Student Challenge: Boy and Girl

A boy and a girl sit next to each other in class. "I am a boy," says the child with blue eyes. "I am a girl," says the child with brown eyes. Their teacher knows that at least one of them is lying. Which is the boy and which is the girl? For a blog point, place your answer in a closed envelope addressed to "Mr. Koch." Put your name and grade as the return address. Deliver it to Mr. Koch at school. p.s. If you can't find me, your teacher can put it in my mailbox too! p.p.s. You can add comments, but DON'T reveal your answer in the commen...

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Word of the Week: "brouhaha"

To earn a "blog point," study the word below, then add a comment and use the word in a sentence. You must use correct punctuation, capitalization and the word must be used correctly. A funny sentence is OK as long as it makes sense and is rated PG!...

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1st Grade Update: Stop Motion Movies

Our research on Thomas Edison led us into the fascinating world of early animation and some of the tools early animators used to create the illusion of movement and hence, "motion pictures." One of these early tools that Edison himself was inspired by was the thaumatrope. In a previous post, you can see that we made our own thaumatropes.  A more advanced early animation and motion picture tool was the kinetescope. It passed a series of...

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Student Challenge: Add a Line

By adding one straight line, can you make the following equation add up? 5 + 5 + 5 = 5 5 0 For a blog point, place your answer in a closed envelope addressed to "Mr. Koch" and with your name and grade as the return address. Deliver it to Mr. Koch at school. p.s. If you can't find me, your teacher can put it in my mailbox too! p.p.s. You can add comments, but DON'T reveal your answer in the commen...

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Student Challenge: Relatives

Riddle: Brothers and sisters I have none but this man's father is my father's son.Who is the man? For a blog point, place your answer in a closed envelope addressed to "Mr. Koch." Put your name and grade as the return address. Deliver it to Mr. Koch at school. p.s. If you can't find me, your teacher can put it in my mailbox too! p.p.s. You can add comments, but DON'T reveal your answer in the commen...

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Word of the Week: "bedlam"

To earn a "blog point," study the word below, then add a comment and use the word in a sentence. You must use correct punctuation, capitalization and the word must be used correctly. A funny sentence is OK as long as it makes sense and is rated PG! ...

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Student Challenge: Sunbathing Sea Lions

Some sea lions are lying in the sun on two rocks in the harbor. The sea lions on the larger rock shout over to the sea lions on the smaller rock: "If one of you comes over here, there will be twice as many sea lions in our group as in yours." The sea lions on the smaller rock reply: "Well, if one of you comes over here, our numbers will be equal." How many sea lions are there on each rock? For a blog point, place your answer in a closed envelope...

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5th Grade Update: Creating New Civilizations

There isn't anything too flashy to share for 5th grade, but we've been doing a LOT of ground work in terms of research and idea building for our civilization projects. After our research of various number systems from civilizations throughout history, students have begun designing their own number systems. Will it be a base 10? Base 5? Base 20? How many digits/numerals will it use? Ten like the Hindu-Arabic system we use today? How will you represent...

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4th Grade Update: Blueprints In Progress

The mysteries of The Wright 3 continue to deepen as our 3 main characters are gradually unraveling the strange but true history of the Robie House in Chicago. Along the way, though, we let the book send us off on related thinking challenges and projects, and one of those projects is to slowly design our own homes. Little by little we've learned some basic concepts of architecture and also focused on the Math that architects use. We've created a basic...

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3rd Grade Update: Hot Off the Presses!

Though it took some patience and some skilled hands, everyone has finished their kites! The back of each kite includes an executive summary of the famous event, including the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY and HOW of it all. Many have keys attached, and one student even brought in a mock Leyden jar just like the one Ben used to "trap" his electricity. After the "enlightening" experience of the kite projects, we did go back into Ben's childhood...

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2nd Grade Update: There's a SPRING in Our Step

You know from our last update post that we'd had the LEGOs out to do some attribute sorting and a creative design challenge. Well, we weren't quite ready to put them away so we constructed a little research unit on the history of LEGO. We used the book LEGO Toys by Kris Hirschmann as well as the video below as our primary sources and created research mindmaps. We then switched gears and focused on another classic toy--the pull back car....

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1st Grade Update: From Light Bulbs to Motion Pictures

Since our opening unit on learning styles and multiple intelligences, we've covered LOTS of ground researching Edison and related inventions.  We started with some traditional research using the text Thomas Edison and the Light Bulb and gathered our data into a class "big book." One of our major research questions was to discover what material made the best filament inside the light bulb for it to last the longest. Originally, light bulbs...

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Article: Can Emotional Intelligence be Taught?

Recently at our GT parent meeting, I stressed the importance of addressing the "affective" or "social/emotional" aspect of growing up gifted. This New York Times article discusses some of the current, ongoing research on the topic. Here are a couple excerpts from the article that might entice you to read more: "...school is an emotional cauldron  a constant stream of academic and social challenges that can generate feelings ranging from loneliness to euphoria. Educators and parents have long assumed that a child’s ability to cope with...

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