GT update and news

Parents,

It is hard to believe it is already March! I have just a few quick updates for you all this week. Part of advocacy for our gifted learners involves dispelling dangerous myths that are prevalent in the larger community. As such, I have attached an interesting article by Steph Tolan titled, " Is it a Cheetah?" http://www.stephanietolan.com/is_it_a_cheetah.htm. The author uses a cheetah metaphor to help view the problem with achievement based orientation about gift learners. I also attached an article from NAGC (National Association of Gifted Children) titled, " Myths about Gifted Students".  http://www.nagc.org/myths-about-gifted-students. As always, I welcome your thoughts, reflections and feedback.

Five of our students performed at the City Written on Saturday, February 16th. Lailah Lavizzo, Abby Bismuth, Ryan Tanner, Delina Mesfin and Emerson Shurter all represented our ITBS Semantics Team. Abby was our team winner. Huge congratulations to our DPS Semantics Team for their incredible tenacity and hard work this year. For the remainder of the year, I will be facilitating a Latin group. We will continue to learn commonalities of various languages with tips for spelling within each. At both of the oral Bees this year, some of our students made it to the round where they ran out of the Scripts words and picked any word in the Webster dictionary. We learned quickly that studying the dictionary would take an incredible amount of time. Instead, we will focus our studies on prefixes, suffixes, roots, Latin and Greek and learn common tips for spelling.

The Spring Noetic Math Competition will happen on April 4th or a day or so earlier. If you have changed your mind about your child's participation, please reach out and let me know.

The slides from the GT Parent information night are posted on our school website. We will be scheduling another event to discuss the social/emotional aspects of giftedness and hope to see you there. 

Alison and I have facilitated ITBS testing for a very large number of students. Please be on the lookout for identification letters that will be sent home with your child. We are also sending home results from the recent ITBS achievement testing in reading and math. If you have questions, please reach out and we will be happy to help.

It is a pleasure and a gift to work with your children. I appreciate your ongoing support of our program. 

In partnership,

Rebecca Mercer

GT Teacher/STL