I was out Monday and Tuesday for the 14th Illinois Association for Gifted Children conference.  I was out Friday for SMART Board training.  I look forward to integrating new ideas from these learning opportunities with my classroom instruction!

A reminder that Winter NWEA testing takes place next week for all my gifted/enrichment students.

Genesis X: We completed our reading of A Light in the Forest and began using Ideas (themes, key concepts of text) as our thinking framework for group discussion.

Genesis: Students continued working on their Ancient China projects.  They worked on drafting, revising, and editing their paragraphs through teacher and peer conferences.  We will begin our Persuasion reading/writing pull-out after Ancient Civilizations.

Legacy: As we are preparing for high school honor-level writing, students practiced writing various thesis statements (point of view + claim) for their comparative essays.  They continued drafting with teacher guidance and daily freewriting.  Students were also introduced to a theory of gifted development through a variety of discussion and writing activities; we will conclude this subject on Monday.  We continued the nonfiction reading workshop with a focus on critical reading for bias in text.

Explorers: We completed monologue performances–FANTASTIC job!  We ended the week with our main idea common assessment practice and word study assessment.  We will begin our Fahrenheit 451/poetry pull-out next week.