For the 6th year in a row, Birchland Park Middle School students built Rube Goldberg machines as part of the Gifted and Talented Program. Kids met after school once a week for three months, taking on engineering challenges. The grand finale was a Rube Goldberg machine, judged by members of our faculty and staff. The goal of the machine was to "make time fly without killing time"; that is, they would make a clock travel without breaking it. All the teams accomplished the task successfully.
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Read this Blog entry from a parent and former teacher, about traits of gifted kids.
http://crushingtallpoppies.com/2014/06/09/a-gifted-child-checklist-for-teachers/ The DIGITS Program brings STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) Professionals into 6th Grade Classrooms to teach kids about STEM careers. Volunteers from Hasbro visited all of the 6th grade science classrooms.
I am writing to you today to let you know that Mr. Allen, the Principal at Birchland Park, has informed me that the town of East Longmeadow is planning to cut the Gifted and Talented Program at the Middle School. If you and your children value this program, please let our superintendent and school committee members know. It would be a shame to lose this program which serves as an outlet and inspiration for critical and creative thinking within our school system. Suzanne Collins Gifted and Talented Education Birchland Park Middle School Rube Goldberg was an artist and an engineer who drew cartoons of crazy contraptions. After school, students have been getting together to solve Rube Goldberg Engineering Challenges. Awards are given out for creativity, teamwork, presentation and effectiveness. The team above won last week's creativity award! The team below, won the presentation award. Their enthusiastic presentation complete with costumes was a great success! I hope to add to the collection of videos on this site, but here are a few of the videos previewing LEGO Robots that my students built. I was able to purchase these kits through a generous grant from ELEEF: the East Longmeadow Educational Endowment Fund. My students really enjoy working with the robots! Visit the Birchland Park Scratch Studio to see some of the great computer programming projects that students have created this year in GT class. Scratch is a computer programming language developed at MIT for kids. Students get to be creative, and be problem solvers, while reinforcing math and literacy skills...and it's fun to boot! The Future City Competition takes place this Saturday in Boston. Three teams will be presenting the cities that they have created over the past few months. Here is a picture of the High Cliff City brochure. Wouldn't you like to take a trip to the future and visit their city? Letters for sixth grade GT pull out will be going home this week. Eligibility for GT is based on test results and grades, as well as teacher and parent evaluations.
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Ms. Suzanne Barricelli Collins
STEM Teacher at Birchland Park Middle School. Archives
June 2014
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