Godley Station School Gifted Newsletter
4th Marking Period
Kindergarten News
The kindergarten gifted students completed a unit about insects. They learned that even though insects may all look different, they are alike in three ways. All insects have six legs, three main body sections (head, thorax, and abdomen) and a hard skeleton. After we watched videos of ants hard at work building their colony, a spider creating a web, wasps making mud daubers and bees in a beehive, we went on a “bug hunt” on the school grounds. The students had to find at least six different insects, identify them and state where they found them. As a culminating activity the students created their own bug and then wrote a paragraph about it. The paragraph had to include their bug’s name, where it lives, what it eats, who’s its enemy and how it helps mankind.
First Grade News
First grade gifted students have been studying plant life. We have studied parts of a plant, the plant life cycle, and photosynthesis. We made terrariums and got to see firsthand the water cycle.
Third Grade News
Hannah Jane Gard, gifted third grader in Mrs. Stringer’s class, was the top scoring student for Chatham County in the Sumdog mathematics competition. Way to go Hannah Jane!!
Congratulations to our 2nd and 3rd Grade Quiz Bowl – Hannah Jane Gard, Amalia Brenton, Peter Terekhov, Gracie Smith, Jasah Bush, Taylor Connelly, Milissa Maxwell, and Nicole Vasilev. They won 1st place in our recent competition against other elementary schools in the west side division. Throughout the year they read 20 books and memorized everything about them. They did a great job representing our school!
Third grade gifted has ended the year by researching self-selected topics and using technology to create google slide presentations and posters. We will present our projects the last week of school.
Fifth Grade News
5th grade gifted had a wonderful culminating activity of visiting the Tybee Marine Science Center on May 3rd. This was a two part field trip. First was the Squid Dissection – Students will work in pairs to perform a guided dissection. Students learned about the anatomy, adaptions, and the behavior of the most intelligent invertebrate, the squid. They also compared and contrasted invertebrates and vertebrates and why scientific classification is important. Second was the Beach Ecology Walk – Students explored the dynamics of Georgia’s barrier island on the guided beach walk along the shore of Tybee’s beach. The barrier islands along the coast were introduced. The intertidal zone, the origin of sand, the forces behind the tidesand waves, and dune formation andits importance were explained along the walk. The effects of pollution and development on the ocean and shoreline were examined. Various animals and plant life were identified. Adaptations for survival on the barrier island were emphasized. The life cycle of the Loggerhead Sea Turtle was explained.
Not only did 5th gifted grade students work hard to gain academic skills in reading, writing, math, and science, students also worked to gain skills for a stronger emotional wellbeing. It was a great year of learning how to fill our own emotional bucket as well as others. Within this emphasis, students worked to earn community service hours by doing different activities such as serving the homeless food at Forsyth Park, donating canned items, donating need clothing for winter, as well as performing various services within our school.
We are proud of the growth our 5th gifted students have made and wish them luck in middle school!