Kathy Gavin

Confratute is without a doubt the best professional development activity I am engaged in all year! So once again I am excited to work with teachers in my strand, Mentoring Mathematical Minds: Teaching Math to Talented Elementary Students. The investigations we explore come from the Project M³, an NAGC award-winning series of curriculum units, for mathematically talented elementary students. I have found that the best way for me to understand students' thought processes as they engage in an activity and learn how they come to know the mathematics is to do the activity myself. In this strand, you will immerse yourself in several investigations and explore how your students think and act like mathematicians as they work with engaging and advanced mathematics.

For example, in one investigation students are the mathematicians on a Himalayan expedition out to discover the Yeti. They find a very large footprint that they determine must be from this creature. Unfortunately, all their measuring tools were lost when their backpack fell through a crevasse during a blinding snowstorm! They only have an unsharpened pencil and use it to figure out that the footprint measures two pencil lengths. They (and you) are now back in the lab and must create a life-size Yeti with this information. Each small group is given some paper and supplies and assigned a particular body part (right leg, left hand, etc.) to sketch and cut out. They must work together to figure out how to do this using math problem solving skills and creativity. They record their steps. Finally, they present their findings to the class and we tape together the body parts to create a complete Yeti.

Here is a sample of one our Confratute Yeti's!

Our motto for all our curriculum investigations is "The math begins when the game ends." So we now discuss how the creature looks. Why is the right leg much fatter than the left leg? How come the left hand is short and stubby compared to the right hand? Besides using critical thinking to analyze their measurement process, students are engaged in proportional reasoning, an advanced math concept, and put it to use to rectify the design.

I look forward to creating a Yeti with you this summer along with many more math investigations that promote the 3 E’s of Confratute (Enjoyment, Engagement and Enthusiasm for Learning) while nurturing math talent in your students.

Kathy Gavin
University of Connecticut
mkatherinegavin@aol.com

 

Benjamin Lacina

It's been almost 10 years (nine years and 49 weeks to be exact) since I first heard Mo Willems articulate an idea in the adult world that has powerful transfer to the kid world. Perhaps it is even more coincidental that the Final Four is taking place in the Twin Cities this weekend.

You can find his original sentiment on National Public Radio in 2009, when Willems was their Resident Radio Cartoonist, and again in 2013 when speaking with CNN. "There is a day in everybody's life when they realize that they're not going to be a professional basketball player and they're not going to be a professional cartoonist. It's usually the same week," he said. "But people keep playing basketball. And they stop drawing. And I just think that that's such a waste."

Why is this still timely? Because kids and families are still asking for the arts and creativity to be alive and well in the classrooms of 2019. When we take away the opportunity to practice those skills and work those creative muscles, they atrophy, just like in an activity like basketball.

As the new Supervisor for Talent Development and Acceleration Services in Saint Paul Public Schools this fall, I have engaged with more families over more hours than I can count of one-on-one phone conversations about children's test results and portfolio review results. (Beyond universal CogAT screening of kindergarten and second grade students, Saint Paul's identification process also includes a portfolio review that allows teachers and families to submit artifacts or evidence of a particular child’s exceptional talents, skills, and abilities, that may not show up on a CogAT.)

Reflecting back on these phone calls with families, two things struck me: a) kids’ artistic and creative production are major indicators to the adults around them of out-of-the-ordinary thinking and exceptionality; and b) opportunities for students (identified or not) to “show up” in the classroom and engage those parts of their brain continue to take a back seat to skills-based mindsets in education—and families are searching for these opportunities for their kids.

In my Confratute strand, I'm excited to engage participants in thinking about creativity in new ways, starting with their own talent development and using that mindset when developing learning environments for students. We will work with tools that integrate perception, reflection, and inquiry (all while slowing down the pace of the world around us) to "go slow to go fast." As a bonus, these tools are great for staff rooms and classrooms alike, so instructional leaders outside the classroom may be interested in attending as well.

We need strategies for engaging our creative brain, and these need not be impeded by our lack of identifying as "creative" or "artistic" ourselves. Skills are often just new vocabulary—kinesthetic practices for our muscles, thinking strategies for our brains. This means practicing seeing, hearing, drawing, rhyming, moving—and more. We will practice these to expand our skill set—our toolkit—so that more aspects of teaching and learning will honor the creativity that our students automatically bring with them to our classrooms—and those (sometimes) dormant energies that lie beneath the surface of ourselves.

And, as an additional bonus, I'm also excited to back directing the ConfraChorus, when I get to be your personal trainer!

 

Brian Housand

Now that spring has officially arrived, summer is just around the corner, and that means one thing: Confratute can not be far away! Ever since my very first Confratute in 2003, each summer I have looked forward to making the trek to Storrs, Connecticut for a week filled with learning, laughter, and connecting with old friends and making new ones. I have had the opportunity to be a part of numerous professional learning events, but quite honestly, none compare to the transformational experience that is Confratute.

This year to heighten the anticipation for Confratute 42, strand coordinators have been invited to contribute to the Confra-Blog an idea or strategy from their strand. Since this was partly my idea, I have been asked to compose the first post.

I am excited to present Using the Schoolwide Enrichment Model with Technology along with Angela Housand. This session is based on the book by the same name that Angela and I wrote along with Joe Renzulli. In our strand, we reexamine the Enrichment Triad and how today's technology tools can be meaningfully integrated with the model. As a part of the strand, we share a variety of Google Drive templates and thinking activities designed to prompt curiosity and deepen thinking that were developed in conjunction with the book.

One of my favorite activities that Angela and I developed is based on the concept of examples and non-examples. We combine this concept with what we refer to as a "messy problem" that has multiple correct answers. This is an idea that we borrowed in part from Sesame Street called One of These Things Is Not Like the Other. Students are given a prompt with four images that are all related but slightly different. The challenge is to examine the relationship between the images and determine how they are all alike and how they might all be different.

While the activity as it presented does begin to encourage students to push their thinking in new directions, the real thinking comes not in responding or consuming prompts that have already been created for them, but instead in creating their own. To help facilitate this, we have created Google Drive templates for you and your students to utilize.

To view the Google Drawings version go to bit.ly/sem-tech-other
To make a copy go to bit.ly/sem-tech-other-copy
To view the Google Slides version go to bit.ly/sem-tech-other-slides
To make a copy go to bit.ly/sem-tech-other-slides-copy

I have written more extensively about this strategy and how to use it in your classroom on my blog at http://www.brianhousand.com/blog/one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other. There you can also find over 100 teacher created examples for you to use in your classroom if you so desire.

In additional to this strand, I am thrilled to teach a brand new strand this year entitled Utilizing Technology to Promote Creative Productive Giftedness. Together, we will confront a new technological challenge each day and work to transform it into an opportunity for creative productivity. Along the way we will examine ways to meaningful integrate a curated collection of tools designed to specifically reduce distractions, track progress toward goals, increase productivity, be more creative, and basically get stuff done. I hope you will join me in this exciting and new journey.

While it is only March, I anxiously look forward to being reunited with my Confratute family this summer and welcoming new members into this dynamic community of educators. I will see you all soon.

Brian Housand
@brianhousand
brianhousand.com
University of North Carolina Wilmington