Ezra's video that inspired Tom's book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0LPfQLm4WA. The students enjoyed learning the background of the book. After that, we moved on to reworking the classic nursery rhyme Jack & Jill to exclude letters. First, we rewrote Jack & Jill as a group excluding the letter E. During our second class, students worked in pairs to exclude different letters. Here's how we rewrote the nursery rhyme to exclude the letter E: Jack and Jill ran up a hill to grab a pail of liquid. Jack was tumbling down and hurt his crown, and Jill was tumbling with him. No letter E to be found in our version. The students' wheels were turning as they worked hard to come up with words that have similar meaning and the same verb tense.

Before moving on to symmetry, I decided to pause and indulge the kids with some "regular numbers math" as they call it. We've been doing geometry all year, and the kids have been wanting to work with numbers. So, we worked on addition with regrouping. The students are at very different places on that skill. One or two had never been taught this before/never previously attempted it. A few students have mastered the skill and can do addition with regrouping with large numbers. For example: 3,768 + 2, 345. I encouraged all the students to write neatly and erase thoroughly. I explained that especially when we regroup and carry a number over to the next place, we need to be able to read our own work to avoid making unnecessary mistakes. We will be heading back to our study of geometry and learning about symmetry next week.

We are nearing the end of Edward's journey. Time flies when you're totally engrossed in a good book! Students updated their prediction trackers this week. They were given five questions to answer/update in fifteen minutes, so they had to manage their time accordingly. I asked them to answer using PQA (part of the question in the answer), write the best sentences they are capable of, and use their best handwriting. A couple of our students have a very difficult time writing sentences. I told them that they all speak well, so I am confident they can all write well. I asked them to imagine they were answering the sentences aloud and write their answers as they would say them. I hope to carve out time another day to allow those students more time to finish their prediction tracker questions. We also did some reading and journaling this week. Since Edward was recently transformed into a marionette puppet, I brought in a couple marionettes from home. The students loved handling the marionettes!

Our HA math curriculum provides games that we can use to review. I introduced the game BYNGO (blue, yellow, number, green, yellow) that is similar to bingo. The numbers involved in the game are small and manageable, but interpreting the problems is difficult. I encourage students to read difficult problems and word/story problems three times to interpret them. It helps to sit in the problem and interpret it before starting to compute numbers. More BYNGO next week.

As you may recall, each student previously selected five of nine project options to complete for Fairy Tale Tic Tac Toe. Each student will complete three projects, so I took their choices and put them in pairs/small groups. Since we have an odd number of students, each project will be completed by two or three students working together. It was quite a puzzle for me to put together, but I arrived at a plan and shared it with the students. After students learned which three projects they will be completing and who their partners are, students began working on their first project. I stressed the importance of supporting their partners. I've been checking in with students on their work and will continue to do so. I'm finding that students are quick and brief in their answers and writing. They are capable of better, more thorough work, so I will be encouraging them to expect more from themselves. They will continue working on their first project next week. Please ask your student what he/she is working on.

We use a place-value system that is base ten. Our system contains ten symbols (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9). Egyptians used a face-value system with seven symbols. We have begun exploring Egyptian math. As we continue to learn about their face-value system, we will compare it to our place-value system.

Please ask your HA student about his/her behavior in this class. We are together less than an hour a week, and we are losing valuable time in class to address behavior. We have a few students that consistently practice good citizenship, and those students are repeatedly distracted by their classmates and have to sit through my lectures. Thank you for your support.

The students are eager to begin reading The Westing Game, but I thought it wise to first introduce the author and address some vocabulary necessary to the mystery genre. Working in pairs, students read about Ellen Raskin and answered several questions. We discussed mystery vocabulary and worked on a crossword with our vocab words. The crossword puzzle is incredible challenging!

Students finished their post-assessments. We had a detailed discussion on what it means to check our work before turning it in. I look forward to grading their tests and sending them home with their pre-assessments in a "proud packet" next week. I'm confident their growth will be evident and be rewarding to the students!

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