Target

Target Classes After Winter Break

Target classes will resume second semester on Monday, January 14. The first week back, all Target teachers will be in county-level training sessions.

We will welcome all of our new students to our classes the week of 1/14 as well!

Parents of students who have been tested for our program will receive the results in the mail next week.

New Blogs

The Target Teachers will each soon have their very own personal classroom blogs. Be on the lookout!

We will miss our Target students!

We hope each of you has a wonderful, relaxing summer! Best of luck to the fifth graders as they move on to middle school, and as for the rest of you... we'll see you next school year!

Please click the link below for a summer opportunity for your gifted child.

Download BEST Camp_1

Week of April 30, 2012 First Grade

We were off to a late start today, because we had the priviledge of watching the dress rehearsal of the second grade play.  It gives us something to look forward to, and we learned a lot from the information they presented.

We began our Target day with logic puzzles and word bogglers.  We then brainstormed the characteristics of a "big hearted person."  We read about Thidwick, who carried a number of pesty characters in his antlers, all the while being the perfect host.  After this, we learned about the three types of animal relationships:  mutualism, parasitism, and commensalism.  Be sure to ask your child to explain the differences to you.

We created a "moose," by tracing our hands and then made thumbprint animals who might live in his antlers.

NO HOMEWORK this week.  IMPORTANT:  THERE WILL BE NO TARGET CLASS ON MAY 11, DUE TO FIELD DAY!  OUR LAST CLASS WILL BE ON MAY 18.

Week of April 16, 2012 First Grade

This was a very short Target day due to the morning testing.  We began by challenging our brains with two logic puzzles.

This week, we read Horton Hears a Who.  We talked about the life skills and wonderful character traits displayed by Horton in this story and in the other story we read about him.  We then used a story frame to plan a new story we are creating with Horton as our main character.

Mrs. Bullard's students will finish writing their stories for homework and Mrs. Goldstein's will plan how they will solve their story problems.

 

Homework for all:  Do a "green deed" to help the earth in some way (suggestions are on the green sheet that went home this week.)  Come with your snack packed in a reusable container next week!

Week of April 13, 2012

We hope everyone had a wonderful spring break. It was nice to be back with our students this week. First graders learned and discussed a powerful lesson from our Dr. Seuss story, The Sneetches. The children had strong feelings about "prejudging" people and treating people unfairly. Groups brainstormed positive attributes they look for in friends. Students used their divergent thinking skills to create many unusual new symbols to represent equality. The class also refreshed there convergent thinking skills after the long break with a logic problem and analogy activity. Next week due to CRCT testing for older students, we will have a shortened Target day and not begin classes until after the morning testing period.

Week of March 19, 2012 First Grade

What a fun and exciting day we had today!  We started our day talking about variables in equations and wrote some equations with variables in them.  We also worked on some other convergent thinking activities to warm up our brains.

We read Horton Hatches the Egg and talked about what it means to be responsible and faithful to promises.  We also talked about situations when people took advantage of others and how things should be handled in such situations.

We then focused on "eggs."  We learned about the significance of eggs in many different cultures and then watched a PowerPoint presentation telling us about the Faberge Eggs.  We looked at a book with pictures of these eggs and then designed an egg of our own using plastic eggs, "gold and silver," and "jewels.  We also created a stand for our "Faberge Egg."  We are very proud of our artistry!

After this, we completed an "Imagine That" sheet using our divergent thinking to turn doodles into pictures.

Homework:  None this week.  Due to "Art Day" next Friday, there will be no Target.  We will resume classes after Spring Break.  We hope everyone has a safe and restorative break!

Week of March 12, 2012 First Grade

We warmed up our brains today by using our Convergent Thinkings skills.  We worked on logic puzzles, analogies, word bogglers and even did some "detective thinking" to link two otherwise unlike words.  We also used our math skills to determine answers to questions.

Today we had a "feetstival," because everything we did involved the subject of feet.  We read The Foot Book, by Dr. Seuss.   We discussed all the things that our feet, our hands, and our hands and our feet together could do.  We also read How Big is a Foot? which tells the true story of where the measure, "foot," came from, and then did several measuring activities involving the use of our feet and a ruler.  We wondered if the term, "ruler," came from the fact that 12 inches was the measure of a king's foot.  We read a story with foot idioms and discussed the literal and figurative meaning of each.  Some of them were really funny when we thought about the actual meaning of the words!

 

Week of March 5, 2012 First Grade

Today we do lots of convergent thinking with a logic puzzle, a word connections activity and some heavy duty Mathematical thinking.  We also share our "room cleaning machines."  We then read The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins and talk about the message in the story.  We discuss the type of ruler the king in the story is and about rights and fairness.  We think about a right we would not like to give up and use our divergent thinking to portray that right with a partner to our classmates.

Week of February 13, 2012 First Grade

Our first grade Target day begins with a lesson on the concept of "balancing," to prepare students to think in terms of equations as being balanced.  We use physical balances and combine different objects to see how many of each it takes to balance our scales.  We then continue using our "convergent" thinking to solve logic puzzles and a word boggler puzzle.

Before reading our Seuss book, we talk about the concept of rhyming words and brainstorm lists of rhyming words.  We then work individually to complete a rhyming activity.

Our story this week is Green Eggs and Ham, a book that Seuss wrote on a dare from his publisher who bet him that he could not write a book using no more than 50 words.  Obviously, Mr. Geisel (Dr. Seuss) won!  We talk about the fact that the boy in the story doesn't want to try something new.  We make connections with our Target day, which has lots of new things for us to try.

We use our "divergent" thinking to transform the shape of a green egg into something that has nothing to do with an egg at all.

NO HOMEWORK this week!