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4th grade Explorations at Bradfield with Carol Lanning The students worked in groups to create a fictitious "enigma" creature, tunnel to Atlantis, sea monster, etc. They present it to the parents as a scientific fact with artifacts, blurry pictures (ex. Bigfoot), then are questioned by the parents and other students. The student answers are creative and thoughtful. Each group also made an Animoto video about their "discovery."
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Congratulations to the following students (all in TAG), who earned the top ten scores in the MIS/HPMS School MATHCOUNTS Competition on January 14 and 16:
Matthew Healy, Enayat Kapadia, Parker Lake, Amy Li, Justin Liang, Richard Luo, Ben Olness, Calder Sinak, Stacy Wang, Michael Zhan These ten students will represent HPMS at the January 31 MATHCOUNTS Dallas Chapter Competition at SMU. Top scorers in the Chapter competition will move on to MATHCOUNTS State in Austin on March 28. Thirty students in grades 5 through 8 participated in the two-day, after-school meet. Competition was extremely tight this year for those top ten spots. After the individual testing on Day One, Henry Wang and Justin Liang were tied for 10th place and had to battle it out in Day Two’s Countdown Round, a one-on-one head-to-head competition. In the Countdown Round, two students at a time sit at the front of the room, armed with buzzer switches, competing to see who can correctly answer three questions first. Meanwhile, the other students watch the fast-paced action and try to work the problems themselves. Justin Liang won the 10th place spot, while Parker Lake was the overall victor of the Countdown Round, defeating all his opponents, including our two tied-for-1st-place individual test scorers, Amy Li and Michael Zhan. Our top 5th grader was Justin Li, who actually tied 8th graders Henry and Justin Liang for 10th place, but he is ineligible to compete at Chapter because he’s not yet in 6th grade! Parth Nandekar came in first of all 6th graders. Thanks to Greenhill School for providing the buzzer-and-light indicator system, as well as to parent volunteers Angie Nouanesengsy, Lisa Sinak and Jennifer Lake for helping to run this event. The Math Team is coached by Sarah Beth Haigler and Randi Summer. We wish our team the best of luck at the January 31 MATHCOUNTS Meet at SMU! MIS TAG students in Ms. Turet's 5th grade Explorations class dissected a sheep brain.
Third grade TAG students at Armstrong dissect pig hearts.
The second grade Explorations students at Hyer Elementary were challenged to create an invention that would protect a raw egg when dropped from six feet. The students worked with partners and utilized Wallis’ Stages of Creativity to guide in the production of their inventions. It was fun to see all of the creativity and innovative thinking the students used to successfully complete this project.
Students in HPISD's Talented and Gifted programs are using analytical and critical thinking skills in their daily learning units. Here are just a few examples of the special learning occurring in our TAG classrooms.
Second-grade TAG students have been studying inventive thinking and inventors. After a lesson on the inventor, author and cartoonist Rube Goldberg, the students tried their hand at creating their own zany inventions. Keep an eye out for one of them on a store shelf one day. Third-grade TAG students are studying heart health. The students are looking forward to hosting several guest speakers in the near future, and they are especially excited to dissect pigs' hearts with assistance from a community expert. TAG students in fourth grade recently researched enigmas and developed their own cases for and against the reality of these enigmas. They also presented newscasts about enigmas, basing them on Orson Welles' infamous 1938 radio broadcast, War of the Worlds.
On October 31, several 6th and 7th grade students attended the TEDxKids event. Katrina Csaky, MIS 6th grader, was selected to do a performance of her original poem. She did an incredible job!
To see Katrina's performance, click HERE (look for Session 2 video, starting at time 17:36).
Bigfoot speaker from the Woodape Conservancy spoke to the Bradfield 4th grade Explorations.
 From the generosity of PC-TAG gifting, Amy Powers' 7th grade language arts students participated in Peter Nevland’s two-day writing workshop How to Write Awesomeness and Get Away With It on April 29-30. Peter’s workshops grab students’ attention and equip them with simple, powerful tools that make their writing spring to life. Students go from hating writing to loving it. Those who love writing do it better. After the workshop, teachers get exercises to use in their classes. Students in years to come will also benefit from these rich writing lessons. Peter is a writer and a graduate of University of Texas at Austin (website). Students discovered:
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