The 2015-2016 school year is off to a great start for our Advanced Studies students! Our elementary schools are focused on providing rich, robust content area extensions for students who are ready to extend their learning beyond the classroom. These extensions are built to allow students to stretch their understanding beyond what is taught - to the level of 4 on the instructional scale and provide opportunities for students to showcase their interests and creativity while also diving deeply into the content.

Additionally, we are excited to launch an Elementary Math Challenge for advanced and gifted students in grades 3, 4, and 5. These “mathletes” will engage in problem-solving practice sessions and will compete in a national Noetic Learning Math Competition in April with the top 5 “mathletes” from each participating grade going on to a regional Math Challenge in May.

In our middle schools approximately 175 students are preparing to participate in our district-wide debate program. These students compete to persuade a citizen judge to vote for their school’s side of a situation. Students engage in a series of speeches and crossfires, which require them to use critical thinking skills to make their points and to address counterpoints.

At the high school level, our Advanced International Certificate of Education (AICE) and Advanced Placement (AP) programs continue to grow as more AICE and AP exams were taken last year than in the previous year. Last school year, a total of 4,699 AP exams were taken and 2,192 AICE exams were taken. This is in comparison to 4,420 AP exams and 2,007 AICE exams taken in 2013 – 2014. We appreciate the efforts of dedicated instructional personnel, parents, and students in increasing this Advanced Studies participation and look forward to another year of growth.

~ Kamela Patton, Ph.D.
Superintendent of Schools

Challenge, Rigor, and Teamwork Skills

Collier County's Academic Competitions and Programs provide a place for students to be challenged with rigorous content. Students expand their critical thinking and creative skills while developing leadership and teamwork skills. There are many choices available! We want all of our students to find a niche. Contact your child’s school for more details.

New Academic Competition

Every elementary school will have a 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade Elementary Math Challenge team that will be competing in a national Noetic Learning Math Competition. Noetic means reasoning, and the competition in April will have students matching their problem-solving skills with students across the country. The topics covered will include numbers and operations, geometry and measurement, probability and statistics, data and analysis, and algebraic thinking. The top five students from each grade in each school will continue on to a district Elementary Math Challenge in May.

Is Grit More Important Than Intelligence?
Make Sure Our Children Have Both.

By Mark Erlandson, Institute for Educational Advancement (http://www.educationaladvancement.org/grit-and-intelligence-2)

Mark Erlandson, the parent of a gifted student who presently attends a boarding school out East, is a former lawyer and public high school English teacher from Wisconsin starting a new business as a legal writing consultant.

Grit. I’ll admit I didn’t have it. Twice now I have put this blog down and stopped writing because I felt uninspired and bored. Weeks have gone by, and too many times to count I have ignored that voice telling me the deadline was approaching and I needed to get finished. So how essential is grit to success, and more importantly, how do we teach our children to get it?

“Grit,” otherwise known as persistence or determination, is currently a passion (some would call it a fad) in certain educational circles today. Angela Duckworth, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist, is a leading advocate of the importance of tenacity in life. Basically, she concludes, based, among other things, on her research of West Point graduates and National Spelling Bee contestants, that what correlates with success most is grit, not intelligence. Similarly, in the area of gifted students, the most famous study, conducted by University of Connecticut psychologist Joseph Renzuli, director of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, concluded that “task commitment,” together with ability and creativity, was, indeed, one of the three essential components of giftedness.

Duckworth believes that grit can be quantified. My score was a 2.25 on a scale of 1 – 5, with 5 being the grittiest, and concluded I am “grittier than at least 1% of the U.S. population.” Ouch, no wonder I can’t finish this blog. So what can we do to ensure our children will have grit when they need it?

First, stop praising your child for his or her intelligence. A Stanford University study found that children praised for their intelligence learned to care more about their grades than about learning on subsequent tasks, and after failing, they were less persistent than their unpraised peers. Instead, praise your children for their hard work and determination. Also emphasize to your children that intelligence can be improved through hard work. Another Stanford study concluded that students who believed that intelligence is malleable earned better grades during the next two years than those who believed that intelligence was fixed. (Carol Dweck, a Stanford University psychology professor, has a “growth mindset” test here designed to measure to what extent you believe that success comes from effort rather than innate intelligence or talent.)

Next, show kids the effect of grit in the real world. Everyone, for example, has heard the story of how Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team but continued to practice. Other examples might include Steve Jobs, who failed at several Apple projects and ended up losing control of the company for several years, and Andrew Wiles, a mathematician who ultimately proved Fermat’s Theorem after years of failure. Of course, as always, modeling for your children where you have used grit to be successful may be the best teacher. (Maybe I can get my daughter to read this.)

Watch for when your child becomes frustrated. Use this as an opportunity to discuss the everyday nature of frustration, and explain to him or her that this is an opportunity for growth. Finally, according to Paul Tough in his book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power Of Character, the best thing to do to develop the character of our children is to let them experience failure. As he states,

American children, especially those who grow up in relative comfort, are, more than ever, shielded from failure as they grow up. They certainly work hard; they often experience a great deal of pressure and stress; but in reality, their path through the education system is easier and smoother than it was for any previous generation. Many of them are able to graduate from college without facing any significant challenges. But if this new research is right, their schools, their families, and their culture may all be doing them a disservice by not giving them more opportunities to struggle. Overcoming adversity is what produces character. And character, even more than IQ, is what leads to real and lasting success.

So now that this blog is done, maybe it’s time to get that unfinished novel out again and prove Duckworth’s test wrong.

New Extensions Boards Engage and Challenge Gifted and Advanced Students: Two Schools Share Their Experiences

Extension boxes have been dispersed to all of the gifted cluster classes for grades 3, 4, and 5. The purpose is to provide extension activities for gifted and advanced students who are ready for extra rigor and depth in a subject. Students learn to work autonomously through the extension and will use a choice board to choose a way to present what they learned. Students are also asked to self-evaluate, which is an important skill for them to learn. Some of the topics include Life at Fort Caroline, Plant Structures, and Themes of Geography. More information can be found in an article below.

New Gifted Extension Boards on Marco Island

Missy Herrington - Tommie Barfield Elementary

“But Mrs. Herrington, I don’t know how in the world to draw my map to scale! Do I have to do that part?” When I first told my 5th grade gifted and level 4 thinkers at Tommie Barfield Elementary about the DE Extension Boards available to them, they were so excited! However, they quickly found out that the boards were not an activity they fly through and mark off of their “to do list,” but rather projects that require problem solving and critical thinking skills. Some welcomed the challenge, while others found that, perhaps for the first time, something was going to be “work.” Having taught many gifted and advanced students, as well as being a parent of a gifted child, I find that problem solving and work ethic are sometimes the biggest hurdles for these kids. Typically, schoolwork comes easily to them so that when faced with something they don’t know how to do, they lack the skills to begin solving the problem as well as the patience and stamina to see it through to completion.

The Tommie Barfield Elementary 5th Grade Team is so excited to be using these boards to challenge our students and equip them with those skills necessary for success not only in school, but in life. We are using the boards primarily during our ELA rotations for those students who need the opportunity to take Learning Goals to that Level 4 thinking.

When students have completed assigned classwork or exhibited early mastery of a concept, using their BYOD device or classroom laptop, they work on their chosen project from the Gifted Extension Boards. The choice menu allows students to choose activities that appeal to their learning style fostering their metacognition as they plan their approach, monitor their comprehension, and evaluate their progress. The teachers check in with them helping to facilitate their learning, challenging them to dig deeper, explain further, and consult with classmates also working on the boards. We especially encourage them to persevere even when the work gets tough.

We cannot wait to see how the students’ thinking changes as they continue to use these resources throughout the year, and I know they will be astounded as to what they can accomplish as these Gifted Extension Boards give them that nurturing push towards meeting their full potential.

New Gifted Extension Boards in Immokalee

Sylvia Rodriguez - Lake Trafford Elementary

The new Gifted Extension Boards are utilized in my classroom Monday through Friday during Gator Time, which is a 40-minute block. Through the use of interactive notebooks, students record information and illustrate their findings with diagrams, charts or graphs. These electronic extensions allow my students to be active learners. Primarily working in pairs, students make real-world scientific explorations by creating investigations and experiments focusing on real-world topics. Through collaborative research and small group discussions, students become the experts, the real scientists. My role is to scaffold the lesson and provide clarifications when necessary, serving as the “guide on the side,” not the “sage on the stage.”

One extension had the students research, record, and compare the growth rate of plants and analyze how various fertilizers affect plant growth. This topic, in particular, raised great interest in my students, since Immokalee is a predominantly agricultural region. It was awesome to have my fifth graders realize how the results of their findings can have a direct impact on their community! Because the level of interest is sufficiently high using the gifted extension boards, this allows my students to not only retain what they learn, but also transfer what they learn to new contexts. The students see the activities as personally meaningful, so they are willing to challenge themselves and persist in the face of difficulty, in an effort to accomplish a valuable, finished product.

Due to the high level of engagement, students are able to hold a profound grasp of what they learn. It is amazing to witness the enthusiasm in learning and personal confidence in my students on a daily basis

Global Perspectives Course Prepares Naples High School Students for College

Naomi Rothring - Naples High School

The Cambridge Advanced International Certificate of Education (AICE) Global Perspectives and Research course develops gifted and advanced learners by providing opportunities to explore and make judgments about issues of global significance. Students engage in digital learning and acquire disciplined and scholarly research skills in preparation for post-secondary studies. Understanding a variety of different perspectives helps nurture a climate of cross-cultural awareness and prompts self-reflection. “I never thought that writing a massive paper would be so exhilarating, but this class allows us to delve deeper into topics that expand our minds and excite our souls!” said Carmellina Moersch, a student in the class.

Students further develop their research skills through the in-depth study of an academic topic of their choice in connection with the Collier County Public Schools Advanced Studies Laureate Program. These learners analyze the structure and context of arguments, assess the credibility of sources, and use the evidence gathered to construct their own arguments. “The thorough research required for this class allows us to fully understand a topic that interests us while preparing us for how college research is conducted,” said student Kieran DiGiorno.

Not only does the Global Perspectives and Research class build on the higher-order thinking skills of analysis, evaluation, and synthesis, but it also fosters the students’ oral presentation and communication skills. The course gives gifted and advanced learners the necessary skills to be successful in higher education and employment. Francesca Martin, another student in the class, said, “Global Perspectives and Research is a class that is preparing its students for experiences beyond the classroom; the workforce will be receiving students well-versed in research, public speaking, and analysis.”