3M Young Scientist -The Power of Student Challenges 2

How often do you provide students with opportunities to solve real world problems?  I believe this is one of our most important roles as educators today.  You can learn more about my process by reading my prior post The Power of Student Challenges.   Every year, 3M and Discovery Education make it easy for me to continue fostering these types of  learning experiences through the 3M Young Scientist Challenge.  Here are some of my learnings from participating.

The first year we attempted The 3M Young Scientist. I threw out the challenge to my students with limited time to work on what I would call "real" STEM activities.  It was a bit bumpy, because though I felt I had a clear understanding STEM, I was not completely sure what guidelines to set, how to assess, or even where to start. It was a bit overwhelming.  The resources from the 3M Young Scientist site were able to provide me a scaffolded approach.

There are a lot of resources available with the "STEM" label on them, but it is often difficult to decide which activities are best suited for my students. I evaluated the STEM materials with our Gifted Laboratory's motto and principles in mind, "We are a laboratory, NOT a factory." We believe it is super important that students are given materials, task, and guidelines, but not a complete layout on how to complete the task. This means there will be more than one way to complete a task and students will have to think critically. Thanks to Discovery Education and 3M, I have been able to access a substantial amount of wonderful STEM Activities that not only serve as a great springboard for The 3M Young Scientist challenge, but also as problem solving activities.

We have utilized many of the Student Activities found on the actual 3M Young Scientist website  and the STEM Career Challenges found within Discovery Education.It's challenging to know what the future holds for our students, but allowing them to explore STEM careers with these resources will give them a critical look into their future.

I'm thankful that 3M and Discovery Education have partnered together to help promote problem solving with their challenge and STEM Activities to expand my students' ideas for their future careers.

It's not too late.  Learn how to challenge your students by visiting the 3M Young Scientist Challenge site

Higher Order Thinking Skills and Discovery Education's- Educational Partner's Challenges

I had originally posted this within in the Discovery Education's Online Community, but thought I would share it here too.

The thing I love most about the many Discovery Education Corporate Partners are the contests they hold. The beauty of many of these contests is their focus on solving real world problems. If students are encouraged to focus on the process of solving a real world problem, rather than just focusing on a solution, exponentially higher order thinking skills can be honed. Though the end result is what is ultimately judged, I am convinced that by solely focusing on outcomes, valuable learning and growth will go unrealized.  

In solving any problem, it is always important to dig deep, explore and thoroughly define the issue at hand. In my experience, this is an area most of my students and, quite frankly, some adults would rather skip right over. For whatever reason, students seem to prefer having problems defined for them, but defining the problem is a valuable step that is chalked full of higher order thinking skills. By giving time for students to process and completely define problems they are required to question and analyze deep with a topic by using Spotlight on Strategies (CDN).  For example, if I were starting a challenge with students, a modified version of the S.O.S. "Think-Puzzle-Explore" (CDN) could be used to open up students' thinking and put them in the driver seat. This S.O.S allows students to record what they already know, record any questions they might have and create a plan as to how they will explore a specific topic.


Another way to ensure students are honing their higher order thinking skills is by guiding students to utilize each contest rubric and/or checklist which will help guide and refine their work. I am a firm believer that I should not do anything for students that they can do for themselves; this includes reading and analyzing contest guidelines. In my experience, introducing these tools to students early allows them the opportunity to refer back to them on a regular basis and helps guide their projects. The number of times my students ask if things are good enough or if projects contain enough details have greatly reduced. It has been nice to watch as these topics have become conversations students are having amongst themselves. This has also meant the process of revision is slowly becoming a student endeavor and proves rubrics and checklists should not be utilized as simple tools in a very real and purposeful way.

   

Finally, I am a firm believer the best way to teach problem solving is by giving students the opportunities to attempt to solve actual problems we find in the world today. Thanks to Discovery Education and their Educational Partners we have been given several opportunities to do just that across just about every subject area.

Discovery Education in The Gifted Laboratory #1

For years now Discovery Education (DE) has played a huge role in The Gifted Laboratory and I thought I would start blogging about some of the ways DE makes an impact here. It has always been a desire of mine to help students realize that the world is much bigger than they can imagine and that history is constantly happening around them. Thanks to DE and their Global News Feature my students are able to get a tiny glimpse of both of those concepts. The Global News is a weekly two to three minute news segments that introduce students to a current event. In the past my students and I would watch a segment, discuss it, and then move on. However, this year I thought I would attempt to deepen their thinking around these topics by integrating different SOS's. 


For our first Global News activity we used the SOS (or Visual Thinking Routine) "Connect-Extend-Challenge". This is a teaching strategy that requires students to identify background knowledge, new learning, and what challenges students may have about the topic. This is a great strategy by itself, but this strategy fits very nicely into a Tree Map, which is one of the eight Thinking Maps. In this case we used our Tree Map to sort our information into ideas that students connected to their background knowledge, extended their thinking, or challenged them in some way.  With the combination of the two strategies, my students were not only able to collect information (or text evidence), but they were also encouraged to do some deeper thinking around that information before they were asked to write about the topic. 

After each student has had a chance to complete his/her individual Tree Map we took the time to discuss this event as a class. Students were encouraged to add to their maps anything they wished to from our discussion. I work very hard to build a healthy learning community and by
allowing students to add to their maps during our discussion it encourages the idea that we are better together. 

My final step was to guide students through a writing assignment in which they were asked to tell what they learned and why it was important. Admittedly, their writing is a tad bit bland, but my main concern for this part of the lesson was that students were able to see a strong connection from their Tree Map to their writing. We still have work to do, but this is not a bad start.  Here are a few links to student blog posts: Grade 4 Post and Prine Students' Post.

Thinking Maps #1

 About ten years ago I had a slight change in my career from general education to resource to gifted and this change brought about a change of focus. I have never been the package program kind of girl and I tend base my approach what my students need. With this approach in mind, I utilize a mixture of strategies and frameworks from a variety of places. Many of these things overlap or are used in conjunction with one another to help build a richer learning environment. The latest introduction has been Thinking Maps, which are the eight common visual maps based on research on how the brain actually learns. 

 I work at four schools all with their individual set of strengths and weaknesses. Lucky for me, all four schools are in various stages of implementation of Thinking Maps. At Abel, they are in year three of implementation and it is very obvious upon entering the school that they are all about Thinking Maps. Their walls are lined with examples from every grade level and subject.  When I am there I love wondering the hallways with my cellphone snapping all the shots I can.  Students are taught to utilize these maps to organize their thinking and ultimately to select the Thinking Maps based on the task at hand.  During the second half of the year, I observed that students were using different maps to complete the same task. This to me means that students are being taught and allowed to organize information into the Thinking Map that works best for them. For students to truly own their learning process that whole process will need to be put into their hands, which includes selecting what tools will work best for them.  

As I continue to explore and learn about Thinking Maps  I am looking forward to incorporating them many of the others strategies we use frequently in our Gifted Laboratory. Thinking Maps are tools to help students organize their thinking and by being intentional about the task students are given to complete within each map can only serve to deepen their thinking. Personally, I am looking forward to seeing what these tools will aid my students to producing this year.

Scaffolding with SOS

           

      For the last several years now Discovery Education (DE) has been publishing their incredibly helpful Spotlight on Strategies (S.O.S) Series.  According to DE,  "Spotlight On Strategies (S.O.S.) are creative, research-based instructional strategies, presented by teachers for teachers. These simple instructional strategies incorporate digital media in meaningful, effective, and practical ways."  If you have missed this gem on the DE website it can be found on the Professional Development Page.   Based on the feedback of DE users the layout and how these strategies have been presented has been improved upon. These strategies are now organized by skill and include written and video directions for using that particular strategy.  This has become one of my first places to go to when lesson planning and I LOVE that DE is a company that truly listens to their users, but unfortunately you must be a DE user to enjoy The S.O.S. Series. It has been my experience that by themselves they are each powerful, but can be even more powerful when utilized together.

         In that earlier post In My Own Words??, I had proposed as set of questions that I needed to ask myself and if I were honest those questions are haunting me some. However, the one thing I believe that has worked to help guide my students to deeper thinking in the past was scaffolding. Last year, we explored Who's Santa? and Exploring the Southern Reconstruction,  where one strategy was utilized to gather information and another strategy for organizing the collected information. With Veterans' Day this year I again used scaffolding to both assess and get students to think just a bit deeper on this important subject. The first thing I did was pulled a clip about Veterans' Day from DE to use. I selecting one from one entitled Observing the Holiday, which about four minutes long. Then I combined the S.O.S. Strategies - Silence is Golden and the Visual Thinking Routine See-Think-Wonder. 

Here what we did:
-On a page within their Interactive Notebooks I had students divided that page into three columns and label them See/Think/Wonder.

-We then watched the video without the sound and stop it ever 30 seconds to a minutes (depending on the age of the students). Students were instructed to only write down what they saw in the video.

-Each time the video was stopped I ask the students to think and to record their thoughts in the center section of their paper. At this point of our activity we would discuss what they saw and thought about it. I would encourage students to explain why they might have those thoughts and many times the response will be it reminded me of something.... I labeled this as the skill inferring and encourage my students to do the same.

-We would repeat this process until we the video is complete.

-After the video was complete we did a variation of the S.O.S. Quick Write. Students were asked to use there notes on See/Think/Wonder and write what they thought this video was about.

-Finally, we watched the same video with sound to check for accuracy.

Breaking Out -Part 1

Here are a few pictures from our experience. 

Reading Across State Lines-Round 2 (Week 6)

Link to the Virtual Field Trip of Ford's Theatre

http://www.discoveryeducation.com/Live/fordstheatre150.cfm

Facebook or Face to Face- (The DEN Summer Institute)

  Over the last six or seven years I have become a consistent user of Social Media both Facebook and Twitter.  Due to this there seems to be a variety of jokes and inquiries, which all seem to lead back to one question; Am I replacing my face to face relationships for online relationships?  I think that is really not a fair question, because in reality one is just an extension of the other. I have never attempted to replace my face to face relationships with online ones. Although I will admit I do have some online friends whom I interact with quite regularly and refer to as my friends, but I  have never had the pleasure of meeting face to face. Some as far away as Tasmania and I am not sure that my life would be the same without these connections. I know the experiences for my students would not be the same either and my classroom is a richer and fuller place to be since I have opened it up to the world.  It is one thing to talk, read and even see videos about concepts such as time zones, but it adds a whole new level understanding when you are in communication with friends in real time on the other side of the world.

     With that said, there are some face to face events that I am honored to take part in that helps to promote those online relationships and top on my list is Discovery Education's Summer Institute (DENSI). Each summer Discovery Education bring about one hundred fifty educators together from all over the United States, Canada and this year the United Kingdom to a week long experience. I have used the word experience, because it is much more than just a conference. Many have referred to it as the the family reunion you would choose to attend, but to me it is like summer camp when you were a child. The Discovery Education Staff go out of their way to create a space for and encourage attendees to build relationships that extend past the five days we spend together. This has been my experience and truly nothing can replace those memories we have shared.

  I believe that learning needs to be a process and that includes my own learning as well as my students' learning. DENSI in many ways is the beginning of so much new learning for me. This past summer some of that learning included: more about SAMR Model, Inquiry Learning, Augmented Reality, Grant Writing, DE Virtual Tours, and Coding. Along with that learning came a variety of other educators who are using or have used these ideas successfully and much like our individual classrooms we become a community of learners. Those relationships and that learning continues throughout the year online. I have DEN friends all over my Facebook Page, Twitter Feed, within my Glide Account, and I even have a group of DEN Stars whom I text with on almost a daily basis.  Discovery Education believes in the power of building those connections and their support in this effort does not stop with DENSI. It continues throughout the year with ongoing event, such as: #denchats each Thursday night at 8:00 pm on Twitter and DENvice on Facebook.

   As I sit here in my classroom at the beginning of the the 2014-15 school year I know I don't go in alone.  At the end of this year's DENSI 2014 Discovery Education Staffer, Dean Shareski, put a video together entitled Thank You DENSI 2014 and we all loved it. However, like learning each of our experiences at DENSI 2014 was personal and I have stolen his idea using my personal photos from DENSI 2014 to create my own Thank You DENSI video. 

A group of us met a couple of days before the conference and some of these shots were taken during that time period.

Finally, if you would like to check out archived session from DENSI 2014 here is that link.
    
 

Discovery Education Spring Virtcon and CBL

Last week I was honored to be contacted by Karen Ogen, who serves as Coordinator of Media/ Technology Magnet Program in Columbia, South Carolina, in regards to her Keynote presentation entitled "Igniting A Passion for Learning" for Discovery Education Spring VirtCon.  Her plan was to present several different avenues to inspire and challenge students in the classroom, which included Genius Hour, gamification, maker challenges and Challenge Based Learning (CBL). She then approached myself and other DEN Stars with the opportunity to share a bit about our experiences with these learning frameworks. I was sent few questions and asked to share about something I am truly passionate about, CBL. 

Since we all know that when people are truly passionate about something asking them to keep things brief is hard and due to her time constraints she had to cut everyone's section down some. However, I still had my video pieces on my computer  and I thought I would share the full version of my answers here for those still interested. 

 

 

Stop Girl Bullying 

Gabbing the Gifted-1st CBL Challenge

CBL Across Manatee 

Peace Solution

 

Challenge Based Learning (CBL) Resources

https://www.challengebasedlearning.org/

iTunes U

Helpful Books

 Making Thinking Visible 

by Ron Ritchart, Mark Church and Karin Morrison

Comprehension and Collaboraton:Inquiry Circles 

by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels

Teaching Science with Interactive Notebook

by Kellie Marcarelli

 

"Hills are Alive"-#DENSI 2014

Well yesterday was a big day for some of us in the Discovery Education Network (DEN) and we got the long awaited email inviting us to the Discovery Education Network's Summer Institute (DENSI).  We spent the evening celebrating by tweeting, texting and Facebooking each other and even making a few travel plans.  Personally, I am beyond excited about attending and think I have done more than one version of "The Happy Dance".  However, there is another side of the coin here, and my heart goes out to all those on The Wait List. I have been there, more than once. So when I say I understand how you feel, I do. Yes, DENSI is fabulous and full of everything it promises and more, but the DEN does not just happen at DENSI. With that said, I thought I would share a portion of my written application here in hopes of encouraging someone. 

One of the fhe first things I did after becoming a STAR was apply to the DEN Summer Institute in Boston and to my surprise I was accepted. I was so excited, honored, and nervous about attending. Then three days before I was to leave my Father ended up in hospital with mysterious intestinal bleeding, which later was to discovered to be cancer (fully recovered now). I remember running to the hospital to visit him the morning I left and feeling guilty for leaving. However, my family insisted I go and the nurses promised to give me updates over the phone.  Although, my first institute was full of many highlights it was a bit tough those first several days until my father was out of the hospital. With that said, I tend to work a bit like a Crock-Pot and it takes me awhile to warm up in any new situation and at first I come off a bit standoffish. So when I applied the next two summers and wasn’t accepted I honestly thought I blew it.

Still, I  knew I somehow I needed to be more connected to the DEN, because just being in contact with these people was making me a better teacher. I continued to attend Days of Discovery and webinars, but I still felt I needed more. So in the spring of 2012, I decided to apply to be part of the Leader Council (LC) and was accepted onto the Social Media Team. About this same time, I learned that I had also won ISTE/SIGOL- Highly Commended Online Learning Award and would be presenting at ISTE. This was my first ISTE and as I headed to San Diego by myself  I prayed I would not spend the whole week alone. That statement now seems almost comical, because I wasn’t even there twenty-four hours until those online DEN connections became very real. I volunteered to take over the DEN Twitter and Facebook feeds for Discovery Pre-conference.  I was a bit nervous about it all because, I  had never used Hootsuite before and I am Dyslexic. However, I felt that jumping in was what I needed to do to be more connected and I am so glad I did. I already knew Carol Anne McGuire through DENSI Boston (and three rounds of Rock Our World) and she along with daughter Macy were the first two faces I recognized.  Honestly, the California DEN went out of there way to make sure everyone felt welcome at The Pre-Con and at ISTE. I just remember the DEN being a huge part of that week and feeling lucky to have met some of these people. After having a great time during an evening out with Discovery, that Jannita organized, Katie Warren asking me if she would see me at DENSI Montana and I sadly had to tell her that I had not been accepted. Actually, I told her that I indeed had not been accepted the last two year and that I thought I was done applying.  I did go on to say that I knew I needed the DEN and that  I would just be involved in other ways. We spoke for awhile and then she made me promise that I would not give up and I would indeed apply in 2013. At that point, I was tired and wasn’t sure what I would do. However.  it was sure nice to have someone want me to apply again.

Then last spring when the DENSI 2013 application information hit Social Media and had come out through Discovery Education’s emails I ignored it at first. Just wasn’t sure I had it in me to again apply and not be accepted a third time. Then I remembered the promise I made to Katie and with the application being a one take video I figured this wouldn’t take long. Plus, due my experience at ISTE and serving on the Leadership Council for a year I really did feel like I had a better idea about what the DEN was really about with my application on You Tube  might help spread the word about the DEN.  Once my application was turned in I did not think too much about it and just figured I had fulfilled my promise to Katie. Unlike the two years before, I was not waiting impatiently for the weekly DEN Insider to see if I made the cut. In fact, I was sort of avoiding Twitter and Facebook late on Friday afternoon to shield myself from all the DENSI chatter. Then for some reason one Friday afternoon in late March I began to get pings coming through on my phone and when I checked there were several post on Facebook and Twitter in which I was tagged. That was when I decided to check my email for The DEN Weekly Update and saw that my name was on “THE LIST”. Seriously, you could not wipe the smile off my face for weeks and I also vowed then in there to make the most of this experience. I would go early, stay late, and meet as many people as possible. So in May when Dacia Jones put out on Edmodo about flying up a couple of days early and staying at the Von Trapp Family Lodge I jumped in with both feet.  It did not matter that I did not know Dacia Jones or anyone else that was joining us, because after my California experience I realized that all I needed to know is that they were part of the DEN. Since then these women have become an important part of my world and I refer to them as my “Hills Are Alive Buddies”. 

Anyway, DENSI and LC Pre-Con were nothing short of AMAZING! I remember searching at dinner on the first night of the LC Pre-Con for Katie Warren and giving her a big hug. I am pretty sure I teared up when I thanked her for making me promise to apply again.

Interactive Notebooks and Challenge Based Learning - #2

In my last post I spoke about how we were  implementing Interactive Notebooks into our Challenge Based Learning (CBL) process so I thought spend some time demonstrating what this could look like in an elementary school classroom. This may turn into a series of post, but for now here is a lesson done with my second grade students in the midst of their CBL Challenge: To help keep Oneco Elementary School's Campus clean and beautiful. 

The strategies I present in this video have been taken and modified from Discovery Education's - Spotlight on Strategies (S.O.S) Blog. I was introduced to this incredible series about two months ago and it is quickly becoming one of my go to resources when dealing with multimedia.

 

Please make sure to watch all the way to the end to hear a couple of students discuss their metacognitive thinking. 

 

Here is the blank graphic organizer I use with my kindergarten and first graders. As we make our way through different videos we use Post-its in each section to hold our thoughts. 

CBL Across the District -Part 3/ Multimedia and Language Arts Common Core Standards

I have said in an earlier post that the Common Core K-5  is chalked full of standards that focus on strategies rather than specific content and incorporating them into a Challenge Based Learning (CBL) challenge is quite natural. Honestly there are a lot of programs and frameworks out there making these claims, which should leave us all with questions about how. Since which standards are covered in during the CBL process are based on the  activities chosen it is impossible effectively communicate about all of them that maybe covered within a challenge in just one blog post. For this post, I am going to focus in on using multimedia in the mist of student research or guiding activities.

 Like so many of our challenges, Discovery Education has played on huge role in our guiding activities and we found a ton of helpful videos and other resources. It can never be just quality of the information in each video, but what skills students can hone while interacting with that information that is important. Many of the same skills used in create Strategic Readers  and laid out The Common Core Language Arts Standards  should be considered when guiding students through using any multimedia content. 

With those principles in mind, I have chosen to explore and adapt many reading comprehension lessons and activities found in Strategies that Work by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis, Comprehension and Collaboration: Inquiry Circles in Action  by Stephanie Harvey and Daniel Harvey and for me the most practical The Comprehension ToolKits . These thinking skills need to be explicitly taught and video is just another avenue. These lessons and/or activities might include; organizing information and taking notes using Fact Question Responses (FQR) Chart, determine importance and the use of many graphic organizers. 

 I am not trying to suggest that students shouldn’t be required to read. I am suggesting that the thinking behind some of the comprehension skills can be taught and honed through the use of multimedia. It is stated throughout much of the literature on reading comprehension that a readers job is to make meaning from that text, which relates as much to a students' thinking as it does to being able to read the words on the page. It is my opinion, that having students use these skills when interacting with multimedia can only strengthen our students' thinking. 

At the core of a CBL challenge is a real world problem and along with that comes an authentic solution that is generated from student research. With each lesson or guiding activity we move closer to fulfilling what is stated in the Key Design Considerations for Common Core English and Language Arts:

 ”To be ready for college, workforce training and life in technology society, students need the ability to gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize and report on information and ideas, to conduct original research in order to answer questions or solve problems, and nonprint texts in media forms old and new. “

 

Rubrics- More than an Evaluation Tool

At the end of last year I became very aware that I needed to do a better job of documenting the learning I knew was going on in my classroom through curriculum models; such as Challenge Based Learning, Inquiry Based Learning and other interdisciplinary approaches. At the same time empowering my students to self and peer evaluate each project and ultimately continuing to hone high level thinking skills.  So as I began constructing our first project of the year I decided I would not only build an compatible rubric, but put that rubric in my students' hands. 

Before I go too much further, I should say that our first project of the year was “All About Me” Paper Slide Videos. To give credit where credit is due, I should also mention that this project was put out on Twitter by Lance Rougeux/@lrougeux who was sharing Martha Rougeux’s brilliant idea. Just two of the wonderful educators I have met through Discovery Education Network.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to observe that as my students worked they referred back to the directions and the rubric on a regular basis. As time progressed, I was no longer being asked if things were good enough or if their projects contained enough details, because those were topics of conversations that were taking places between students. While at the same time the process of revision was slowly becoming a student endeavor as well. If I were honest this project did take a bit longer than I had anticipated, but it was time well spent. I LOVED listening to all the learning in action and let's face it I learned a lesson as well.  My first lesson of this school year is that rubrics need to take a larger role in the learning process within my classroom and should not just be used as an evaluation tool.

Finally, I have found a couple of wonderful resources on the subject of authentic assessment that I thought I would pass along as well. I know I still have a ton to learn on the subject and can't wait to explore these resources a bit further.

Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything- Assessment and Rubrics
 http://www.schrockguide.net/assessment-and-rubrics.html

 Jon Mueller-Authentic Assessement Toolbox
http://jfmueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/whatisit.htm

One Take Video/ Book Trailers

During the Discovery Education Summer Institute in 2010 and again while attending The DEN FETC Pre-Conference in January I learned about One Take Video from Dr. Lodge McCammon.  Basically,  One Take Videos are videos shot in one take with no editing needed. I had a ball in these workshops and loved that these activities lead to many deep conversations around the content we were working on. However, until this spring I had not attempted to use this with my students, but the last couple of months we have been able to fit several One Take Videos in to our curriculum. One of my favorites has been my second grade reading group's Patricia Polacco's Paperslide Video Book Trailers. I am a big fan of assigning projects and activities that cover as many standards as possible. Within The Common Core Language Arts Standards second grade students will be asked to: 


-Retell stories including key details and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson.
-With guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed revising and editing.   
-With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers. 

 I could not have been more pleased with how these videos turned out and at the same time allowing us to hone the above standards. Thank you Discovery Education and Dr. Lodge McCammon for adding this fun and innovative activity to our to curriculum and classroom.

Oneco's Gifted Program Newsletter-Spring 2012

Dear Parents,

A couple of months ago I heard a speaker say, “Your school should have an academic focus not a project focus.” This is a statement I full heartedly agree with. However, just because projects are present does not mean that the academics have taken a backseat. On the contrary, they are as front and center as ever before and as I have stated in the past I throughly believe in the Gifted Program's motto WE are a Laboratory and NOT a Factory. Personally, I feel that by isolating skills we never quite get to the deep problem solving skills needed to prepare our students for their future. The gifted students have worked on several quality projects that demonstrate this principles this quarter. 


First our Healthy Eaters’ Campaign was released and the students have spent some time promoting it. Fifth grade students were in charge of creating a brief survey that Ms Brigance, Ms. McDonald and Ms. Schade so graciously allowed their students to participate in. After that data was collected these students created triple bar graphs, analyzed the data and created a plan to promote our campaign to optimize its effectiveness. After FCAT, we will again ask these three classes to complete our survey again use the data to evaluate the campaigns effectiveness.


Grade 2 students have been exploring Manatee County Schools’ Strategic Objectives and creating a grade level ePortfolio. The Four Strategic Objectives are rooted in The District of Manatee County School’s Mission Statement and is at the core of educations throughout the county. These students have spent a great deal of time reading through The Strategic Objectives and using a graphic organizer (called a Frayer) to break down the rubrics to help them define each Strategic Objectives. Then students wrote and video taped reflections that demonstrates not only their understanding of each, but also how they relate to real tangible things in their lives.


 Grade 3 has been investigating Simple Machines. They have built each machine using legos and other classroom materials and discovered ways to make the workload less difficult. These students also created paper slideshows, much like “Common Craft Videos”. These videos can be found linked on Oneco’s Gifted Website under Gifted Highlights.


Grade 4 are continuing to work their way through Navigate Your World, where they have been learning about basic geography. Soon after FCAT, these students will be learning to use both compasses and global positioning systems.

 Finally, our 5th graders also work together to compete in The Fizz Dr. Lodge’s Video Challenge hosted by Discovery Education. For this challenge the student learned the Kinesthetic Lectures for a song, based on an academic content, in our case geography. We worked with the song entitled “People Move”, which covers The Five Themes of Geogaphy. This has served as a great review for us as we make our way back into Navigate Your World, geocaching and Challenge Based Learning. Our video can be found linked on Oneco’s Gifted Website under Gifted Highlights.