November/ December

Exploration:
The bulk of our labor recently has been on our Ancient Civilization research projects which focus on a student selected cultural universal of one of our four ancient civilizations. As we follow the FINDS research process, students have learned about primary and secondary sources, how to identify and cite appropriate sources that are readable, reliable, and relevant. They have also become effective note takers by locating important ideas and details and rephrasing and organizing them in their digital notebooks. From their study, they will be creating an artifact model that they will be able to display along with a museum style placard. The placard will show off their research and highlight the archaeological find and what it reveals about the culture from which it came.

FINDS Research Checklist

Focus

_____ Civilization you will research ______________

_____ Topic (Cultural Universal ) you will research ________________


Investigate and choose resources

_____ Explore Symbaloo web site and choose web sites

_____ Explore books and choose books to use for research

_____ Site the sources that were used in taking notes


Notes

_____ Type notes in the digital notebook about your cultural universal from the resources chosen

_____ Describe at least 3 artifacts that are part of your cultural universal


Develop notes into project

_____ Write a research paragraph on your topic from your notes

_____ Create an artifact, model or visual about your topic


Score work

_____ Complete checklist

_____ Rubric

_____ Reflection


M^3 (Mentoring Mathematical Minds) Unraveling the Mystery of the Moli Stone:

In math, we have continued to practice translating our inner problem solving strategies into clear written explanations. In our latest game, Some Sum, students drew 4 numbers and considered strategies to place them in two addends and build the biggest sum to win. We got to consider place value, the commutative property, and look at how many different ways we could build the largest sum. We also completed our first math check-up assessment.

Critical and Creative Thinking:

Stemming from our research project, we looked at an exemplar project on Ancient Rome's Art. The example used research to describe the role of the mosaic in Roman culture. Students then got to create their own mosaic highlighting a scene or pattern from their daily life.

We have also been enjoying shaping our critical thinking skills with practice and discussion from our new brain stretcher packets.

October

Morphic Thinking: We have really gotten into the groove with our morning warm-ups. I am loving the creative answers to our Spontaneous Problems. I think our favorite so far is “Your feet have become triangles...what now?!?!” I am also impressed with the deep thinking and elaboration I am seeing with the boundary breaker prompts. It is certainly a nice time for the group to enjoy sharing and hearing the ideas of their peers.

Exploration: Our work thus far has lead us through the exploration of our own past, the exploration of South Carolina's past, and now to the exploration of the ancient past- all through the lens of archaeology. We kicked-off our study of ancient civilizations by looking at cultural universals in our game, Shipwrecked. Students had to decide on the most important things for survival in a new society, and saw how nine basic elements become evident in every culture. They saw the progress from meeting the basic need of food, water, and shelter, to creating laws, division of labor, and even recreation. We also read the book Westlandia, by Paul Fleischman, which is the story of a boy named Wesley and his summer project of creating his own civilization. We were able to observe the nine cultural universals in his society as well: geography, family, economics, communication, government, recreation, beliefs, education, and resources (food. clothing, shelter).

Springing from the cultural universals, students were able to act as time travelers stopping off at Ancient Egypt for a view of the pyramids, and then on to Ancient China to see the making of the terracotta warriors. Our next stop was Ancient Greece to walk through the columns of the Parthenon, and finally to Rome for a contest of gladiators in the Colosseum. Students rotated through our civilization stations to get a glimpse of each culture. They collected facts and stamped their passports as they selected the civilization that they would like to dig deeper into for their upcoming research project. As a class we looked at the where and when of each civilization and added their period in history to our timeline.

 

M^3 (Mentoring Mathematical Minds) Unraveling the Mystery of the Moli Stone: In math, students got their feet wet with their first problem solving prompt. They were asked to consider the change in a Maneki Neko bank and explore the different combinations they could use to total 47 cents, using only dimes and pennies. Ask your student about the rule they discovered. Next, students competed to build the largest two digit number in our game Card Capers. Students had a tens space and ones space to fill as well as a discard space. When a 0-9 card was turned, they placed the digits one at a time in the space of their choice. without being able to switch and not knowing what the next flip would reveal. We talked about strategies and the place value of digits affecting their magnitude. Students were tasked with finding out how many two digit numbers could be created, considering there was only one of each number and zero could not be used in the tens place without resulting in a single digit number. There was lots of great idea sharing and discussion! We are continuing to work on expressing our thinking and problem solving in writing that is clear and uses mathematical language.

Critical and Creative Thinking: This month students practiced reasoning strategies by using clues to complete matrix logic puzzles. They used the given information to make one and two step deductions in order to find or eliminate matches between the puzzle categories. These were a good test of growth mindset and a class favorite! Students have also gotten started on their "Where I'm From" poems. These pieces will share their personal family histories. Students are modeling their writing off the poem of the same name by George Ella Lyon.

Archaeological Adventure

We hit the road to Charleston to check out what history we could discover at Colonial Dorchester and Charlestowne Landing.

Colonial Dorchester gave us a peek into colonial life in South Carolina as far back as 1697! Students were able to tour and participate in the excavation still happening on the site today.

Charlestowne Landing is the preserved site of the first English settlement in South Carolina, founded in 1670! Students were able to tour the property and see how archaeologists have used their discoveries to recreate structures present in the original town.  They also had fun simulating how different people groups supported each other's societies with the trade game.

 

September

I have had a wonderful time getting to know everyone and seeing some familiar faces after a fun summer! We have kicked off the year firstly learning about why we are here and our rights as a gifted learners. Students spent time looking at what brain science tells us and that mistakes are an important part of the learning process. I hope they find our classroom a safe place to explore, take risks, and grow this school year!

Exploration: Speaking of exploring they enjoyed the escape game that we used to introduce Exploration as our year-long theme. They practiced collaboration in order to searched the classroom and discover clues leading us to the "Key to Success" this year in ALERT. Student groups (with help from our consultants) solved codes and puzzles highlighting some of the things they will experience in our classroom through the course of the year. They managed to beat the clock and uncover the hidden key: Curiosity! We have also spent time developing concept generalizations for exploration and looked at archaeologists as explorers of the past. Students used the skills of archaeologists to excavate and document their finds in our edible dig site!

Critical Thinking: We used videos from the Children's Guide to Critical Thinking to introduce the traits of critical thinkers. We also met the three types of thinkers, Selfish Sam, Naive Nancy, and Fair-minded Fran. Using these characters as a conversation starter, we began to look at the importance of being a critical thinker and ways to practice and improve our thinking skills.

Creative Thinking: Students have gotten familiar with our mascots of creativity, the Nerds! We use these particular mascots because no two are alike, they are colorful, fruity, and fun- just like creative thinking! Students explored their creative sides by discussing and demonstrating the four keys to creative thinking. We began by taking a simple figure, looking at it from various perspectives (flexible thinking), brainstorming what it could become (fluency of ideas), choosing the idea like no one else's (originality), and filling in the details of our picture (elaboration)! These creative pieces became the covers of our ALERT binders reminding us to "think outside the box"!

Habits of Mind: Art Costa's Habits of Mind represent 16 traits that successful people can use when faced with a problem. Throughout the year, we will be focusing on building these individual traits in students. As an introduction, students looked at the habits collectively and became familiar with them by playing our Habits of Mind bingo game.

Morphic Thinking: We kicked off our Morphic Thinking morning routine where students warm-up with a spontaneous problem and boundary breaker. We will be including these weekly. A spontaneous problem is a brainstorming problem to be solved in a specific amount of time and scored according to the number and creativity of responses generated. The point is to challenge students to be flexible thinkers, to elaborate on original ideas and to think fluently and creatively about a specific topic. A boundary breaker is a group experience that works toward creating a sense of community. Students gain an awareness of and respect for the opinion of others by the use of questions that go beyond superficial depth and have no right/wrong answers.

M^3 (Mentoring Mathematical Minds) Unraveling the Mystery of the Moli Stone: We have introduced our math curriculum by studying the mysterious Moli Stone artifact. In this unit, student will focus on numeration and gain knowledge of different number systems. Using this knowledge, they will help archaeologists uncover the meaning of the mysterious markings on the stone. We have also spent time preparing for our math time together by outlining both the rights and obligations as mathematicians as this curriculum focuses heavily on discussion, defense of one's thinking, and writing about concepts. Students finished showing their prior knowledge on the pre-assessment and we are ready to embark!