Family:
My husband Brian and I have been married for 32 years this January. We met in a hardware store - he worked there and I frequently thought of things I needed to buy there... We have two awesome kids; Nick and Olivia, who both went to O'Dea.
Interests/Hobbies:
Photography, Writing, Data Visualization, Astronomy, Math, Art
Favorite Quote:
Once we give up our fears, we become artists.
Favorite Book or Story:
Wrinkle in Time, Irving and Muktuk; Two Bad Bears, and/or All the Light We Cannot See.
My favorite movie lately is Hamilton and also Despicable Me. The books are not as good as the movie.
About My Classroom:
Gifted and Talented classes are small pull out groups that meet in the modular for Reading/Writing and Math each day. We use tools for creating ideas and thoughtful connections across disciplines, always producing something interesting out here!
All students in these pull out groups are learning to use The Writing Revolution and the icons of Depth and Complexity to gain flexibility and deeper understanding of our subjects, projects, and objectives.
Every year, our GT classes contribute projects to the Core Fair. From visualizing world populations concentrated into small areas, to comparing the economies of the world and representing our findings using bowls of rice on a world map, we express and explore math in creative ways.
5th grade GT Language Arts students conduct a year-long research project called Young Scholars. Students pick a passion topic, meet with mentors, and go on field trips which culminates in an oral presentation from our Google docs and Google slides.
In Math, all gifted and advanced Math students ranging from 3rd to 5th grade engage in accelerated pull out groups focusing on grade level and beyond Common Core math objectives. 5th graders participate in the Math Olympiad and become proficient with 6th grade math objectives.
Gifted and advanced Reading/Writing 4th graders post their creative writings in our Google Classroom, work on research projects ending with a class presentation, and learn about the relative value and supply of commodities by trading along the Silk Route. In Math, 4th graders explore deeper understandings of complex Math skills.
3rd grade GT Language Arts students tackle challenging reading and writing through the Center for Gifted Education's Journeys and Destinations, Scholastic's Story Works, Junior Great Books, Readers Theater, and novel studies and express our wonderings/writing using The Writing Revolution objectives.
From mapping geographic settings from stories using Google Maps to pursuing our own passion projects, we gain an understanding of how to express ourselves through what we learn!