Family Heritage

To celebrate Family Heritage Day at Glenhope, the ASPIRE 5 scholars became historians this week.  Mrs. Fullhart designed this lesson with the intent of learning the stories behind the families in our classes.  Throughout the week, students and their parents gathered significant family documents, pictures, and artifacts that gave clues to their culture, origin, and history.  On Friday, students placed all of their items in a shoebox for others to explore.  Scholars worked in groups to make deductions and inferences about the family based on the contents of the box.  After an hour of exploration and taking notes based on some of the depth and complexity icons, the scholars chose one of their families to share their conclusions about.  The student that the box belonged two then verified the inferences and made corrections if necessary.

We believe this was a very enlightening experience for the students, teachers, and parents that participated.  We often talk about how we have become a global society, and the importance of celebrating diversity and all cultures.  The family stories that were shared were very diverse, and I think they had a tremendous impact on the students, as they learned about how their friends and classmates somehow came to share this common classroom in Colleyville, Texas.  

We would like to thank all of the parents who went to great lengths to help the students collect their items all week long.  We could not have done this unique project without your support.  We truly appreciate your help, and we hope that you had some fun reminiscing about your own family during this process.  We also want to thank all of the parents that came to Glenhope to participate.  We hope you enjoyed this activity as much as we did.  Best wishes to everyone during the Thanksgiving holidays!

Making Connections

During the past two weeks, the ASPIRE 5 scholars have been able to make several connections across content areas.  First, the 6h grade math class studied ratios and rates at the same time the science classes explored solutions and mixtures.  Math activities included the exploration of lemonade recipes, taste test results, and fruit snack ratios.  Science activities included solving mixture problems with algebra, separating mixtures and solutions, and writing recipes for mixtures and solutions.  Throughout the week, students were able to integrate math and science concepts and skills.  It was fun to watch students apply what they learned in one subject to the other, and to hear their conversations about how math and science depend on each other.

In Humanities class this week, the scholars' work centered around a historical fiction novel.  The Matchlock Gun tells the story of a family during the French and Indian War.  The scholars learned how to annotate text, as they used the SIFTER method to search for figurative language, ethical issues, tone, theme, and other literary concepts.  Using historical fiction allows us to truly teach humanities holistically, as we can include social studies concepts during our reading and writing workshop.  Our next step is to compare primary sources form the French and Indian War with The Matchlock Gun so we can separate fact from fiction, as they made predictions on what they perceived as facts from the story.  A wise person once said that every book is a social studies book, and I believe that our humanities class has the potential for greatness when we heed that advice.  

One of the goals of the ASPIRE 5 teachers this year was to integrate concepts across the curriculum.  The students are able to make deeper connections as they see how their learning applies to their lives in many ways.  In particular, GT students benefit from these connections as they easily lead to more rigor, real-world problem solving, and critical thinking.  This is the main idea behind the Parallel Curriculum initiative of the ASPIRE Academy.  As we begin to implement PCM in every grade level, our students will have more academic experiences that are reflective of their abilities.  Our colleagues at Cross Timbers Middle School are already blending these subject on a daily basis, as they teach blocks of humanities and math/science.  We are looking forward to making more similar connections throughout the year to prepare them for what lies ahead in middle school and beyond, and to lay the foundation for successful implementation of the PCM at Glenhope.