Summer Blues..

Wow, I cannot believe that summer is ending in less than a month! I feel like only last week I was packing up my classroom and bringing projects home to be completed.
Unfortunately, I haven't completed ANY of those projects. When I left for the summer my principal was still unsure of my placement. It is either fourth grade social studies and science, fifth grade social studies and science, OR fifth grade science! I haven't done any planning because I want to plan things for the correct subject. Maybe next week I can start getting a rough idea for all of them?

Anyways, as from my last post about the gifted endorsement I got lots of views. I'm glad that there are people out there that are still interested in the gifted children. During my class I found that most people were taking the class because it was electives for them. However, I took the class because I am totally interested in reaching my gifted students better.

In this class I learned that all students are gifted "at certain times and under certain circumstances."


(COPIED FROM http://www.gigers.com/matthias/gifted/three_rings.html)

This is Renzulli's Three Ring Concept, which my professor focused on for two weeks. Where all three circles overlap would represent someone that is gifted. This model can be used within subjects, sports, and hobbies. With these rings on average about 20% of the population is gifted. I really identified with Renzulli and plan on using a lot of his techniques within my class next year.

Another thing that fascinated me was the different models available for teaching ALL students. This link takes you to the NAEG CENTER FOR GIFTED EDUCATION AND TALENT DEVELOPMENT. You will find a lot of helpful information including models that could help you within the classroom.

A model that I used and tweaked to fit my needs was the Curry Samara Model


I'm hoping that you can click on these and it will be bigger. If anyone is interested I can email you the unit plan. It is for fourth grade Ecosystems. What I liked about the model is this is a WHOLE unit. It covers all the standards for the ecosystem and you can just glance down to see EVERYTHING that will be covered. The topics that are to the right are more advanced for your gifted students and the ones on the left are your average lessons. So all students can work their way up to the "gifted" side!

I also have information on the Maker Matrix and the Levels of Service Approach, if you're interested.

I really did learn a lot and cannot wait to apply it to my classroom.

I'll end this SUPER long post with these other few things that I created for class.

The first is the difference between acceleration and enrichment.





And this was one of the first items I created during the class. It Curriculum differentiation is broken into four parts. Content, Process, Product and Environment. This illustrates the difference between them.