Gifted Services Department to Host Family Involvement Night

The Bucyrus Elementary Gifted Services Department is excited to host Bend Your Brain and Puzzle Your Friends, a Family Involvement Night for eligible Bucyrus students and their families, at 6:30 p.m. April 17 in the Bucyrus Elementary School auditorium.

As many of the lessons in the classroom are project based, students will be using the evening to share their personal projects as well as explain the learning process involved. Students will have the opportunity to talk about their work, summarizing activities and reviewing content knowledge as they share some of the highlights of this year's activities to date.

Student presentations will include the following:
- First Grade: Dinosaur Reports, Creative Writing samples, and Measurement Math projects
- Second Grade: Animal Reports and Powerpoints, Advertisements and Commercials for their "New Candy Bars", creative writing and Wordles
- Third Grade: Pocket Person Reports, Tall Tale Posters and Powerpoints, Fraction Books that students created, creative writing and Wordles
- Fourth Grade: Christmas Land, North Pole Geometry, Data Project and Patterns
- Fifth Grade: Chasing Vermeer movie posters, Chasing Vermeer chapter summaries, “Images of Greatness” research projects, Poetry Projects, Candy Cane Advertising, Data Project, Patterns and Centers

According to Gifted Coordinator Sandra Shields, the evening is an opportunity for parents to see how such services are delivered specifically at BES. “In the K-5 classrooms, students are cluster grouped to work with likeminded peers. Ms. Carissa Wiedle works directly with gifted students in grades 1-3 and Ms. Traci Wetterau is the Gifted Intervention Specialist (GIS) for grades 4-5.”

By working in an inclusion setting and in collaboration with the regular education classroom teachers, the GIS’s are able to pull in other high-achieving students to work with the identified gifted students so that each child’s academic and emotional/social needs are met. They cover the grade level standards but to a greater depth and breadth. The GISs design lessons to enrich and accelerate the students' learning.

Refreshments will be provided. For more information regarding the upcoming Gifted Family Involvement Night, contact Shields at 419-563-3125.