On 10/01/09, Isabell wrote:
> I am a retired K teacher. My principal has asked me to
> take a one day a week position teaching gifted children.
> I'll be working with grades 2 and 3 for half the day and
> grades 4 and 5 for the other half day. There are no
> curriculum guides or materials. Any suggestions would be
> SO appreciated!
> Thanks!
> Isabell

It will be fun - sounds like it can be wonderful enrichment
time. What resources do you have? A laptop connected to a
projector would be nice.

What are your interests? I can feed you material but with no
curriculum to follow, you can follow your bliss. What about a
first unit entitled "Speaking Through Stone"? One of my
favorites and we study public sculpture - who puts these huge
and sometimes small monuments into our parks and by our
highways? Why? How do they decide who gets a sculpture and
what it will look like?
Princeton New Jersey considered several versions of an Albert
Einstein sculpture before letting the public choose one. You
can access hundreds of public scupltures on line and the kind
of 'out of the box' thinking that this is works well for GT
children.
And get some clay - after consideration of other sculptures
intended to honor someone or some event, let them make one of
their own. In fact, this 'unit' could cover two weeks.

Consider the two monuments and the HUGE fight over them that
are the memorials to those who died in the Vietnam War.
There's a great documentary on it - I'm blanking on the name
but it's certainly one the older children could watch. Which
of those two represents the concept better? Consider also the
huge fight over the new statue of Franklin Roosevelt and
whether he should be portrayed as physically challenged or
not.

GT children have the ready ability to consider such matters
and have strong opinions about them.

For a start the above might work well - I've used it many
times and every time it's been well-received by students and
parents alike.

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