This Week in GT

Week of October 16-20

10/19/2017

“We can’t improve what we don’t assess.” - Michael Hyatt

The Eanes ISD GT program takes these words to heart! Every nine weeks the GT cuties all over Eanes spend some time reflecting on their performance in class. What a rare and extremely valuable opportunity! The students are asked to complete this form using integrity, effort, and detailed thought.

The students take this activity very seriously, and they appreciate the value of reflecting on their growth and progress in GT. They are incredibly honest and forthright in their ratings and comments about themselves. It is always enlightening to discuss the report with the child. I highly recommend doing so!

These Self Reports, along with the Teacher Report, will be given to you at our Parent Conference. If we are not conferencing you will get these reports inside of a folder that will be sent home after conferences.

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Week of October 10-13

10/12/2017

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The GT Cuties enjoyed working on their projects this week! Each grade level made significant progress and embraced the new learning opportunities with enthusiasm. Your children are voracious learners who never shy away from taking on new challenges :-). Here is a glimpse at the accomplishments of the week:

1st grade: Building Project. Students used Keva Maple Kits to create specific structures in a given amount of time. Their challenge of this week was to make a house with a fenced yard. The time given was 10 minutes. Each student worked every second of those ten minutes, and they were able to work as one large group to accomplish the goal. Making adjustments and problem solving along the way, the cuties communicate so positively with one another it is truly heartwarming. After the building the students spend time reflecting on the experience in their journals.

2nd grade: Board Game Creation. This week's focus was on sketching the board and writing the rules for the original game the cuties are creating. Each student is making their own game, so all of the decisions and creative conundrums fall onto their shoulders! But, they use one another to test ideas and get feedback about the details of their games. Much progress was made this week, and the students are adding more depth and complexity to their games each day!

3rd grade: KNEX Amusement Park Building Challenge. This group works together like a well oiled machine! They meticulously gathered the right parts from the amazing and enormous kit last week, and this week has been all about building! The structures they are working on are complicated, and this build demands critical thinking, patience, resilience, and cooperation. I am so proud of the way are devouring this challenge!

4th grade: Kicking Machines. There are three different Kicking Machines being designed in this class. Each one is completely different in design and approach to the problem. The cuties are working together to make the plans they drew last week a reality. They learned quickly that things work very differently in the real world than they do on paper! But, they face these bumps in the road with positive enthusiasm and a willingness to pursue until the problem is solved. This group is really enjoying the design, test, and improve cycle that the project demands.

5th grade: Decades Project. This week the students were put into pairs and given the challenge of creating a multi-media presentation about a decade in American history. The cuties will be going into much more depth as they research various aspects of American life during their decade. The project they are making is destined to rock your world! We will be inviting parents to these presentations in a few weeks - get ready to be amazed!!!

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Week of October 2-6

10/5/2017

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We spent the first six weeks of school practicing the eight Thinking Skills of GT. The purpose of that unit was to increase student awareness and comfort with each skill. Since we use the skills in our projects and daily activities, the time we spent building a solid foundation based on them makes the year's learning more meaningful.

This week the GT Cuties launched into their first projects of the year! The first graders are exploring BUILDING for their first project. Each day of GT class they receive a building challenge with a time limit. Then, they build! At the end of class they take a picture of what they built and write about it in their Builder's Journal.

Second graders are designing their own unique board games. To begin the project the students carefully examined several of the games we have here in the GT classroom. Then, they recorded commonalities amongst the games in their My Board Game journals. Next, students sketched the board and started writing the rules for their game.

The 3rd grade GT cuties are working together to build The Scrambler - a design from the KNEX Amusement Park building kit. The kit they are using has many pieces and it will take everyone's cooperation, focus, and strongest thinking in order for The Scrambler to be built!

Building a machine that can kick a ping pong ball is the challenge the 4th graders took on this week. Their Kicking Machines must be built out of recyclables. They have to kick a ball into a cup that it two feet away. They also have to kick into cups that are at an angle. The students are enjoying the challenge of designing, building, testing and improving these machines.

5th grade GT cuties are studying American life throughout the decades. They began the project working independently to research a specific decade. Students are finding out facts about fashion, economics, music, sports, politics, and more. The decades range from the 1920's to the 1990's.

Parent Conferences October 25, 26, and 27
Please email me if you would like to arrange a conference. Let me know when you are meeting with your child's homeroom teacher and we can set up our conference for right before, or right after, it.

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Week of September 25-29

9/28/2017

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The GT Cuties had two main goals for this week:
1. Complete the Student Interest Survey
2. Complete the Reflection about the cooperative games we played last week

The purpose of the Student Interest Survey is to ascertain what the students' interests are, what types of projects they want to do, and how they prefer to work on those projects. In order to find out these important things I created a Google Form and emailed it to the GT Cuties grades 2-5. The form requires them to answer the following questions:

What are three things you do not already know about that make you curious?
What projects have you seen that you would like to try in GT?
Which do you prefer: working by myself on projects, working with one other person, working with several people on projects?

The students completed the survey with much sincerity, and they gave some excellent suggestions for possible topics of study & projects. Next week we will begin the first projects of the year.

By spending time thinking about what we learned we can solidify the core objectives in a much deeper way. The GT Cuties are familiar with "Reflections," because we complete them with regularity after projects. This week's Reflection has five main components that the students will complete:

Tell About What Happened: The students will fill in this space with sentences describing the game(s) we played together.
The Thinking Skills of GT: In this section students wo;; select three of the GT Thinking Skills they used the most in the games. They will also explain how they used each one.
Compliments: This is the place where the student gives a compliment to a person who helped the team in some way.
Suggestions: In this part of the reflection the students tell about a way they would change the game to make it more challenging.
Camera Roll: The students drew four color and detailed pictures of things that really happened during the game. Then, they write captions describing the pictures they drew.

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This Week in GT

Every Friday Ms. O updates this page. Check here to find out more details about the learning we did in GT class this week!

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