District B

District B held their annual workshop on February 6, 2010 at the Oak Grove Middle School in Oak Grove. Sue Winter talked about current events in Jefferson City and our (GAM's) hope for better funding for our programs. Rose Ernst stepped up next to ask the parents for their help in forming a parent group for our district. The parents completed a survey and those results and further information on the group will be coming soon. (Watch the GAM website and district emails.)

Cindy Sheets, our guest speaker, was able to inform the parents on some of the problems with praise and how to give praise correctly. The parents seemed to get a lot from this session asking many questions. Mrs. Sheets then followed up with several excellent ideas involving technology and sites and ideas for our students/children. Of course, after listening to the parents questions and thoughts I'm led to believe that a few of them probably went home to play too.

Our students were engaged on this morning with several different types of activities requiring them to stretch their brains. The students may have come out of their sessions telling parents that they built towers, squished their hands in oobleck, pantomimed stuff, or played with shapes. The teachers will tell you they stretched their brains with divergent, convergent, creative and logical thinking. And I will tell you that both groups seemed to have a fantastic time.

The classroom teacher workshop this year involved differentiation ideas for both gifted education and regular classroom teachers and featured Rick Wormeli's book, Fair Isn't Always Equal: Assessing and Grading in the Differentiated Classroom. Ellen Wright and Sue Winter facilitated with ideas and practical models the participants were able to take back and use in their own classroom. This group was able to pick up several new ideas and even hear from Cindy Sheets on the Response to Intervention model.

I would like to thank all our teacher volunteers for taking time from their busy schedule to come and play on Saturday. And thank you to all our participants for another successful workshop for District B.