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Archive for the ‘Gifted Education’ Category

Hyperlink Poems

Posted in Blogging, Digital Learning, Gifted Education, Teaching, Writing, tagged Amy Ludwig Vanderwater, fibonacci poem, hyperlink, manatee, Wonderopolis on May 18, 2014| 4 Comments »

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Sometimes I teach a lesson in writing workshop, and the students apply it right away. Sometimes they don’t. A few weeks ago, a blogging friend (if it was you, let me know in the comments) wrote about using hyperlinks in blog posts. She was doing a research unit with her students. I thought how cool would it be to write a poem and put in a hyperlink. I made the suggestion that my students go on to Wonderopolis (which they love) and read about a favorite topic and write a poem about it including a hyperlink. One of my students even commented, “Why haven’t you taught us this before?” But none of them did it.

Choice is important to me in writing, so I didn’t freak out. On Friday, Amy Ludwig Vanderwater offered a challenge on The Poem Farm for students to write a poem about a manatee. And Friday was my last official day with my students. I thought there would be no way we could fit that in with writing a letter to me and having a popcorn and apple party. Not to mention they were leaving an hour early to go out for Character Day activities. But two students took the challenge. They read Amy’s poem, watched the video, and wrote a poem using a hyperlink.

Later in the day, I had a few other students at school #2 also take the challenge. I tweeted Amy, and she tweeted back that in honor of my students, she would adopt a manatee. How cool is that!

Manatee

You are sometimes known as sea cows.
Shallow, slow areas are where you choose to browse.
You are actually related to elephants,
and you’re big, graceful, and elegant.
The great Manatee is who you are
And truly you are the ocean’s star.
Brooklyn

Image from Wikimedia commons

Manatee, my Friend (a Fib poem)

great

friend

what have

you done to

deserve this treatment

you will be safe soon my dear friend.
–Tyler

Since I will be out of school, I’m not sure if I should continue this round-up. What do you think? Should we keep it up over the summer or take a break and come back with full force in August? Let me know in the comments.

Link up your post with Mr. Linky. Come back and read other posts. Don’t forget to comment. That’s what makes the blogosphere go around.

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Celebrating Happy Endings

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Gifted Education, Gratitude, Teaching, tagged altered books, Amy Ludwig Vanderwater, magnolia, Margarita Engle, watercolor on May 17, 2014| 9 Comments »

This was my last week with my students for this school year. I always get reflective at this time of year, wondering if I’ve done enough for my students. So yesterday, our last day together, I asked them to write me a letter. I asked 1. What do you remember about our school year? 2. What was your favorite activity? and 3. What was your greatest lesson? For the most part, I was touched by their letters. I just want to share a few quotes and celebrate them.

This year we got to meet Caroline Starr Rose and Greg Pincus! We went to Mississippi! We saw a haunted house! But most of all, we bonded like a family. That was my favorite activity. My greatest lesson is that you don’t have to be famous, or super smart, or handsome, or even popular to be loved. Matthew

My greatest lesson I’ve learned from being here is to not be afraid to make mistakes as a writer and in life. Mistakes will help you to become a better person. No one is perfect and sometimes all of us forget that. Brooklyn

My students finished their poetry projects. They made altered books out of discarded books. They illustrated and glued in their own poems and some favorite poems by other authors. Vannisa put in a collection of some her favorites from the school year, a bookmark from Margarita Engle, A bookmark from Amy Ludwig Vanderwater, an Eleanor Roosevelt quote, and “Keep Calm and Write Poetry.”

Brooklyn’s poetry book cover. Gotta Love Poetry!

Today, I am also celebrating magnolias. They are in full bloom, our state flower, and I went to a watercolor workshop this morning and painted one. I am posting a picture of a real one from my neighbor’s yard and the one I painted. Wish I could also post the scent.

Watercolor magnolia by Margaret Simon.

Magnolia, the Louisiana state flower.

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Bridge Opening Ceremony

Posted in Gifted Education, Teaching, Writing, tagged Joe Daigre Bridge, Mayor Hilda Curry, New Iberia, project based learning on May 13, 2014| 6 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

This past Saturday was the culmination of a year long student project. We began working with the group of 6th grade gifted students in August. Each month we met together as a group, 6 teachers and 23 students. In the beginning we immersed the students in the theme we had selected for this year, bridges. We brought in speakers including the chief engineer for a bridge being rebuilt in New Iberia. The bridge had been out for more than two years, and some of our students were well aware of the inconvenience this caused. Barbara Ostuno, chief engineer, piqued their interest in the construction of a real bridge. As discussions over a service project were held, the students brought up the bridge and how we could celebrate its completion. Thus we began to plan a bridge opening ceremony.

In January, Mayor Hilda Curry came to visit our group. She spoke to them about the ins and outs of planning a community event. She explained how the original bridge was built by her grandfather when he was mayor. The new bridge will also be named for him, Joe Daigre. She then invited them to meet with the department heads to talk about their ideas. We planned a field trip for February.

On this trip, we started the day bridging the generation gap by meeting elderly in an assisted living facility. The students played games with them and interviewed them for a later writing project. They wrote essays about their grandfriend and submitted them to the Legacy Project contest.

In the afternoon, we met with the Chamber of Commerce about a ribbon cutting for the bridge opening and with the city department heads. This was incredibly empowering to our students. They gained confidence in knowing their voices were being heard and were important to others. They were having real world experience being community organizers.

Raising Cane’s manager and employees joined the celebration.

As a group, the students decided to raise funds for playground equipment for a local park. They went out looking for sponsors for the t-shirts. They gathered 30 donations of $50-$250 each.

The students presented their plan to the City Council at a regular meeting in March. We even brought some council members to tears as they were touched by the students’ poise and enthusiasm. A few students and teachers represented our project to the school board and received a donation from the superintendent.

All of this work culminated in our event on Saturday. Wearing our student-designed t-shirts, we met at City Hall to walk down Main Street to the new bridge. The bridge is named for our mayor’s grandfather, so it was fitting that she cut the ribbon.

Students spoke and led the ceremony. At last count, the donations and t-shirt profits were close to exceeding $3000. I feel pretty confident that this real world experience will stay with these students for a long time. They will drive over the Joe Daigre Bridge as parents and tell their children about the grand opening celebration that they helped to organize.

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Celebrating Greg Pincus, Mothers, and Nature

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Chalk-a-bration, Gifted Education, Teaching, tagged chalk poetry, fibonacci poem, Gifted by Nature Day, Greg Pincus, Mother's Day writing on May 10, 2014| 11 Comments »

It’s Celebration time! What are you celebrating? Head over to Ruth Ayres’ site to read about other celebrations.

I. A huge thank you to Greg Pincus, author of 14 Fibs of Gregory K, for Skyping with my class…twice. Two groups of my gifted students talked with Greg and learned about the life of an author and how to write Fib poems.

Quotes from their thank you notes:

“Math and poetry are two of my favorite things, so combining them makes my life 10x more enjoyable.” Brooklyn

“You taught us some interesting things about the book like that some things in reality accidentally snuck themselves into your book.” Ian

“I really thought it was nice of you to talk to us, it being 7:00 at your home.” Matthew

“P.S. I would eat 12 donuts before I ate pie (but I still eat it.)” Nigel

“I like how you said humor is the sixth sense because you made a joke out of every question we asked, especially the pie question.” Gage

II. My principal asked my students to write chalk poems on the sidewalk for our Mother’s Day celebration, “Muffins with Moms.” So we had another Chalk-a-bration, and following our Skype with Greg Pincus, we had to make them Fib poems!

III. This week was our annual Gifted by Nature Day when all the gifted students in the parish gather for a day of playing strategic games and making art and poetry with nature. This year a group of middle school students led the art/writing activity. This was a great relief to us teachers. The activity was great, too. The students drew an object from nature, then retraced it on foam board. This pattern was used for a monoprint on colored construction paper. The students really focused on the details in their drawings.

After they made the prints, they wrote 6 adjectives and a metaphor or simile about their print. I told the students these were poems. I thoroughly enjoyed this day watching my students interact with kids from other schools and have so much fun playing and creating. The weather was great, too, so we enjoyed picnicking in the park.

I wanted to take pictures of all of their prints. Here are a few to celebrate!

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DigiLit Sunday: Haiku Deck

Posted in Digital Learning, Gifted Education, Poetry, Teaching, tagged Bees, Butterflies, Carole Gerber, choka, Haiku Deck on May 4, 2014| 6 Comments »

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Tweet with #k6diglit.

I have had some struggles with using Haiku Deck in my classroom due to the network blocks on our server. I’m sure this is an issue for others as we use new apps in our classrooms. I found a way this week to make it work. The server blocks the images, but not the app. I taught my students about fair use of photos from the Internet. We search images on Google, click on Search Tools, and click on Labeled for reuse. This limits greatly the number of images we can choose from. However, when using a web-based app, I feel it is important to use the images rightly.

The poetry writing exercise included a discussion of imagery and how scientific poems can use imagery to help your reader understand a concept. We looked through poetry books and found model poems that used imagery. We read together the poem Helianthus from Seeds, Bees, Butterflies, and More! by Carole Gerber.
“If saying ‘helianthus’ makes you cower…
use our common name–
Sunflower!”
Vannisa chose to write a haiku about sunflowers. She actually wrote three haikus, so I told her that a long poem using the haiku syllable count is called a Choka.

To see the full poem on Haiku Deck, click here.

Inspired by Carole Gerber’s big name poem, Matthew wrote about Charcharodon Carcharias or Great White Sharks. Matthew managed to work in a line he lifted from the book he is reading.

Matthew’s full poem is here:

An InLinkz Link-up

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Chalkabration Haiku

Posted in Chalk-a-bration, Gifted Education, Poetry, Teaching, Writing, tagged chalkabration, chalku, haiku, teaching gifted on April 30, 2014| 3 Comments »

Join the Chalk-a-bration over at Teaching Young Writers.

Believe it or not, it’s the last day of April and the last day I will be posting Chalk-a-bration with this year’s bunch. I hope they will participate from home over the summer, though. My principal enjoys our chalking-up-the-sidewalks-with-poetry so much that she has asked us to decorate the walkways for the mother’s breakfast, “Muffins with Mom,” next week.

As we continue to work our way through the ABC’s of poetry, we have landed on H, and what better form to use for chalketry than haiku. We should coin the term, “Chalku.” Lots of different thoughts going on today. I was thinking about the humidity that has moved in thick and warm; the cold weather has definitely moved on. Vannisa is thinking about the end of school and summer coming. Kendall responded to music I played. I love the variety of ideas as much as the consistency of form.

This humidity
makes my hair curl like wild weeds,
all helter-skelter.
by Margaret Simon

Playing soft and smooth
having a fast-paced tempo.
Music comes from you.
by Kendall

School is almost out.
Summer means no more homework.
Summer’s almost here.
by Vannisa

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Celebrating a Break Through

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Gifted Education, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged gifted education, Hatchet on March 22, 2014| 7 Comments »

Slice of Life Day 22. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Slice of Life Day 15. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

My post will be short today. I am spending the weekend with my Berry Queens in Jackson, MS. for the Sweet Potato Queens weekend. I’ll be writing about this wholesome-woman-power fun later, but today I want to celebrate what may be a breakthrough.

I have a 6th grade gifted boy who has been extremely underachieving all year long. This is a typical problem with gifted students, boys in particular. He has resisted almost every incentive or motivation I have put before him. I have tried a number of things, but this week I may have made the miracle happen.

Karl(not his real name) may have found the just right book, Hatchet, to finally make him love reading. His reader response on Tuesday, posted late as usual, was 48 words long and began with “I really like this book.” I read this and had a serious talk with him. I did all of the talking. I blasted him. Then I looked at his tear-stained face and said, “You may not think that you are able to do this. You may think you are not good enough to be in this class. But you are here because you are good enough. You can do it.” I took another student’s journal and read to him her response to Hatchet.

I prompted him with questions, “How would you feel if you were Brian and the pilot died? If you had to fly that plane, what would that feel like?” I told him to go read a chapter and come back to the computer and write another response. I threw in more bait. “If you make a personal connection to the book, you can use it as a Slice of Life.”

He came to me later and said with a grin, “I read more than one chapter.” Then he wrote 250 words! Not only did he write more words, he made a connection to the character. I’m not sure if it was the “discussion” or the student model or the just right book, perhaps all three, but I am celebrating a break through. I gave Karl praise, but to top it all off, Anna Gratz Cockerille, the Two Writing Teachers leader for the Classroom Challenge, commented on his post. You can read his post here.

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Celebrate. Open. Build.

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Gifted Education, Slice of Life, tagged Anne Darrah, Musson Patout, Stinson Liles, wooden coffee table on March 15, 2014| 7 Comments »

Slice of Life Day 15. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Celebration Saturday is here. I love Saturdays! I can sleep a little longer. I take a walk with my dog. I feel refreshed. And Ruth Ayres encourages us to reflect on our week and celebrate.

1. Earlier in the week I posted “Ten Things Right Now.” There I mentioned that my uncle had died. I was not able to go to his funeral, but my mother blessed me with a copy of my cousin’s homily. In the latter part of his life, my uncle ran a B&B with his wife on Tybee Island in Georgia. Sadly, I never visited. (Sigh, regrets) Stinson speaks to my OLW OPEN. Every life leaves us with a lesson.

I’m not much of a theologian, but it seems like one of the big points Jesus was trying to get through our heads is that the foundation of evangelism is hospitality … Opening our hearts starts with opening our arms. Opening our doors. Opening our homes.
Seems like, in a way, my Dad lived the vocation we’re all called to.
–Stinson Liles

2. The elementary gifted teachers in our parish are working once a month with a group of sixth graders. Our service project includes a bridge opening ceremony for a bridge in town that has been closed for 3 years for renovation. We are working to get sponsors for our t-shirts. My principal gave me permission to take my 5 morning students on a field trip to solicit donations. We met with the VP of Musson Patout Automotive Group. Here they are receiving his generous donation. They felt so important and proud.

Students with Bart Romero of Musson Patout

3. I have commissioned a friend to build us a coffee table. She sent pictures of the process. I can’t wait to get this beautiful art work into my home. The best part is she is having a great time building it. We all have our different passions. Hers is wood.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.
–Dalai Lama

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Kidlit Book Club for Adults

Posted in Books, Gifted Education, Slice of Life, Teaching, tagged Letters about Literature, R.J.Palacio, Wonder on March 10, 2014| 11 Comments »

Slice of Life Day 10. Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

I teach gifted in a public school district. In my two schools, I am the only gifted teacher, but in my district, I am one of 6 elementary GT teachers. Yesterday, we met unofficially. We decided to start a once a month book club for reading middle grade literature. We decided that we needed to know more about what was new and what better way to learn about new kitlit than to read and discuss it. A little wine and some snacks, too.

This first month we decided to read Wonder. A few of us had read it and loved it. Wonder is one of those important books. If you haven’t read it, you must. For me, the book has taken on new meaning through two children.

One is my nephew, Jack. Jack’s school district in Round Rock, TX. did a “One Community: One Book” project. Everyone in the community was encouraged to read Wonder. Jack is in third grade, and he wrote a letter to the author to be able to attend an event where she spoke. He told me later all about it. R.J. Palacio told the story of how she came to write Wonder. She was in an ice cream shop with her children, and a little girl with a facial deformity came in. Ms. Palacio was not happy with her reaction. She mulled it over and over. That drove her to create August.

When we read Wonder in my classroom, I did not even consider my student Brooklyn. I was reading it for all of the other reasons; it’s a great book and teaches so much about how to choose kindness in this world full of intolerance. I thought it was important to teach this point, but I didn’t even think about how Brooklyn lives like Via, Auggie’s sister, every day. Her brother and her mother are disabled. She knows the looks people give, the head turns, the feeling of being different. But Brooklyn doesn’t feel different at all. Her life is totally normal to her. She expressed this beautifully in her letter to R.J. Palacio for the Letters about Literature contest.

Like Via, I get very angry when I see someone staring at us like they paid us to put on a show. They look my family up and down, but when their eyes get down, they stay down, staring at my family’s legs. “They aren’t aliens! They are just like me and you, but their legs don’t work exactly the same.” I say this every time, but only in my head. I’ve tried to see what they see, but I just can’t see it.

Momma always told me that God gave me to her and the family for a special reason. Your book helped me to realize being different isn’t always bad. Usually, I feel like no one understands what it is like living with my family. No one understands how normal it can be. Your book changed that. You understood, and I want to tell you thank you.

Next month we have selected to read A Snicker of Magic. I haven’t read it yet, but have seen lots of good reviews. Looking forward to reading and sharing with my colleagues who love a good kidlit book, just like me.

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Celebration Saturday is Here!

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Gifted Education, Gratitude, Poetry, tagged Author Amok, Azalea Estates, Laura Shovan, New Iberia on February 22, 2014| 4 Comments »

Each week I join in with other teacher-bloggers in celebrating our week. The celebration is hosted by Ruth Ayres at Discover. Play. Build. I hope I can stop sneezing long enough to write. Spring is coming and trees are blooming. My allergies tell me so. Today is a gorgeous day in South Louisiana. The sun is shining. The birds are singing. The air is crispy cool at 57 degrees. I celebrate starting my day with a walk. Minga is back to health, so we took our dogs Petey and Charlie to the park. Celebration was prevalent as old friends greeted her, happy to see her out and looking great.

I want to celebrate our 6th grade gifted students. We took them on a field trip this week as part of our WOW (Way out Wednesdays) enrichment program. First stop was Azalea Estates assisted living facility. There the students played games with and interviewed the residents. The room was full of energy. Everyone enjoyed themselves.

Brooklyn interviews Montez about her life for a Legacy project.

Next we went to downtown New Iberia to meet with various entities about our community service project plan. The students were met with respect by the head of the Chamber of Commerce as well as the mayor and city department heads. They did a wonderful job presenting their plans. I overheard one student say to another, “I like feeling special.” I celebrate their specialness and the opportunity to work with a great group of teachers and students.

I also want to take a moment to celebrate a fellow poet and cyber-friend, Laura Shovan. Laura is doing a birthday project at her site Author Amok. She is asking other poets to join in by writing to color prompts. This week I hit a hard spot. I wanted to write to the color Dubarry. I struggled after researching Madame duBarry. I tried a number of times to write something and the results were ~~crap~~, let’s say less than desirable. I told Laura of my trouble and she sent me a prompt through email. “Wear it: Imagine you are putting on an article of clothing in this color. What happens when you walk out your front door?” I was getting ready for bed when a poem with the color Orange Pepper came to me. I wrote it on a sticky note in the bathroom, then sent it to her immediately. She posted it the next day. My confidence is back. Thanks, Laura, for making me feel special.

I bought a tangerine purse–
orange pepper for my shoulder.
My daughter said I looked like I was carrying a satsuma.
The mailman asked if I had anything toxic or potentially hazardous.
But you said,
“Hey, I see sunshine on your shoulder.
Let’s walk together.”

by Margaret Simon

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