DINOrama

K is in the 99th percentile for her age in reading which puts her in the TAG program. Because of this she does extra projects for her reading class at school. Every time they finish a unit, she does an extra something at home and then brings it in to show to her classmates.

The first unit was on three whales who got separated from their pod and trapped in the arctic waters near Russia. They were rescued by people who helped break holes in the ice so they could breath. A Russian ice breaker tore apart the ice and lead the whales to the open sea. K made a picture of the whales trapped and people trying to save them.

Her second unit was on camouflage so she drew and colored this scene of sea creatures blending in to their surroundings. She loves sea life and has read many books on all the different animals that live in the ocean. She is like a walking encyclopedia and can rattle off all kinds of information.

The only things this girl loves more than horses and sea life are dinosaurs. Her last unit was on fossils and she was very excited about doing a dinosaur of some kind. Her dad came up with the idea of printing off a model of a dinosaur that she could put together 3-D style. She wanted to do a diorama so he taped together some cardboard boxes and she set to work gluing her dino parts to pizza cardboard, cutting it out and then piecing it together. It was pretty easy because there were letter tabs that matched up with each other.

Once that was done she started on her background for the diorama. She put some great detail in her "museum". There was a dino skull you can walk in, an egg with a baby dino still inside, a Brontosaurus, a slide and a gift shop with clothes on the racks.

When she was done, this thing measured more than three feet across and was spectacular! Her dad spray painted her dino gray and attached it to the box with wire so it wouldn't fall out and get trampled.

K was so excited to take it to school and show everyone. I delivered it for her because it was so huge. The kids thought it was awesome. She not only gave a presentation to her reading class but she also gave one to her home room class. Unfortunately her reading teacher gave her a hard time; she didn't believe K actually made it herself. K was very upset about that and quite frankly it pissed M and me off.

We are all very proud of her. She is so talented, smart and creative. I only wish she actually got graded for these projects she does. She spent a good part of her spring break working on this. I wish there was a better way for her to be challenged in reading. I don't think doing these projects really does much for her in that aspect. Reading in a higher reading class or reading harder books makes more sense to me but this is the way her current teacher wants to do things. Seems to me it's more of a "Did you really understand the material we covered?" than a "Let's challenge your reading ability with harder books." stance.

Speaking of comprehension, here's a funny story. During the last unit on fossils, which K knows a lot about, the reading teacher asked the class if they learned anything. K mumbled under her breath "No.". The teacher heard her and told her to clip down, it's a disciplinary action they do at her school. K proceeded to tell her that she already knew this stuff because she reads a lot of books about dinosaurs and fossils, which this teacher knows because she had K last year for first grade and commented several times on how much she liked dinosaurs and she could pronounce words she herself couldn't. Anyway, she still had to clip down and when she got home she told me about the incident. I found it rather funny. If you don't want to know the answer to "Did you learn anything?" then maybe you shouldn't ask the question.
I told K that in the future if she didn't learn anything, just keep her thoughts to herself. It did make me chuckle though.