NOTE: FOR PROJECTS AND INFORMATION ABOUT ROCKET ENGINEER GREG KRAULAND’S VISIT, PLEASE CLICK HERE.

All GATE students began the year with a project called First Fascination. This project asked students to recall the first thing that ever fascinated them. The spark kindled that day ignited the lifelong desire to learn. Our fascinations ranged from bumblebees to bouncing balls, from numbers to insects.

This group also attended the Children’s Museum puppet Workshop and The Wind in the Willows at the Pittsburgh Playhouse.

In grade 2, students studied the digestive system. They tested various foods for starch and fat, constructed a set of teeth, used ice water to “find” their stomachs, and simulated bile breaking up fats. To review and celebrate their learning, the group played the Digestion Game. They had to make their own life-sized game board and follow a sometimes frustrating set of rules.

Our grade 2 math enrichment group used clay, toothpicks, and pictures to solve and write complicated math problems like this one:

I have five flowers that I will use to make headbands for my birds. Some flowers have five petals and some have six petals. I have 27 petals in all. How many flowers have five petals, and how many have six? Hurry—my birds are getting anxious!

(To find the answer, ask a 2^nd grader!)

This group also participated in the puppet workshop, learned about carnivorous plants at Phipps Conservatory, and attended an opera based on Mark Twain’s The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.  Click on the images below to enlarge.

In enrichment, our group read Misty of Chincoteague. We learned about the fragile co-existence between the world of humans and the world of nature. We also explored Marguerite Henry’s colorful use of language by personifying forces of nature.

Grade 4 GATE students wrote stories and graphic novels featuring chemical elements as superheroes. In the process, they learned the principles of change-based narrative. After completing the stories, they learned principles of Islamic geometric design using a compass and straightedge.

Grade 4 also took part in a radio broadcasting workshop at Bricolage Production Company and listened to sections of The War of the Worlds. They participated in an opera workshop, and attended The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.

Students in Grade 5 studied etymology, learning 35 Greco-Roman roots, and writing in ancient Greek and Phoenician. They also explored the world history that led to the evolution of our language. In another unit, the group read an adapted version of Cervantes’ Don Quixote and watched Man of La Mancha. The classic novel has been adapted to a variety of media, and students examined these to evaluate how the story and its interpretation changes with each new medium. 

This group also took part in an opera workshop, attended The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and participated in the North Hills Puzzle-lympics Tournament.

In the enrichment sessions, the grade 5 group considered the puzzles and oddities of Alice in Wonderland. These included parody techniques, concrete poetry, wordplay, paradoxes, conundrums of math and science, and reversals of logic. With an eye toward fraud and forgery, the group used these and other techniques to write “missing chapters” in the style of Lewis Carroll. Perhaps some of the following excerpts are good enough to slip by an unsuspecting auctioneer??

It started to get brighter. She was now capable of seeing the other person. Alice and the other person were both wearing the same thing. They looked exactly the same. Their hair, their face, and their clothing were exactly the same. “Oh my goodness!” said Alice. “You look exactly like me!”

 *   *   *

I

      Fell

               down

                        a hole             and tried to ask a rabbit for help

                                             but that didn’t work so well so I

                                                         started to cry

but crying didn’t help much for I had flooded the place

but I couldn’t help it because I had deeply missed my darling cat Dinah,

so then I tried to take a potion to make me smaller

because I needed to follow the rabbit into a small door,

but I forgot the key so that didn’t help so anyhow I flooded the place

                                 oh golly

I already said that my, things are getting foggy But,”

“STOP!”

The group also wrote, performed, and produced original radio dramas using a sound editing program called Audacity. 

FOR PROJECTS AND INFORMATION ABOUT ROCKET ENGINEER GREG KRAULAND’S VISIT, PLEASE CLICK HERE.