trantwoodgiftednews

Dear Parents,
Welcome to another school year! It is the end of the second week and the classes are bubbling with excitement about what they are doing already. I wanted to give you a brief glimpse into what is happening within the cluster classrooms this year.
September is the month when we begin the year with the teachers getting a chance to get to know your child. It is filled with pre-assessments (a first look at what your child can do on a topic) in order to better support your child in the classroom. These assessments range from reading fluency to scientific process skills. Please know that the pre-assessments are not for grading purposes but to help each teacher get to better understand the need of your child and to assist them in planning instruction for the next few weeks or lessons.
Each grade level ‘s cluster class has also been introduced to their specific grade level’s Theme for the school year. Please see below your child’s theme and an example of a related generalization statement for the year. As much of the curriculum as we can will be wrapped around this theme and how it inter-relates with their own reflective thinking, all in an effort to encourage your child to build their own understanding of concepts and big ideas.

5th Grade – Change: Change generates more change.
4th Grade – Relationships: Everything is related in some way.
3rd Grade – Structure: Structures have parts that interrelate.
2nd Grade –Systems: Systems have parts that work to complete a task.
1st Grade –Patterns: Patterns have segments that are repeated.
Kindergarten – Exploration: Exploration confronts the unknown.

Please set the date for three upcoming events.
 Open House for grades 3-5 ( I will be here to answer questions and to say hello)
 September 29th 1:15 – 2:15 – Overview for Parents about the Resource -Cluster Program (Newly Identified )
 October 19th – 7:45 – 8:45 Pastries with Parents – Fall Parent Workshop

There is also an opportunity for those that are interested to be a part of the Gifted Education Community Advisory Committee. There is an open seat available on the Committee that you may apply for to become more involved in your child’s gifted services and other identified children in the area. If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact me directly ASAP.

As always, I am available to meet with you to discuss the program and how it impacts your individual child. Please don’t hesitate to call 648-4000 ext.) 55042 or email. mthawley@vbschools.com

The end of the year is drawing to a close for 2010-2011. This year has been an exciting one that has created many long lasting memories. As a school we delved deeper into our content as we looked at our curriculum. With the Gifted Resource Teacher’s support, our teachers began writing their own performance tasks, rubrics and some even their own units to support their classroom instruction. During the year we began lunch bunch bookclubs with second graders — Thank you again Dragon Adventurers and Dragonslayers… it was exciting to travel the skies with you as we read. We have also completed our 4th year in a row for TIE – Trantwood Interest Enrichment Program, thanks in part to our own amazing PTA support. I look forward to an exciting year ahead. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with things that you have done or places that you have gone over the summer. I look forward to seeing you all in the Fall when we can continue to move forward.

Student’s in Mrs. Mutsch’s third grade class have just wrapped a unit of study. As part of the unit, the students were asked to solve a murder mystery for SAV (submerged aquatic vegetation).
the students and cluster teacher read through the problem secnario and identified the issue and the indiviudal stakeholders (groups affected by issue) and their initial response to the problem We then worked as research teams – jury members, prosecutros, defenders, and witnesses for the accused to set the stage for our own investigative trial. With the help of First Colonial’s coordinator, Mrs. Scherr, we met with high school students from the legal studies academy to plan our arguments and develop our questioning during the trial. At the end of the time together, all felt the feeling of success and gained insight into the courtroom experience and the research necessary to support a case in our local area.

Since we have come back from Christmas break our 5th grade students have been working with a William and Mary Unit titled Persuasion. Within the unit we have analyzed poetry, discussed about different culture groups’ perspectives, the concept of change, we’ve looked at issues and held debates, and reasoned through literature to make unfamiliar familiar. As a part of this unit we looked for a real life application to utilize our persuasive techniques that we have learned and found through our research a contest that was being held to promote the light rail system in nearby Norfolk, VA. This topic was one that we, as a class, had debated about and the general concensus within the class was that it would be beneficial to our area as well and we should encourage it’s promotion. So, utilizing our new found skills with specific persuasive techniques and word choice, we had many students decide to enter the contest to promote the light rail system. May we have the drum roll please!
Our student’s work was recognized for first (Jacob C.), third (Elijah H.), and fourth place (Izzy A.), with honorable mention going to two of our 5th grade students ( Megan B. and Annie M.), as well. I want to thank all 5th graders that participated and encourage them to continue to utilize their persuasive abilities to create a positive effect on the world around them.

Mrs. McCallum’s class is deep in their investigations about civilizations.  As a class, we have completed two College of William and Mary units from the Center for Gifted Education.  They were Ancient Egypt and Ancient China.  Within these lessons, we learned about each civilization,  their contribuiting factors that made it a civilization and how each society impacts us today. 

In both civilizations, we learned about architecture, inventions, numeral systems, their social structure, and how much of what we know today, we learned through primary sources (actual remnants from that time period).  The students discussed how each were part of a larger system and discussed the interactions necessary for each civilization to be considered successful.

We have now moved into looking at the Native Americans as a whole group of people and the unique tribes that fall into this category.  While studying the Native Americans, we will be applying all of what we have learned about ancient civilizations to this new group of people and asking ourselves… How are the Native Americans a system?

While on a field trip this week to the Chrysler Museum, we are encouraging the students/parents to be detectives and use their observation and critical thinking skills to determine how what they see can be part of a bigger system.  If you visit the museum with the children this week, please share your thoughts or as your son/daughter discuss what we have learned in class, please share some of your own “AHA! moments”

Dear Parents,

I truly enjoy working with your children each and every year.  I love to listen to their creative questions and discussions — they are a joy to have in class…with this curiosity and interest in learning — it  livens most conversations.
Sometimes when a child is newly identified there are questions about what becomes of them in the next school year. The following is a brief description of what to expect in the years ahead.

Once a child is identified as gifted in VBCPS he/she is always considered gifted and in need of services. You do not need to reapply each year to be placed in the resource cluster classes. Every year from now until their 5th grade year your child will be included in all cluster classroom placements — meaning they will always be placed with other identified students and working with a classroom teacher and myself. Sometimes there will be one class at a grade level and sometimes two…it just depends on numbers and the administration’s decisions… but I will always be there working with the teacher.

Towards the middle of their 5th grade year… in November we begin to look at middle schools… each child is eligible at that point to apply to Kemps Landing (a school for all identified students), Plaza’s International Baccalaureate Program (an academic academy within the school that focuses on the world and community service) as well as his/her home middle school with advanced classes and gifted services. All support a child that is need of gifted services and they will continue to receive these services until he/she graduates from High School.

Application only needs to be made if your child is planning on attending another “academy” school within the school district, but they would always receive gifted services and have a Gifted Resource Teacher to assist and guide their learning anywhere within this district.

I hope that clarifies any confusion…if you would like to come in and talk, please just let me know. Thank you for all of your support with your child and of the gifted program… it truly makes a difference.

As I prepared for my day’s schedule and went to each of the rooms, I kept thinking…what a perfect day to share with the parents; I wish they could see what I am seeing now.
The day started at 8:15 with Mrs. Wright-Owen’s switch class. As a way to bring their recent field trip  to Jamestown even more meaning and support her work with drawing conclusions we looked at primary and secondary sources. By synthesizing information from a variety of sources, we read an abstract written by Johan Theodore DeBry and we looked at pictures created by an artist from the 1580′s;  John White – one of the first to create sketches in watercolor of this time period. In our discussion, we talked about what a primary source is and how it differs from a secondary source. We then talked about the reasons that the artist may have drawn the sketches and why they were published in England during that time period in The Briefe and True Report of Virginia Lands. The students had the opportunity to choose which focus they would like to learn more about transportation, shelter, or food. They studied the pictures presented to go with their choice of interest looking for details of how the Powhatans of the area were using natural resources in their everyday lives and other details to support their productive lifestyle. Each student then read a paragraph that supported the picture with more details in a translated version from the original abstract that was published with the pictures…all of this was organized in a graphic organizer to share what they had seen and what they had read as a class. The student’s enthusiam to look closely at pictures of this particular time period and to discuss relationships between what they saw and read with what they had learned in Jamestown was contagious. I heard questions, like: How did they get the smoothness on their canoes like that? What could they have made the fishing traps out of to work in a fast moving river? It’s not easy to stand in a river like there are in the picture.  How did they think about doing that ….? The questions and the search for answers was non-stop and exciting to see. If your child would like to continue this information digging of the time period, please check out this site: http://www.people.virginia.edu/ ~msk5d/hariot/history.html and http://www.historyisfun.org/jyf1/education.html#Classroom under the Program Topic Living with the Indians
I then left the fourth grade class and headed to Mrs. Dungan’s 5th grade switch class. We have recently finished a science unit that shares the scientific process with the students and the teachers and I wanted to apply what they had been learning to their next unit — Matter. The teachers decided that they really wanted to do a science exemplar ( a problem scenario that requires more than one step to complete to synthesize information) that had the students explore, design, and test their questions about matter solutions. So, as I walked to 5th grade my love for what I do was bubbly! The plan was to have the students look at the materials provided and discuss what could they do with the materials presented…straws, butcher paper, plastic cups, water, dish detergents, measuring spoons, measuring cups, paper…the ideas presented were our start to a chance to explore with the materials with hands on investigations…we gathered details about what we saw, generated questions, and talked about where we could go or what we could do to learn more about our questions. We then looked at our team’s responses and shared as a class…looking for patterns in our observations. From our list of patterns we saw that some of what we observed could be measured, counted, or timed. The students were guided from this point to choose an independent variable and a dependent variable to design their own investigation of the solutions. Please take time to ask your 5th grader about their explorations and which of their questions did they decide to test in their efforts to learn more about solutions in Matter.

After leaving 5th grade I headed straight to 2nd grade with Mrs. McCallum’s class where we were just wrapping up our unit on matter in science.  This was the first year that we tried to do a unit of differentiated study from University of William and Mary on the topic of matter…. it was something new for both Mrs. McCallum and myself and a learning experience for the students as we brought the end of the unit closed with a performance task…an assessment that requires the students to do or share their learning in a way other than a end of unit fill in the blank test.  In this task, the students were scientists sharing their results from their experiments that supported their chosen testable question.  Each child presented either individually or as a small group at our Matter Conference.  Each child was very excited and just a little nervous to share what they had found out and to demonstrate one example of how they collected their data…. discussion was amazing and centered around what each child had decided to test, what they predicted would be the outcome, whether their prediction was supported by their data or not.  Then as all conferences do we shared a light refreshment made of solids and liquids… and you guessed it our decorations of helium balloons were our gas.  The conference lasted much of the afternoon as the students took turns sharing their findings to a very engrossed audience.

As I moved from second grade to third, I grabbed my materials of wrappers, cereal boxes, magazine advertisements and handouts about propaganda.  In third grade, we’re getting ready for our summative project that shares how economics impacts us in our everyday lives.  We played guess this company while sharing slogans…like HMM, HMM Good!  You guessed it Campbell’s Soups.  We discussed why people use propaganda and where do we see it?  As we looked at the different examples, we talked about the trends that we saw …what were the hidden messages that the advertisements trying to share with us?  Did it work?  Who were the commercials or advertisements audience and did this matter?  This begins a project for the students to develop a product (good) or a service for someone else and then to create a commercial to hook a targeted audience.  Each of the student’s commercials and products will be available on November 10 during our whole grade level Market Day event.  Can you see how this might connect to life (and economics) as we know it?

I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into the amazing things that our classroom teachers and students are doing here at Trantwood.  What did you enjoy most reading about? Do you have any questions about what you read?

Cluster teachers are trained in a philosophy of teaching called “differentiation”. The word “philosophy” is used rather than “technique” or “strategy” because differentiation is actually a way of thinking about teaching that is quite unique.

In a differentiated classroom, teachers collect data on their students on a regular basis. They use assessments not simply for grades, but as a way of determining a student’s current needs. These assessments are then used to make important instructional decisions, such as how to modify the content (what is learned), the process (how it is learned), or the product (how students show what they learned) to meet the specific needs of the students in their classroom.

This data is used to allow the teacher to differentiate based on the following needs.

1. Readiness: This means students are grouped according to their current ability and their potential ability. The goal is to help students grow as much as possible
2. Interest: The purpose of this type of differentiation is to get students excited about what they are learning so they put more effort into what they are doing.
3. Learning profile: The goal of differentiating by learning profile is twofold: it is the need for efficiency or to improve student productivity that drives a teacher to differentiate by learning profile.
4. Affect: Differentiating by affect in the cluster classroom means helping a student feel safe and secure based on the specific emotional needs of gifted learners.

Hopefully you can recall examples of times when your child’s teacher employed these types of differentiation and know that your child is receiving full-time gifted instruction even when the gifted resource teacher is not present.

The following resources are available in your GRT’s reference library:

Tomlinson, C. (1999).  The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners.  Alexandria, VA:  Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Tomlinson, C. (2001).  How to differentiate instruction in mixed-ability classrooms (2^nd edition).  Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

The following article was written by guest GRT Meghan Raftery from Centerville Elementary

One of the activities that we do at the end of a lesson or project is share “Glows and Grows“.  This allows the students and teachers to reflect with a critical eye about what they have done well with a lesson, discussion or project and what they may need to focus on in the future as they move forward with their learning.  I find this metacognition, the idea of thinking about thinking, is a struggle for some students and teachers at the beginning of the year, but with practice and a plan on how to use what is shared we all begin to find how useful it can be and do the reflection with growing insight in to how to make ourselves better learners and thinkers. 

I have asked some students to share some of their own Glows and Grows in the next couple of days — about the year, about particular lessons, and about themselves as students. Please check back to read more….

Over the last week, we have been visited by other Gifted Resource Teachers from across the city. They came with the sole purpose of observing our students engaged in critical, creative thinking skills and problem solving. They participated in what the educational field is calling Learning walks… a chance to look in for 10 -15 minutes on a variety of classes to see how the teacher has engaged the students in learning. This is all in our efforts to move towards a 21st century professional community of learners across the district. The feedback that they provided was immensely beneficial. They saw our students engaged in discussing new ideas, sharing ways to solve problems, and creating original ways to express both written work and mathematics.
Today, I had the opportunity to visit Red Mill Elementary for my learning walk. I saw the Gifted Resource Program in action through collaboration and instruction as well as other classes within the building at 1-5th grade. Looking from the outside in to the class was a very positive learning experience for me as well. I loved the purposeful use of technology and how the students were excited about their work.
On Wednesday morning, I will have the opportunity to visit First Coloial HS for another learning walk… my plan is to look for ways that I can help our students be prepared for what is yet to come.