Marie T. Culver
Gifted Resource
Last updated 12/3/2008
S.A.P.L.I.N.G.S.
(Students and Parents
Learning Intellectual Growth Strategies)
Marie
T. Culver, Gifted Resource Teacher November 2008
427-1880
mariet.culver@vbschools.com
A Message From Your GRT
I am so very appreciative for the
opportunity to work with the kindergarten and first grade students and teachers
each week. Holland Elementary is one of fifteen
Virginia Beach Schools that participate in the SAPLINGS-Emerging Scholar
Initiative Program. Each week, the
teachers and I work collaboratively together to focus on critical, creative,
logical, problem solving, metacognitive, and
questioning skills with the children.
“Kid Watching” is a big part of our program as we watch and hear the remarkable thoughts
of our emerging scholars. As kindergartener, Breyona
pointed out, “Mrs. Culver, you’re writing our brains down!” The kindergarten
and first grade classes are bursting with energy, deep thinking, and big ideas
about our world. During this time of
year that we give thanks, I am so thankful for the children, teachers, parents,
administrators, and our community that make my job as a gifted resource teacher
so rewarding. Happy Thanksgiving!
Kindergarten Highlight
We have been stretching our brains and
sharing our incredible thoughts with each lesson developing the theme of Explorations. We have had five lessons including “School
for Bears”, “Cat Quizzer”, “Q is for Duck”, “Birthday Presents”, and “The
Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin”. We have problem solved with bears and grids,
played 20 questions with the mystery pumpkin, created pumpkin questions with
our question cubes, generated creative responses for our letter riddles, discovered
new name riddles, mapped out a mind map of a birthday celebration, and problem
solved a math problem with jack-o-lanterns! Elyas was
thinking about how he solved his problem in “The School for Bears” and he said, “It reminded me of playing chess
because you move pieces a certain way.”
During “Q is for Duck” Hayla created “T is for 
elephant because they tap flies off their back with their tail.” Lorenzo produced,
“E is for 
whales because they eat fish!” One of our kindergarteners created a name riddle, “C is for Emily because I like to watch the clouds.” Emily M.
created, “P is for Emily because I like to pop
popcorn. Lilli analyzed which is
harder to make a riddle with the book or one on your own at your seat. She
stated, “It was harder on the carpet with the book because I had to think about
stuff the animals do.” Our
kindergarteners used their creative problem solving skills by determining what
to do if a dinosaur came into our backyard during the story “The Cat Quizzer”. Karlie
said, “I would run to the beach because dinosaurs don’t like to get too hot!”
Josiah added, “I would call the animal control and they would put the dinosaur
into the truck and take him to the zoo!” 
During “Birthday
Presents” Jabin brainstormed what a celebration
was and he said, “A celebration is when you ride on a roller coaster.” The
lesson, “Pumpkin Jack” was
collaboratively created using fat and skinny questions and 
making a mindmap
of the life cycle of a pumpkin. Tysean made an
observation of a changing pumpkin that “the pumpkin is going to decay because
it is turning gray.” Lorenzo made an amazing observation of the pumpkin in the
snow and said, “He is flat as a pancake.” He added, “As the days passed it got
flatter and flatter.” Lorenzo commented on the change that he was hoping for
was that “the pumpkin would turn orange to be ripe and to be good and fresh!” “Pumpkin Jack” ended with “Welcome back,
Jack!” Karlie shouted out right after the teacher
read it and exclaimed, “I 
knew he would come back! I knew he couldn’t
grow in his bedroom because he needed dirt to live!” Joshua problem solved why
pumpkins were called “little treasures” and he said, “They’re like a golden
flower.”
“The Wizard of Oz was right
when he said to believe in ourselves….Like Dorothy, we must be true to
ourselves and allow others to help us reveal the answers that are already
inside of us.” ~Brain Koslow
First Grade Highlights
First graders have been focusing on our
theme of Patterns with “Archibald Frisby”, “Z
was Zapped”, “Shape Space”, “Alien Animals” and “The Pumpkin Circle.” It is
always fascinating to think like a scientist as we take a closer look at
Archibald Frisby and his love for science and the
real world. We identified fat and skinny
questions and used the question cubes to generate more questions about science
and our world. Ikaika created the science question, “Why
is the sun so bright?” Alyssa asked, “Why do we have a moon?” and “How do the
bees make honey?” Remi produced the questions, “How
will a fish survive in a shark’s stomach when it is alive in the water?” And,
“How will a volcano explode?” Amazing Questions! The Z was definitely zapped in
first grade with many creative ideas about letters. Javil stated, “The H was happy because he 
was
hibernating.” Daryn says, “The H was hardly hurt!” Aria wrote, “The
H was happily handed over.” Jalen says, “The H
was happily hatched!” The String Game found its way into our class to use
critical and problem solving skills. The children got tangled up into many
ideas of how shapes are alike and different. Alien animals invaded Room 22 with Squirks, Urts, Gleeps, and Rulps to incorporate
critical, 
creative and problem solving skills. Our first graders used some creative problem
solving tools to create an ending to the story, “Alien Animals”. Jaylen produced, “The SPCA could watch the aliens for a
month. They would take good care of them.” He added, “The aliens had to go
there because they were too hyper!” Ceniya stated,
“The aliens would arrive in a rocket ship.” She added, “It 
started with a fire and then it went to
Earth and the fire made the rocket move!” Kayla created, “The aliens arrived by
flying with their powers and they had disappearing powers.” “The Gourd Experiment” was collaboratively
developed to focus on scientific investigation and our first grade young
scientists created their own experiment with a gourd, water, and a 
container. The gourds were actually planted
as seeds during the spring in our very own Holland’s
Secret Garden and picked as a crop in the fall for our experiment and to observe life cycles. Sean
designed an experiment to test to see if the water will rise when he adds the
gourd to the water. Remi created an experiment to see
if the gourd will sink or float in the water and the water will come from the
sink.” Samantha stated, “I want to study gravity and find out if it will
float.” Anthoni wanted to discover “if the gourd went
in the water will the water go up”? Problem solving, logical thinking and
questioning at its best in first grade! Predictions and conclusions were
developed independently and shared. Taylar predicted,
“I think the gourd will sit on the water because the water is heavier than the
gourd.” We discovered that a gourd does
float even though it is very heavy! Ask your first 
grader why the gourd floats as we were able
to see the inside of it! “The 
graders are great risk takers! Ceniya contemplated why pumpkins know exactly what to do
and said, “Pumpkins need love to have strength and the strength helps the
pumpkin think!” We also discovered that the pumpkin’s life
cycle is very similar to the gourd’s life cycle that we discovered in our
garden with our experiment. Michael discovered that the “
time.” He added, “First, you plant it and
it goes all the way back over and over again.”
Julie focused on the idea of what happens to the pumpkin when it goes
back to Earth by stating, “The seeds help new pumpkins grow. When it goes into
the earth, it makes more. Then the seeds fall out and more pumpkins grow.”
Julie’s connection to nature was when she grew a maple tree from a seed at home
and planted it in our “
“Use
what talent you possess: The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except
those that sang best. ~Henry Van Dyke
Our SAPLINGS
program provided our first graders and parents the opportunity to visit Norfolk’s
Chrysler Museum on Saturday, October 4th. We had 20 students, 20 parents, and our
faculty members: Ms. Barks, Mrs. Guffie, Mrs. Hay,
Ms. Dixon, and Mrs. Culver. Together, we learned strategies that will help the
children become confident and successful independent learners. These strategies are easy to use and could
help your child do better in school. All
of the students, parents and teachers had a wonderful time. Everyone received snacks, directions to
various museums in the area, a C.O.W.L.I.C.K. card with the strategies that
were used during our visit to the
COWLICKS
Use with art, field trips,
trips to the grocery store, parks, and books
Counting. How many __________ do you see in this __________?
Observation. Look at this __________ until I say stop; now turn
around and tell me everything you remember about it without peeking.
Words. What is the first word you think of when you look
at this __________?
Letters. Do you see something in this ______ that begins
with the letter ____?
Imagination. Pretend you are this __________ (artwork, plant,
animal, etc.). What would you say to me?
Compare
and Contrast. How is
this ___________ and this __________ both alike and different from each
other?
Kinesthetics. If this __________ could move, show me how it
would move.
Senses. What would this __________ feel (or taste, smell,
sound) like?
Dates to Remember
All First Grade Referrals
are due on Monday, March 2, 2009
First
Grade Screening: January 29, 2009 (all
first grade students)
First
Grade Parent Workshop on Gifted Testing: Tuesday, January 20, 2009,
6:00 p.m. in Room 22. Snacks and
door prizes!
First
Grade Testing: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 (testing of referred first graders)
Second
Grade
SAPLINGS Field Trip to the
First Grade Teachers:
Shannon Knight, Connie Stanley, Nicole Russo, Jennifer Myers, Aimee Portlock, Micah Barks
November
2008 Marie T. Culver, Gifted Resource
Teacher
757-648-2640
mariet.culver@vbschools.com
A Message From Your GRT
Thank you to the parents of our gifted
students that participated in our recent October Parent Workshop “Using
the Tools of Creative Problem Solving”. We had great interaction, questions, and
strategies to support our students, door prizes, and snacks! Our parents brainstormed (generating tool) ideas on
how to create more quality family time. We
then used the focusing tool, “Hits and
Hot Spots” to focus on the ideas of “family dinner time”, “planning ahead
(monthly)”, and “better organization to prepare for each activity and day”. One
parent stated, “This makes a lot more sense now than it did when I was in
school.” Another parent added, “I also liked being able to brainstorm with other parents.” Another parent commented, “Thank
you for excellent ideas of how to use Creative Problem Solving at home to
join home and school.” Lastly, a parent summarized the evening with, “This is
the first workshop I have attended. I would gladly attend the next
workshop.” Our next workshop for parents of our gifted students is Tuesday,
March 24, 2009 at 6:00-7:00 p.m. I would love to have 100% of our parents of gifted students
attend for this important workshop. Please mark your calendar now!
Also, special thanks to Mrs. Darling
(Gabby’s mom) for volunteering each week to help assist with our Gifted Cluster
and our Emerging Scholar classes. Her
dedication to our programs really helps our students at
The cluster resource model is an
arrangement in which a group (cluster) of identified gifted students is assigned
to a classroom (Grades 2-5) with a cluster teacher who collaborates with the
gifted resource teacher to provide differentiated curriculum and
instruction. Students are assigned to
cluster classrooms according to specific program guidelines. The cluster teacher works with the gifted
resource teacher to develop unit plans, and to plan the use of differentiated
instructional strategies that incorporate the grade level SOLs
with higher level thinking skills.
In cluster classes, students receive
instruction from the classroom teacher who attends trainings and ongoing staff
development with the G.R.T. on the best instructional strategies and practices
for the children. The G.R.T. plans
collaboratively with the cluster teachers and assists in delivering instruction
at the depth and rate appropriate for gifted students. The G.R.T. is also available to other
teachers in the building to assist in differentiating the curriculum to meet
the needs of all students. The cluster
teacher works closely with the gifted resource teacher, who serves as a
resource to the teacher and the class.
The gifted resource teacher may instruct the whole class, model a
strategy, or may co-teach with the classroom teacher. In October and November, 2008, our gifted
cluster teachers in grades 2-5 have received training in Using Gifted Benchmarks with
Performance Tasks and Rigor and Relevancy using Paul’s Reasoning Model.
Second Grade Cluster
The second graders have been focusing on
our theme of systems with the
ancient civilizations of 
the first grade theme of patterns as we
deepen our understanding of systems
through a study of the patterns of human civilizations. The lessons are focused
on critical, creative, logical thinking, problem solving and metacognitive (thinking about thinking) reflection. Mrs. Guffie’s class
have been diligently working to understand that social, economic, political,
and geographical systems structure a
civilization while uncovering the contributions of both Ancient Egypt and China
to the modern world. We discovered that civilizations must have a settlement, division of labor, and a surplus
of food. We have been centering our lessons on the students’ learning
styles to differentiate our content. We utilized creative problem solving using
authentic farming tools outside in the “
civilizations to our world today! It is
amazing how these big ideas help us to answer our unanswered questions of the
past and present and patterns assist us with analyzing the future. Neely stated
to her classmates when asked why we study ancient civilizations, “We study the
past, to understand the present, to predict the future!” The students also took
the role of mathematicians to
explore and to problem solve several “Math
Exemplar” higher level thinking problems and to self assess our own
understanding, communication, and strategies.
Our second grade cluster class “system”
has been most productive!
“As long as
you’re going to be thinking anyway, think BIG.”
~Donald Trump
Third Grade Cluster
Mrs. Mulske’s
third grade cluster class has been focusing on the grade level theme of structures. We created generalizations
and worked together to use our bodies as structures to prove our
generalizations to be true. We discovered that a structure have parts that interrelate; parts of structures support and are supported by
other parts, smaller structures may be combined to form
larger structures and a structure
is no stronger than its weakest part. We analyzed famous paintings of
architecture to prove with evidence that our structures generalizations proved to be true. We have traveled
through the Time Machine visiting
many important structures of
economics, politics, culture and geography in ancient civilizations. Mrs. Mulske
welcomed us into Ancient Greece
dressed in an authentic dress, sandals, and laurel as Mr. Ludwig (P.E. teacher)
dressed in a toga and laurel as Marc Antony and welcomed us to Ancient Rome and finally, Mrs. Culver
dressed as a dyula (merchant) and welcomed us into Ancient Mali. We have been world
travelers! We have been infusing many aspects of the culture of these
civilizations traveling through time and adding many places to our student
passports. We have researched the “Gifts
of Greece” of Trial by Jury, Olympics, Fables, Shipbuilding,
Epic Poetry, Greek Columns, Myths, Sculpture/Mosaic,
Democracy, and Theater 
through trade books, websites, and primary
sources and discovered these “gifts” are present in our world, country, 
and city today. We participated in an “Expert Jigsaw”
activity to present our research and to teach the class our important contributions of Ancient 
environment have features that are
interdependent thus proving our generalization of the structure of a
civilization has parts that are supported by other parts to be true. Kayla
R. simply explained, “We could use the idea of terrace farming that the ancient
Chinese used to solve this problem” and began quickly making steps to test out
her theory. Bravo! Great connection from our study of the farming system from Ancient China to Ancient Rome! Our
groups of problem solvers had many creative problem solving solutions as well
with holes, ditches, and walls to help with the erosion problem of Ancient Rome. Our third grade students
created civilization visual synectics. Ryan stated,
“A cash register is like a civilization because
they both deal with economics.” 
Camryn created, “A globe is like a civilization because they both have
rivers, lakes, and oceans.” Simulations, student choice, critical and creative
thinking, student questioning, research and problem-based learning are
incorporated throughout our lessons to ignite positive comments of “Thank you
for an awesome lesson!” and “What’s next?” Here’s to a remarkable first nine
weeks of higher level thinking!
“There is
only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that’s your
own self.” ~Aldous Huxley, Author
Fourth Grade Cluster
The fourth grade cluster class has been
focusing their attention on the theme of relationships.
We have been exploring the dimensions of
earth science including weather features, meteorology, climate, and seasons,
while thinking like scientists in order to research, interpret information, and
draw conclusions. We have taken on the
responsibility of meteorologists and analyzed the relationships of weather, instruments, and cloud formations and its
associated weather, research for the Virginia Beach City Council, daily weather
data, and compiling real data with high, low pressure, and humidity. We were
needed in the “
“It never
occurs to me that there are things that I can’t do.” ~Whoopi Goldberg, Actress
Fifth Grade Cluster
The concept of change has been our theme that we have focused in all aspects of
the fifth grade curriculum. We developed
generalizations of change while visiting the “Secret Garden” and finding a great deal of evidence to support our
generalizations. We determined that change
generates additional change; change can be either positive or negative; change
is inevitable; change is necessary for growth; change can be evolutionary or
revolutionary; change is linked to time; change is everywhere; change may be
perceived as orderly or random; change may happen naturally or may be caused by
people. We designed Bio-poems to reflect on our own ideas of ourselves and
our world around us. Math Exemplars have helped us to problem solve using
words, pictures, and diagrams to incorporate writing into all areas while giving
us time to self assess our understanding, strategies, and communication. We could clearly see that we are changing each day from a novice to an
expert! We have created our own mindmaps to use as an ongoing assessment and concept maps
as a summative alternative assessment of the “Big Idea” of the Five Kingdoms.
Connections are the name of the game when we looked at the geography and the
life of the Native Americans of Virginians using visual synectics. Kaplan’s Icons have marched through all of
our lessons with challenging us to apply the icons to really add another layer
of “Depth and Complexity” to all of our lessons of change. We worked with our Creative Problem Solving
of generating and focusing tools of “Brainstorming” and “Hits and Hot Spots”.
We focused on “How did the Powhatans help the settlers
survive?” We focused on multiple perspectives of the English Settlers and the Powhatans while we created a cause and effect graphic
organizer to make 
generalizations. Mindmaps
were once again used to assess our knowledge for differentiated activities.
Visual Synectics were created to make connections
with the geography and the life of Native Americans of Virginia. We focused on
generalizations of systems to analyze the system of slavery. Paul’s Reasoning Web wove its way into
our discussion with focusing on the English Settlers and the Native Americans,
“Clash of the Cultures.” Perspectives, purpose/goal, evidence/data,
concepts/ideas, assumptions, inferences, and implications/consequences were
analyzed to bring rigor into our discussion to add depth to our writing. The Jr. Great Book selection, “Kaddo’s
Wall” was introduced as a West African folktale and students were involved with
activities of shared reading, directed notes, interpreting words, creative and
evaluative writing and a shared inquiry discussion. Our fifth graders have
really leaped into a great deal of higher level thinking!
“Always bear in mind that
your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other thing. ~
Special Thanks
to all of our Holland Family of faculty, staff, students, parents, Mayor Oberndorf and the
Princess Anne Garden Club that volunteered their time for “Spruce Up the
Garden Day” in September! One parent said, “This is my favorite type of
parental involvement activity.” “Count me in for the next one!” Our next
“Spruce Up the Garden Day-Part II is on
Saturday, November 22, 2008 from 8 a.m.-12:00 p.m. WE NEED YOU! Please continue to support our outdoor garden
project to benefit all of our
Dates to Remember
Gifted Testing Dates:
2nd Quarter: December 5, 2008
1st Grade
Screening: January 29, 2009
ODC/KLMS Applicants: March 6, 2009
1st Grade
Testing: April 21, 2009
4th Quarter
Testing: May 27, 2009
2nd Grade
Holds: May 27, 2009
Deadline for al Grade 1
Applications: Monday, March 2, 2009
Parent Information
Nights
Tuesday,
January 6, 2009
Wednesday,
January 7, 2009
Kemps
Landing Magnet School Parent Information Night for Holland fifth grade
students: January 13, 2009 @ 6:30 p.m. in the KLMS cafeteria
ODC Parent
Information Night for students currently in grades 2-4: January 20, 2009
Deadlines: 
Gifted Referrals are due on
or before November 21, 2008.
Applications
for the Dance Education Program, the Visual Arts Program, Kemps Landing Magnet
School, Old Donation Center, and Plaza Middle Years Program are all due on Monday,
February 2, 2009.
Third Grade—Rosanna
Mulske; Fourth Grade—Christina Diaz; Fifth Grade—Melanie
Dixon
Marie T. Culver, Gifted
Resource Teacher