1st/2nd/3rd Grade Gifted - MOSH Field Trip

We had a fun time today on our MOSH field trip, especially in the planetarium as we learned about the Sun, Moon and Stars. This is a great starting point for us as we dig into our Space Unit after the holidays! Thank you so much to those that chaperoned the field trip for us. I so appreciate your help!

4th/5th Grade Gifted

Wake up Work and Logic today had a holiday theme. The students needed to come up with words, other than a proper noun, using the letters from the words “Merry Christmas Friends”. This activity proved to be difficult from some students. We will be working on some more Boggle type activities in the coming weeks to strengthen the student’s “word smarts”. Students finished their writing assignment and worked on their presentation skills as they presented their letters to the class. I love seeing their creativity! Students completed a holiday themed STEM activity where they worked in groups. Each group was given a brown lunch bag containing a container of green playdough, 20 regular straws and 5 bendy straws. They were given the task of building the tallest free standing Christmas tree. It took us two rounds to get some groups with a Christmas tree type figure. The students enjoyed some extra Think Fun time during our Holiday celebration. Thank you to those that sent in a treat to share! J

4th/5th Gifted

The students worked on a holiday themed Sudoku to work on the skills taught last week. The 4th and 5th grade students were given two choices for a Holiday themed creative writing assignment. One option was to design a new suit for Santa and explain why you chose certain features of the suit and the other option was to choose a villain and use elements from the original story to persuade Santa of the villains’ innocence. I was surprised that all of the students chose to persuade Santa of the Villains' innocence. I'm looking forward to the students reading their letters to the class next week!

1st/2nd/3rd Grade Gifted

At the end of the day our 1^st and 2^nd grade presented their readers theater to a 1^st grade class in the library. They did a great job using their “presenter voices” and acting out the Anansi readers theater. We will introduce a fun new readers theater for our space unit after Christmas. 1^st and 2^nd grade finished up their spider books and will present them to the class next time we meet. 3^rd grade had a mini lesson on latitude and longitude to prepare them to identify a location on the globe to place their civilization. They will begin working on their civilizations map in the coming week.

4th/5th Grade Gifted

5^th grade joined us just before lunch today because of testing. The students worked on a Time for Kids activity and answered questions involving the show Shark Tank. As a whole class the students learned strategies in solving Sudoku puzzles. We began with a 6x6 puzzle and progressed to a 9x9 puzzle. I’m looking forward to seeing more Sudoku puzzles completed as early finisher activities. 

1st/2nd/3rd Grade Gifted

1st, 2nd and 3rd grade friends practiced their readers theater several times today preparing for their presentation next week for some 1st grade friends. They also worked on their spider book research project. Some completed their writing and have been able to begin their drawing on each page. 3rd grade presented their brochures to one another and introduced their civilization. I introduced our upcoming unit on space by reading a book about stars. We are looking forward to our field trip  in a couple of weeks.

1st/2nd/3rd Grade Gifted

The students were given a Thanksgiving themed dictionary skills packet that required them to look up certain words in the dictionary, make note of the guide words and page number the word was found on. They were also given a list of words to alphabetize using the first letter of each word and another list to alphabetize using the 2nd or 3rd letter of each word. The activity proved to challenge some of the students but I think they all had fun in the learning process.

The first and second grade students were assigned spiders to research and write a spider book on. The spider book will be completed in the coming weeks. Third grade finished up their Weslandia brochures and should be ready to start presenting them to the class next week. I love seeing their creativity.

5th Grade Gifted

The best part of our day today consisted of our Iggy Peck Architect STEM Activity. We read the book Iggy Peck Architect, viewed a power point of some of the worlds tallest buildlings and watched a short video of the process architects go through when designing and building a building. After some discussion the students were placed in groups, planned their design and were given 15 minutes to build the tallest free standing structure. After our first round the students met with their partner and discussed what went well and what did not go well. They reevaluated their design and made a new plan. Once their new plan was mad,e they were given another 10 minutes to build the tallest free standing structure. This round proved to be much more successful. After lunch, the students worked on a funny Thanksgiving Math Glyph! :)

1st/2nd/3rd Gifted

The students worked hard today! After our normal morning routine, 1st and 2nd grade got busy working on their spider webs. They traced their spider webs in black marker and then made spider models and identified each body part. The spider has two main body parts, the cephalothorax (smaller) and the abdomen. The legs are attached to the cephalothorax so it was very important to make sure the legs were coming from that part of the body. Most spiders have 8 eyes, some have none. The students make sure their spinnerets were extending from their abdomen.

3rd grade is all on the final copy of their Weslandia brochure and some have begun working on their map skills packet. Once we have worked through the map skills packet, the students will find a place on earth to "build" their civilization. :)

1st/2nd/3rd Gifted

Since tomorrow is election day, we discussed the election process and watched a quick video snippet explaining that process and how the electoral college works. We read the books Grace for President and Duck for President. We discussed both candidates character qualities and then each student cast their vote. As you can see, Grace won the presidency in our class. ;)

Since Veterans Day is later this week, the students completed a puzzle. They were each given a sheet and told which parts to color what. They did not know how it would work until later. They each colored their page and then cut the square out. Each square was identified by a letter and number. We moved to the library and learned that a grid system would be the best way to put our puzzle in order since we had no clue what we were making. ;) The ending result is below. On this Veterans Day, we say "thank you" to all our veterans! Thanks for keeping us safe!

I worked with 1st and 2nd grade on note taking for a spider research book. I modeled note taking and then we practiced it together. We will finish this lesson and they will work on their own research in the coming weeks.

3rd grade is working on finishing their rough draft of their Weslandia brochure and beginning their final copy! Jack worked hard and completed his final copy today! I can't wait for him to present it to the class and tell us all about his civilization!

1st-3rd Gifted

Today, the students worked on a packet full of Halloween Matrix when they arrived. It took some time but it was so fun watching the light bulbs go off as they figured out everything! The whole class worked on an edible spider cookie treat that used Oreos (Thank you Annabella for providing them), pull apart twizzlers, candy sprinkle pearls, chinese noodles and sunflower seeds. We went over each part of the spider and what it represented before we began. They had fun making their model, learned in the process and enjoyed a delicious snack! :) Third grade worked on a pumpkin glyph while our younger friends were at resource. Have a safe and fun Halloween! :)

4th/5th Gifted

Today the students did Halloween wake up work and had to make combinations with witch hats using only 4 colors. Their logic for the day consisted of a HUGE Halloween Matrix that was rather confusing. You had to read the matrix both horizontally and vertically. It took a lot of brain power. :) Our main activity today was a spooky Halloween writing piece. The students rolled for their story starter, their main character, their setting and their obstacle. It is so much fun to read their planning sheets. I can't wait to see the created product!

1st-3rd Gifted

Today our Wake-Up work and Logic all had a Halloween theme. We spent more time on this because of the theme. The students made combinations with with hats. They had to read statements closely and then arrange items in order.

Our groups did not get to work on their projects as much as we would have like. 1st and 2nd painted their spider webs with water color and 3rd grade worked for just a little while on their Weslandia brochure.

1st-3rd Gifted

Today our Wake-Up work and Logic all had a Halloween theme. We spent more time on this because of the theme. The students made combinations with with hats. They had to read statements closely and then arrange items in order.

Our groups did not get to work on their projects as much as we would have like. 1st and 2nd painted their spider webs with water color and 3rd grade worked for just a little while on their Weslandia brochure.

1st-3rd Gifted

Today, the students worked on their wake-up work, logic and creative juices.  We had our morning meeting and discussed our activities during the hurricane. I am so glad that everyone is safe and back with us.

1st and 2nd grade continues practicing their readers theater and learning all about spider. The students have drawn spider webs that we will paint with water color next week.

3rd grade is working on their "planning" copy of their Weslandia brochure. I am so enjoying all of their creativity!

As always, the students are loving their free time during Think-Fun. Many of them choose to play chess or Marble Run. :)

4th/5th Gifted

It's been 2 weeks since I saw the students. Our morning meeting was spent sharing about our hurricane adventures. We are so thankful that those in our class had minimal damage to their homes and that everyone is safe and back with us.

Our Wake Up work and Logic really made some of the students think. For our Creative Juices, we had to make pictures out of random pictures. This activity really made the students look at their scribbles and use their creativity to make pictures.

I taught the students a mini lesson on finding the mean, median and mode of a set of numbers. We will review this skill the next time we meet but I think they are now confident in finding the average.

The students were so excited today...our box of Rubiks cubes (on loan to us) arrived while we were out during the hurricane. We spent a large portion of our day looking at the booklet and trying to solve the different stages of the cube. We will be working on these each week for the next several until we have to send them back.

Because we spent so much time on the Rubiks cube today we didn't get as much time to work on the loop planes. We will get those finished up in two weeks when we meet again.

1st/2nd/3rd Gifted

Today we had fund with our creative juices as we did our number drawings. The students were given a number and an item that they had to incorporate into their drawing. Our logic and wake up work got our brains thinking, working and using our problem solving skills.

We spent the bulk of our day working on our projects. The 3rd graders finished working on their planning sheets and planning out their civilization. Next week they will begin working on the rough draft portion of their brochure. The 1st and 2nd graders spent a lot of time practicing their Anansi Readers Theater. They also close read an article about spiders, answered questions and identified where they found the answer in the passage. Once they finished that activity, they began researching a spider of their choice. We will be putting together flip books towards the end of this unit.

As always the students enjoyed their Think Fun time playing Chess, Marble Run and doing other creative activities. If there are any parents who would like to come in and teach Chess on day, we would love to have you. Please let me know. :)

4th/5th Gifted

Wow!!! What a fun day we have had learning. I was going to start including pictures of the students today but we were so involved in our learning that I forgot to take any!!!

We started our morning with our wake-up work and logic. The Logic always gets our brains working. It's so fun to see how the students solve the problems differently. :)

I think the kids have had a fun time today with our main lesson. They finished working on their "Rosie Copters" from last week and presented them to the class. The students were able to learn from each other and gather new ideas for how they would improve their Rosie Copter.

I presented a new stem challeng question to them: How can we modify a loop plane to fly the farthest? The students first made a regular loop plane using two loops and one straw. Each group then flew the plane three times, measured the distance that it flew and wrote it down. We then converted feet to inches and found the average of the three distances. The students are now working on how to modify their loop plane to make it fly the farthest. We will complete and present this project next week!

1st/2nd/3rd Grade Gifted - 9/26

We began class as usual working on our Wake-Up Work and getting our brains working. Then I did a "Creative Juices" activity with the students and made them a little frustrated as I kept changing what I was wanting them to do. I told them they couldn't erase but they had to keep following the directions. It's fun to see who follows directions well and who struggles to do just as they are told. :) I will try to post one of these activities in the coming days so you can see what they look like.

1st and 2nd Grade has begun a readers theater with Anansi and the Magic Stick. We first read the book aloud and then I passed out the script and we assigned parts. We read through our script a couple of times. We will continue to practice reading our script together and then we will begin acting it out. We will be work on a spider unit and spider themed activities this fall.



3rd Grade read aloud the book Weslandia. The main character, Wesley, was a misfit at school. He got made fun of and did not want to dress or act like the others. One summer, for his summer project, he created his own civilization. He had his own crop, his own goods to sell, his own games, own clothing etc. The boys that once made fun of him now wanted to be just like him. Third grade is now working on a project of creating their own civilization . Today, they planned out, drew and wrote about the different topics of their civilization. Next week they will make a rough draft of their brochure. Through this process they are using direction given them and information from the rubric to make sure they have everything that they need in their brochure. It is very important that they put enough information in their brochure so that the reader does not have any questions. I'm excited to read about "their civilizations". :)

4th/5th Grade Gifted - 9/23

This morning, our 5th graders worked on more of the Mensa puzzles for their "Wake-up Work". Today, they had to cut out these sets of numbers and arrange them where they read the same horizontally and vertically. I've put an example below of what they wanted. The puzzle obviously has different numbers and doesn't go in number order but whatever the 1st row across reads is the way the 1st column down should read, 2nd row & 2nd column should be the same, 3rd row & 3rd column should be the same and so forth so on.







4th grade worked on their Creative Juices. I would give them a set of instructions of an object to draw and then once they were finished I would say "Oh no, I meant to have you draw...". They would then have to combine the previous picture in with the new one. It was funny to watch as some of them got frustrated as I made them alter their design. This is all part of learning to go with the flow and that everything does not have to be perfect all the time. It's also a great time to work on their creativity. :)

Together, the classes read Rosie Revere, Engineer. Again we talked about ideas, designing things, PERSEVERING and improving on our design. Rosie's aunt always had a dream to fly so Rosie built her aunt a "plane" to fly in. It went up and then came back down. Rosie's aunt encouraged her to try again so that it would stay up, she improved her design and tried again.



Rosie Revere led us to talk about the STEM process listed below. We will be using this process in many of our projects this year.



We did a small STEM project together. The students were given this rectangular piece of paper with a slit down the middle and a paper clip. We called it the "Rosie Copter". Their challenge was to make the Rosie Copter land slower and softer. They will share their designs this next Friday.

4th/5th Boggle & Noggle Champs

Congratulations to RAY who received the highest score in our Boggle this week! I owe you some candy! :)

Congratulations to EZRA who received the highest score in Noggle this week! :) See me for candy also! :) 

Great work guys!!! I love to see you working on your Word and Math Smarts!!!

1st/2nd/3rd Gifted Class - Monday

 - This morning the students worked on their thinking-skills when completing their wake-up work. We've talked about how its okay to struggle and to have to think about things. Our "wake-up work" this year will consist of working on:
       - Analytical Thinking
       - Flexible Thinking
       - Problem Solving
       - Elaborative Thinking
       - Originality

 - We talked again about the different "smarts" and the students completed a survey shading in what applied to them. We talked about how it's okay not to be "smart" in every area and how we can all learn and work on being "smart" in areas where we struggle.

 - We read the book "What Do You do With an Idea?, a growth mindset picture book". We discussed big ideas and little ideas and how it is okay to have both kinds. We jotted them down on our notebook paper. We also talked about how people may make fun of our idea and how to persevere through that. We also discussed ways that we can make our ideas come to life. Then the students made "Idea Portraits" that we will use as their binder covers this year.

 - Those that completed all of their work early were able to work on Boggle and Noggle. A couple of the students completed at least one of those activities.

 -During Think Fun Time, those that had completed their work, enjoyed playing chess and marble run.

 - Below is an image of a paper that went home today about a Gifted Education Symposium that will be held on Tuesday, September 27, 2016. It deals with Understanding Your Gifted Child. I am planning to attend and hope that you will too.

- A very informal Meet and Greet will be during Open House on Thursday night, September 22, from 6pm - 8pm. A reminder should come home with your student this week. I hope to meet you then!

 - Please work on getting the Gifted Information Forms back to me soon. If you need another copy let me know.

4th/5th Gifted Class - Friday

 - This morning the students worked hard on their Morning Work.

4th Grade's questions dealt with the forest. They learned about simile's (we'll work more on those in the coming weeks), had a lot of describing to do (we'll be working on fattening up our writing and using descriptive words) and we had another problem involving fractions.

5th Grade's questions dealt with logic and paying attention. They had one difficult math problem that we worked on. There are 4 solutions to it. We found one. I have posted it below so that they can work on it over the next week. :) Congrats to Steven for finding one of the ways! Great job!!


 - We finished our Goal Assignment from last week and they are being displayed in the room.

 - We read "What Do You Do With An Idea", a growth mindset picture book. We talked about ideas, how people may scoff at our ideas and how we need to plan steps and do research to make our ideas become a reality. We made idea portraits to use as the cover of our binders. Your children are very creative! :)

 - Many students finished before others and they enjoyed completing Noggle (like Boggle but with numbers) and Boggle! I can't wait to total up their scores and see who had the winning boards this week.

 - Those that completed all of their work today were able to participate in "Think, Fun Time". Many of them chose to play Chess.

 - Below is an image of a paper coming home today about a Gifted Education Symposium  that will be held on Tuesday, September 27, 2016. It deals with Understanding Your Gifted Child. I am planning to attend and hope you will too.





















 - Next Thursday, September 22, will be a meet and greet Open House for those in the gifted program. I hope to meet you then!

 - Please be sure to send in the Gifted Emergency Form as as soon as possible. I sent additional copies home with students today. I'd love to have each child with their supplies by next Friday if possible.

2nd/3rd Gifted Class - Monday

 - Today the students enjoyed being back together! It was fun seeing them get excited as their friends came in!

 - We enjoyed completing our Interest Inventory Room Walk and learning more about each other.

 - We shared about ourselves at our morning meeting. The students enjoyed sharing some interesting facts.

 - The students learned about the eight different "smarts" and which "smarts" they are as well as the "smarts" they could work on.

 - We discussed making SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time bound) goals for the 2016-2017 school year and how it is important to persevere and keep going even when we may be discouraged.

 - We enjoyed playing together and learning from each other during Thin/Fun Time. It was so wonderful to see the students work together, help each other and teach others chess. :)

 - Please make sure that you ask your child for the Gifted Information Sheet to complete and the supply list for our class this year! 

I am so excited about having your child in class this year! I look forward to getting to know them and completing projects together! Please be sure to email me with any questions or concerns at branuml@duvalschools.org 

4th/5th Gifted Class - Friday

 - Today, we enjoyed playing, getting to know each other and making new friends!

 - We worked our brain this morning during our morning work on logic, patterns, anagrams and a math problem with multiple steps.

 - We enjoyed learning about eight different "smarts" (music smart, math smart, self smart, body smart, word smart, nature smart, people smart, art smart, body smart) through a power point and various activities.

 - We read the book, "The Most Magnificent Thing" and discussed how goals and achieving them are important, we discussed strategies she used to help her attain her goal as well as the barriers that affected her while trying to achieve them.

 - We set our own goals for the 2016 - 2017 school year and put them down on paper. We will discuss these more in depth next week.

 - Please be sure to ask your child for the student information sheet you need to fill out this weekend. I have also sent home a very short supply list for our gifted classroom.

 - It was a pleasure meeting your child and working with them today. I am looking forward to the great adventure of the 2016-2017 school year! Please email me with any questions or concerns at branuml@duvalschools.org

Welcome to GATE at Kernan Trail Elementary! I am so excited to have your child in my class this year. I grew up in Texas, Ohio and Florida, I spent the majority of my growing up years in Pensacola, Florida and graduated college from Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. After graduation, I taught English at a University in China for a year before moving back to Florida and marrying my husband. We lived in North Carolina for seven years before moving to Tennessee for four years. We are so happy to be back in Florida! This will be my 12th year teaching. I have primarily taught third - fifth grades math and science/STEM. I am so excited to teach in the gifted classroom this year. I look forward to getting to know and working with your child this year! I have two daughters, Emma who is almost 10 and Ellie who is 4.