Prosper ISD Elementary Gifted and Talented Program

Meet the GT Staff Janet Anders Director of Advanced Academics Jenna Whatley Elementary GT Campus Specialist Baker and Cockrell Wendy Kruse Elementary GT Campus Specialist Folsom and Rucker

Schedules Wendy Kruse: Monday/Wednesday at Rucker Tuesday/Thursday at Folsom Jenna Whatley: Monday/Wednesday at Cockrell Tuesday/Thursday at Baker

Program Design Project based: • Kdg – Creative thinking, Fluidity, Flexibility, Elaboration, Originality • Texas Performance Standards Projects as a baseline http://texaspsp.org

• Lego Mindstorms in Grade 4

Program Pullout Time Frames • • • • • Kindergarten: 30 minutes per week First Grade: 1 hour per week for projects, plus 30 minutes math Second Grade: 1 hour per week for projects, plus 30 minutes math Third Grade, 1 ½ hours per week for projects, plus 30 minutes math Fourth Grade, 2 hours per week for projects, plus 30 minutes math

Math Enrichment Component New this year: • 30 minutes of pullout or “in class” support for math for students who need the enrichment • GT Campus Specialist will also be providing some alternate assignments to be completed in place of the classroom assignments

Math Enrichment • We are looking for deeper understanding and reasoning • If a child can be shown something 2 or 3 times and repeat what he/she has been shown, they may not have an understanding of the “why” – which is a foundation to advanced math in middle school and high school

Understanding and reasoning… Look at the problem below…does the “1” mean the same thing?

Math Enrichment If the pullout is not a good fit for a student, we will work with the teacher to provide enrichment at the appropriate level in the classroom.

Students may sometimes have the same assignment as the rest of the class. This may be used as a preassessment or it may be appropriate for the level of understanding for that concept for your student.

Differentiated Instruction • We are working with teachers to differentiate for GT students who have mastered the content • Graded assignments may sometimes be different for your child • Your child should not always make a 100% he/she needs to be challenged

Texas Performance Standards Projects • • • • First Grade: Goals: SongWriter’s Club Students will listen songs to identify language and narrative patterns. Students will research the song writing process and songwriters.

This will allow students to examine how songs communicate content and emotions.

Identify and practice alliteration, repetition, and rhyme.

Build awareness of song structure Create original stories Create song lyrics based on original stories

Texas Performance Standards Projects Second Grade: Pursuit of Passion • • • Students will explore hobbies and interests in depth from different perspectives. This will allow students to connect one’s personal hobby or interest to a related profession.

Goals: The main goal of the project is to encourage each student to pursue his or her own passion.

Understand the relationship between personal interests and society.

Become familiar with various career and study opportunities related to interests Develop the essential skills of logical thinking, creative problem solving, intellectual risk taking and communication.

Texas Performance Standards Projects Third Grade: Utopian Destination It is a social studies unit that allows students to study the formation and history of cities and act as urban planners for a city of their imaginations.

This allows the students to look deep into the history of our local community and other communities and ensure their Utopian City meets the needs of government, education, communication, transportation, and recreation.

Texas Performance Standards Projects Project Goals: The students will become familiar with urban planning.

They will examine how cities evolve over time and how natural resources play an important role in adaptation.

The students will develop a proposal and presentation for a new city, complete with charter, governance structure, services outline, transportation plan, maps, and materials for promoting tourism and business development.

Texas Performance Standards Projects Fourth Grade: Enigmas (Through December) The students will investigate a naturally occurring enigma or unsolved mystery.

They will use logical thinking and creative problem solving to research an enigma and how it manifests itself. They will investigate theories about the cause of the enigma, and then hypothesize the cause of the enigma.

LEGO Mindstorms Robotics Fourth Grade: (January-May) The students will build and program robots that will perform loads of different operations.

Step 1: The students will build their robot.

Step 2: The students will program their robot using the LEGO Mindstorms software.

Step 3: The students will test and run their program.

Opportunities for you!

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Prosper Gifted Association

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DI – Destination Imagination http://nexttexasdi.org/

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Odyssey of the Mind

http://www.odysseyofthemind.com/

Questions?