| Mr. Bowen - Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) |
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Fourth graders completed a "black box" activity to explore how scientists often must make indirect observations to form hypotheses. Students had to match 12 different Obs-Certainers to diagrams of their internal configurations. Their only clue -- a small steel ball enclosed in the Obs-Certainer. This was a challenging but fun lab! 
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I introduced a new class-starter activity this week -- analogies. We discussed how analogies work and looked at several common types of analogies. Each week, we will examine a new type of analogy at the start of GATE class.
Fourth grade completed a teamwork activity based on the wordless book Zoom by Istvan Banyai. Students received 2-3 pages from the book and had to work together to put the pages in order. There was one significant constraint -- students could not show their pictures to anyone. The class eventually decided it was more efficient to work together as one large group rather than having individual discussions. After a lot of description and careful attention, students were successful in recreating the story in the correct sequence.
Fourth graders learned about types of communication this week. We discussed the meaning of the word "spectrum" and created a quadrant from two intersecting spectrums -- opennesss to communication and consideration of others. We then plotted four types of communication within this quadrant -- passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, and assertive. We discussed real-world examples of each.
Students then began brainstorming how they can work toward being more assertive this year. We discussed the importance of self advocacy in school, particularly for gifted students. Students began jotting down ideas of conversations they would like to have with teachers, friends, or siblings. Over the year, we will refer to this lesson as we continue to practice appropriate assertiveness. All grades were introduced to the Game of SET. This is a card game where students must find sets of cards based on attributes. Students quickly caught onto the rules of the game and jumped right into playing each other. Some were exceptionally quick at finding sets!
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