IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL EAT! Blueprints allow us to understand how buildings and machines are constructed. This group project saw all GATE students develop a blueprint of their favorite foods. It gives a whole new meaning to “lunch plans!”
Students in grade 6 examined the conflict that shaped and defined our nation—the Civil War. Each student specialized in one or two events of the war and reported on it from one biased side.
The GATE Group finished the year by writing palindromic poems. Read the poem backwards, line by line, and you'll see that the meaning also reverses!
After
reading an anthology of stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer, the enrichment group
illustrated a Singer story in the style of Marc Chagall, an artist whose life
experience mirrors Singer’s.
Sixth graders took a walk through
history as they travelled on the
Downtown Dragons tour. Students
learned about the iconography of
Pittsburgh's historic buildings, and
visited several, including the Courthouse, Dollar Bank, and the Union Trust Building.
Fifth graders “travelled the world” in search of history, recipes, and art. Each student produced a different type of product to share what they had learned.
After studying animal pigments, the group began a seascape project, using what they'd learned. It will be completed next year, but here's a sneak preview!
The enrichment group examined American 
historical documents to learn how events
of the past have led to words, and how we
might reflect ongoing actions in our own words.
In grade 5, students experienced real artifacts from America’s military at Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Hall.
Grades 5 and 6 also took part in the 2019 Puzzle-lympics tournament.
Grade four students learned about the push-pull forces that
power simple machines. They used those
machines to design Rube Goldberg-style contraptions that perform simple tasks
without the greatest of ease!
Fourth graders used basic probability formulas to temper the randomness of board games and tilt the odds in favor of one player….but not enough to discourage other competitors. This is the same principle of risk/reward found in gambling casinos.
Math is a language; a set of tools created/discovered
to serve human needs. In this group, we examine the way
people’s need to trade, to quantify, to express themselves
led to mathematical discoveries that reveal surprising
beauty and harmony.
Fourth graders from all four elementary schools worked together to complete various scientific tasks including bridge building, identifying insects, and controlling small robots in this year’s Science Olympiad.
We know that dogs think, but how do they use logic to solve problems? This exploration invites students to design experiments that build on the work of Duke University’s Canine Cognition Center to unlock the mental mysteries of man’s best friend. Additionally, we wrote advice columns for dogs and concocted interviews with them to see what's on their minds. (Spoiler alert--dogs think about food....a lot!)
From wallpaper to Warhol, repeated images fascinate us. Using principles of geometric symmetry, students created tesselations--shapes that interlock and reiterate across surfaces to form patterns as diverse as our imaginations.
This
enrichment group blended fact and fantasy to depict fire in many forms—a happy
birthday candle, an inviting fireplace, or a savage inferno.
In third grade, students learned about customs of many lands
as they toured the Cathedral of Learning’s Nationality Classrooms.
Over 300 students from grades 3-6 attended a live performance of Hansel and Gretel at Pittsburgh Opera. During intermission, several students got to meet the forest animals from Act Two. They seem tame enough…the animals are, anyway!
This represents the latest chapter in our long-standing partnership with Pittsburgh Opera.
This group took a trip to far-off places to learn about sports, fashion, and deadly creatures from around the globe.
Second graders paid tribute to some of our country’s greatest leaders by designing president-themed museums, complete with a symbolic statue.
After reading Hailstones and Halibut Bones, the group wrote short pieces to attempt to explain musical instruments to those who cannot hear them.
Some
of our most enduring and important truths have been taught to us through
stories. The most famous of these tales are
the fables of Aesop. Students in this
enrichment group adapted (and created) stories with morals into comic book
form.
Primary grade students visited the Frick Museum Complex,
touring the Carriage House Museum as well as Clayton.
Any day can become as special as you decide. That’s the lesson behind an enrichment group dedicated to creating holidays. Students learned about the purposes, artifacts, and traditions that define important world holidays, then applied the same techniques to fashion joyful, serious, and even silly holidays.
Kindergarten GATE students used their imaginations to envision what would happen if it rained butterflies! This group also wove and illustrated their own papyrus mats.
Wind, water, fossils, and even muscles—These provide some of the energy that powers our world. Guided by a dinosaur skeleton, kindergarteners learned how ancient creatures turned into oil, gas, and coal.