ELEMENTARY CAPSTONE EXPERIENCES LEAD TO HIGHER LEARNING
ox Chapel Area FOX CHAPEL AREA SCHOOL NEWS
ELEMENTARY CAPSTONE EXPERIENCES LEAD TO HIGHER LEARNING
This year , Fox Chapel Area rolled out a new elementary gifted curriculum that is designed to enrich the studies of both gifted and high-performing learners . The curriculum includes three capstone experiences and provides a cross‐curricular project-based approach to learning . The first , creative connections , was English Language Arts ( ELA ) -based in which students wrote and published their own books . Students learned engineering concepts as they worked on a series of design challenges in the second capstone experience , innovative inquiry . The third capstone experience , application avenue , is math-based , and students , depending on their grade level , are engaging in either a stock market challenge with virtual money or a data analysis project .
“ We are thrilled about the changes to the curriculum and have seen our students grow as a result of these efforts ,” said Ashley Nestor , the district ’ s executive director of elementary education and instruction .
Students Write and Publish Their Own Books
Inspired by the “ Encyclopedia Brown ” series of books , O ’ Hara Elementary School third grade friends Sam Troutman and Michael Costello worked together to write “ The Mystery of the Disappearing Act .” Sam said he likes coming up with ideas and “ I just wrote them down as they came to me .” Michael added , “ We just made it up , beginning to end . It was really exciting !”
The O ’ Hara students are referring to the ELA capstone experience that included both gifted and high-achieving students from all four elementary schools who wrote and published their own books .
“ The purpose of the creative writing strand is for students to learn to love to write without being constrained ,” O ’ Hara Elementary School gifted support teacher Kara Cornett told parents at a recent Authors Share day in which 18 third grade authors shared their soon-to-be-published works . The Authors Share was part of the new ELA creative connections capstone .
Two O ’ Hara students shared their stories about the adventures of Turtle Guy at the Authors Share event .
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The young O ’ Hara authors wrote fantasy , mystery , and adventure stories – the types of stories in which these students are interested . Ms . Cornett said that students learned about prewriting , writing , revising , and “ editing , editing , editing ” over the 10-week process . “ At the beginning of the project , there were some reluctant writers out there , but they have become passionate about writing ,” she said . Now they were ready to share their works , Ms . Cornett told parents who attended the authors ’ presentations . “ I can personally say that there are great , great stories out there .”
The young student authors met with their teacher for two 45-minute periods a week to write their books . Here , gifted support teacher Tammy Balestrino works with Hartwood Elementary School students .
Nora Kelley and Atia DiGioia worked together to write “ Evergreen Academy ” and the book ’ s cover features original artwork by Nora . Both girls said they like to read fantasy books , and not coincidentally , their original story is a fantasy in which characters they created are in a forest and enter through a portal to get to school . Nora said , “ I liked to use our imagination to think about characters , setting , and plot .”
At Hartwood Elementary School , “ We ’ ve got some fact finders ,” gifted support teacher Tammy Balestrino reported about her young creative connections participants . “ These kids like to know about certain things .” One student wrote a book on Gettysburg , one on 9-11 , and one on Pittsburgh .
A Hartwood Elementary student works on his original book .
Mrs . Balestrino said creative connections covers important concepts such as figurative language ,