Pruett's AIG Blog for IBJ

3 Third grade CogAT results were mailed to all families this week. The IBJ AIG Services Committee will meet in early January to begin the qualification process. With new qualification standards, students will continue to qualify based on available data. Enrichment Study Groups   Both 4th and 5th grade ESG have been deeply involved with “Great Rescue” simulations. Although a couple of teams have completed their missions, we’ll have to wrap up after winter break 4:  Great Solar System Rescue Teams collaborate to locate and save four space probes lost in the solar system. 5:  Great Ocean Rescue Teams collaborate to locate and solve four ecological disasters around the world. Ask your kids about this work! It can be contentious and challenging! Advanced Subject Group Math   4:  Hands On Equations This work uses math tools to make abstract algebra concrete. Students work through seven self-paced lessons - with challenging word problems at the end! W

Today we had a brief but poignant meeting to honor the participants in the Noetic Math Competition. Everyone was honored with certificates, and I was touched by the celebratory applause for each/every student! Our Team Winner and National Honor (top10%!) winner received medals from Noetic. Here's a  LINK  to the Noetic awards page. Happy Holidays, you marvelous mathematical minds!

Our last story from Junior Great Books in fourth grade was Lois Lowry's Crow Call . It's a sweet story about a daughter and her father going on a crow hunt. Doesn't sound sweet, maybe, but perhaps it's helpful to know that no crows were harmed! Liz, the story's protagonist, learns a lot about her father during their time together. Fourth grade AIG reading students were to sum this up in a diary entry from Liz about her father. Here's a good example: Dear Diary, After going hunting I believe that my daddy is trying to make a stronger relationship with me. Letting me have cherry pie that early in the morning proves that he is trying to improve his relationship with me. Of course the war might have changed his parenting. I learned that there is something he didn't lose... his love for me, my sister, and my mother. I know this because he is caring for me and my family super well. I know why my daddy didn't shoot the crows - because when he saw ho

Occasionally, AIG students have an opportunity to work with ThinkFun games. These games are visual and logical. They allow students to think and manipulate shapes in lots of different way. Typically they start fairly easy and become more challenging rapidly. Students often struggle with higher-level tasks, and that's great! Even if they can't immediately solve the puzzles, it's that effort that builds synapses in their brains to become better thinkers and students!

Hey, here's our latest winner from the IBJ 4/5 Grade Math Problem of the Week! Congratulations!

IBJ is fortunate to have Mrs. Julie Brown as a math specialist. As our work has recently involved the review of angles and their measurement, I jumped at the chance to extend this to work with compasses! These math students completed an assignment that involved geometry, measurement, fractions, and not a little fine-motor coordination! All to make a lovely holiday object! Not everyone, btw, was able to complete this assignment!

I discovered this doodle on a Hands-On Equations sheet today. It made me smile! I know just how they feel!

Noetic Learning is an organization dedicated to bringing high-quality mathematics learning materials to students, parents and educators. This year Jones had 23 contestants in the fifth grade competition  who took pencil and paper in hand with over 20,000 students from 473 schools. Noetic honors students scoring in the top 10% nationwide as well as those with the highest score in their school. There are medals for both awards! This year, our sole National Honor and Team Winner is Lily Foo . Lily’s perseverance in the face of a VERY challenging exam led her to this honor. Noetic also honors Honorable Mention efforts, those scoring in the top 50% nationwide. Jones has 6 such honorees:  William Euler, Liam Cooley, Emery Fishcher-Schmidt, Isaac Fertel, Gray Martin, and Jameson Swinger. This contest was sponsored by IBJ PTO and supported by Sarah Cain, Marvin Smith, John Pruett, Julie Brown, and Jenn Warren. You'll hear more around 12/18 when we'll award thes

It has been my pleasure to learn more about and help out a bit with Science Olympiad. Ms. Ross's efforts have been amazing, and I look forward to moving toward to actual competition. This week students were assessed about their scientific knowledge AND took place in a cool construction challenge. Here they are hard at work:

Here's another math student accepting the award for successfully completing the Problem of the Week! Remember, correct responses are entered into a drawing. Keep up the good work, Jones' Mathletes!

You may know that IBJ was privy to many visitors from the Revolutionary War era today. Here are some snaps of some of our distinguished guests.

The results from the fifth grade Noetic Math Challenge should be in this Friday. Here's a couple of snaps from some participants, hard at work! The challenge was just that - a challenge! The work was quite difficult, and that's a good thing. Brains develop neurons and get bigger, stronger, and faster when faced with challenge!

You never know where our dynamic principal will be! Or what she'll be up to! Here she is reading to Mr. Brown's class! Happy Turkey Day, y'all!

Fourth grade students in our advanced subject group for math have been working with tools to help understand (and solve!) equations. This system of hands-on materials is called Hands-On Equations. We began this work with review of expressions and equations before moving on to solve fairly complex equations with the pieces (math tools!) shown. Students will work through seven lessons and then some word problems. Ideally we'll wrap this work up prior to winter break. Ask your young scholars about this work! Here are some snaps to show kids at work:

Maybe you've heard of Shirley Jackson, the author who wrote The Haunting of Hill House  and the famous story The Lottery . She also wrote a great story called Charles that was the focus for a fifth grade AIG reading group. In this story, a young student makes up a character to hide his atrocious actions at school. Sorry for the plot-spoiler! Students were asked to write letters from Laurie's teacher to his parents as a culmination of our reading. Here are a couple of them. You should note there are no last names in the story, so there's some creativity in filling in. Dear Mr. and Mrs. Washington, Laurie has had some difficulties in the first couple weeks of school, but is definitely adjusting. He needs to learn to work with other kids and he definitely needs to learn to respect adults. He has had to be smacked some times and can definitely improve. Moving past all these naughty things, he is now mostly a helper. What I must ask though, is where did he learn such l

As many of you know, I'm an avid reader. One way this manifests itself is through my classroom library. I've got a pretty good selection of books, both fiction and non. Students can always check them out. That having been said, it hasn't been prevalent. However, this student found a good one, Pygmalion , and I asked him to present a brief review. Enjoy!

Mrs. Brown and I have begun offering a Math Problem of the Week to all fourth and fifth graders. Each week students can choose to participate by taking a problem sheet, completing it, and returning it to Mrs. Brown or myself. The contest will begin each Wednesday. Responses should be returned by the following Wednesday when a new problem will be available. Correct responses will enter a random drawing for prizes. Congratulations to him and our future winners!

Our wonderful PTO provided a great new screen for the Jones Media Center. Here it is in action - broadcasting a simulation for some fifth grade students.

While languidly lurking in Mrs. Dancy-Jones's creative class, I surreptitiously spied this spooky sonnet. (Well, it almost has 14 lines!) It's by a mystery student - who said I could publish it. Enjoy some poetic vocabulary and have a Happy Halloween! In the dead of night a deadly spider devours the struggling insect. Suddenly a black cat leaps out of the fog. Unseen werewolves howl in the mist.. A buzzing street swarms with masked faces. While skeletons walk on the crowded street. Dead zombies roam with buckets of candy at their sides. Glowing houses wait for eager kids to approach. Transparent ghosts hang at every doorstep. Disguised children engulf each door with laughter. Sweet candy is gobbled up quickly by grinning faces. Above a black bat beats its wings. Haunting spirits lurk in the shadows. The spirit of Halloween is everywhere! BTW, it's an early release today, so remind Mrs. D-J how awesome she is and get an early start on y

Fifth grade students will have the opportunity to take part in the Noetic Learning Math Contest on November 10th. This competition provides hundreds of students across America the opportunity to take a paper-and-pencil math assessment results from which are ranked and shared. As I understand it, officially participating students in the top 50 percent nation-wide will receive certificates, and those who are in the national top 10 percent will receive medals. Results will be published on the Noetic website:  http://www.noetic-learning.com/ Schools can have up to 30 participants. Participants MUST have a signed permission slip turned into me NO LATER than November 4th . Should we receive more than 30 participants, I'll facilitate all students - however, some may not be on the official role.  I will prioritize AIG math students and then in order of permissions received. Letters from me including the permission form went out yesterday and today. Please be in touch with any questi

Monday saw AHS's marvelous theater program coming to Jones to present plays based on the Jack Tales. Many of our students were able to attend these well-produced plays. They seemed to be a big hit! Plus, Jones students were exceptionally well-behaved! It is AWESOME for our students to see live theater!

Fifth and fourth grade enrichment study groups are currently involved with simulations called The Great Ocean Rescue and The Great Solar System Rescue. In this work, students adopt the role of certain scientists. Fifth graders are environmental scientists, geologists, oceanographers, and marine biologists. Fourth graders are historians, geologists, astronomers, and meteorologists. There is background reading for each science. Students must use information provided by video 'transmissions' along with their background reading to work with fellow scientists to make decisions. Fifth graders are solving ecological disasters around the globe while fourth graders look for space probes lost in our solar system. What strikes me about this work is the absolute necessity to work as a team. In addition to advanced content, collaboration is often challenging for our students. This year students will also rotate through all four sciences (with each of four missions) so they'll be exp

So these intrepid mathematicians were able to excel at making 7-digit numbers. Not just randomly making them, mind you, but using randomly generated numbers to make extremely specific numbers!

In fourth and fifth advanced subject groups for reading (ASGR in AIG acronym lingo), students have been reading selections from Junior Great Books (JGB). The Great Books Foundation has long been a proponent of higher order discussions. The JGB series provides excellent literature selections with open-ended questions for discussions and culminating written responses. BTW, upon qualification third grade will also use this model. Here are some snaps to clarify: Reading Discussing Responding

I have been in third grade classes over the last week or so in preparation for the Cognitive Abilities Test - to be administered to all third graders next week. We (students and I although some un-named teachers have been super-interested!) were going over types of problems they will see on the CogAT. These problems are really like puzzles, and I've been relieved to see how comfortable students have been with them - even when they get more challenging! In Ms. Leppard's class today, I was in time to see part of their morning meeting. Each morning they have a greeting - today's was bon jour -  that they share with a handshake around the circle. It was so cool! What an incredible way to build community and global citizenship. Please don't think that this is the only class where I've seen such awesome stuff! I have been SO impressed with the level of teaching, learning, and engagement in all these classrooms! Third grade rocks!