High Ability Update

Did you know that you can pay for your child's lunches through My Payments Plus? Did you know there's an app? It is nice & convenient for parents; you can personalize your alerts to be notified when the account is running low. You can add money to the account or have it automatically replenish.

The Great Show-and-Tell Disaster by Mike Reiss is a silly book filled with anagrams that kids absolutely love. Working with anagrams is a wonderful way to sharpen spelling and vocabulary skills. Some anagrams we talked about this week are: Brian-brain, cheap-peach, tan-ant, stop-pots-spot-tops, snap-pans-naps, sale-seal, gas-sag, cola-coal, cats-scat-acts, slow-owls, and Gary-gray. What a fun and powerful way to work on language arts!

After sorting shapes by angle size, color, and type, we moved on to Carroll Diagrams. Adding labeling to sorting/organizing shapes takes their geometry to another level. Students must analyze the diagram and fill in the blank labels and missing shapes. Depending on the specific diagram, a shape must meet at least two criteria to fit in. Each Carroll Diagram we complete will increase in difficulty. We've done two so far, and we will continue with this next week. I'm impressed with how well this group did on the first two Carroll Diagrams:)

The students were so excited to start reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane! They were not excited to do some work before we began reading, because they wanted to dive right into the book. The students were each given an Edward Tulane packet that we will add to throughout our novel study. To start things off, students had to make predictions and answer questions on their current understanding of the words miraculous and journey. I asked them to use PQA (part of the question in the answer), and we got all but two of the answers started together. When I looked over their answers, I saw some students did not follow directions. I will keep a closer eye on that in the coming lessons. After that, we got to the exciting part... We read chapters 1-3 in our novel:) We took turns reading aloud. We are looking forward to getting to know Edward more next week.

Time for a check-up. As you know, we don't have traditional tests in HA. This week, students worked hard and strained their brains to complete their chapter 2 check-ups. Due to absences, not everyone is done. Once everyone is done with theirs, I will grade them and send them home.

Working in pairs, students read a fable and filled out a reading analyzer. They are becoming more comfortable with the defining aspects of what a fable is and is not. Many fables end by stating the moral of the story. When a fable does not outwardly state the moral, some students are struggling to identify it. More fables to come next week (with focus on the morals).

Students were challenged by a think deeply question comparing the base 3 and base 10 systems. I continually encourage students to trust their voices & write down their math reasoning using the same words they would use to explain something to a friend.

The students had this week to finish their biography work. As I've said before, they find the profound questions extremely challenging. The students will share their work with the class next week. Since some students did not thoroughly cover each aspect of the assignment, I am letting them choose two or three questions/sections to share with the class. We are looking forward to moving on to a mystery unit:)

The substitution method was the focus of our algebra this week. Given two equations, students found the value of two variables that were in both equations. They worked independently, but they were permitted to consult with one another. They were able to share their work/answers only if they discussed it with one another. They were not allowed to just give a friend the value of a variable without discussion/explanation. I overheard such great discussions! They really had a meeting of the minds, it was great!

Email: kapeterson@duneland.k12.in.us
Location: Jackson Elementary School, North 400 East, Valparaiso, IN, USA
Phone: 219-983-3680