5th grade TAG Fifth grade students brought home their work from the Epidemic unit. I hope that you sat down when them and had them tell you about the activities, thinking, and learning they were part of during the Epidemic unit. Students have selected their research topics, and this week they wrote guiding questions for their research. In my opinion, this is the hardest step of the research process. They also learned that not everything you read on the Internet is true (gasp!). Check out the bogus website I sent them to so that they could practice taking notes. They were so busy gathering information that few of them took the time to THINK about what they were reading and realize how there was no way it could be true. Save the Pacific Tree Octopus! I want to discuss Wikipedia. When we started out on the research journey, the students all declared boldly that it was a bad, unreliable site. Wikipedia is not perfectly reliable, I agree, but you know what? No single source is reliable. When Wikipedia is randomly checked for factual accuracy, it’s proved to be roughly comparable to print encyclopedias. The good thing about Wikipedia is that it is more likely to be up to date than any given print encyclopedia, because updates to it are done in real time and continuously. Wikipedia is a great starting point to learn anything. This is why I had the students go to Wikipedia first ... to get an idea of questions they wanted to generate for research. There is extensive bibliographic information on Wikipedia that leads students to the "reliable" sources. :-) Let's quit giving Wikipedia a bad wrap !!! | 4th grade TAG Thank you to those of you who sent in supplies for the school in Fiji. They have shipped, and I know the students will appreciate the gifts. The students are busily preparing their TAG Town presentations for parents and guests. This will be held on Thursday, March 1, at 9:00 in Ms. Searcy's classroom. We hope you can join us. The students and I have felt kind of lost now that we finished reading Rocket Boys. This week, however, I think I've sucked them into another good book - Among the Hidden by Margaret Haddix. The story is set in the future when families are only allowed to have two children. This is the story of a third child, Luke, and how he discovers that there are other "hidden" children. The truly great thing about this book is that there are SIX sequels to it that will keep them reading for a long time. On Monday, February 12th, I had the opportunity to be at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama for the State of NASA address. I was selected to be on NASA's Social Media team to cover the event. In addition to the speech, I was able to visit some truly fabulous locations on site, including the Deep Space Habitat and International Space Station training mock-ups and the 3-D printing facility. Check out my Twitter feed to see great photos from the day. I shared these with the students in an effort to continue to inspire the next generation of explorers. |
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AuthorI started teaching in 1985. Yes, that's a LONG time ago. I started off as an elementary music teacher, but have been teaching gifted students for the past 20 years. I came to Fulton County Schools in 1991 and taught at Mtn Park ES for 24 years before coming to New Prospect ES in 2015. I love being a Panther ! Archives
September 2019
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