Looking for stuff to do this summer?

• Fermilab has a number of science-related summer workshops for K-8 students. The workshops last between one and four days. Go to Fermilab's Science Adventures page to see all the offerings and learn more.

• The Batavia Robotics Club has fun summer Lego Robotics camps for kids from grades 1-12. See the options at their website.
• Do you have a child who likes to read? You can find recommended reading lists arranged by subject of interest at Hoagies' Gifted Ed Page here. There are a number of other readings lists available on an earlier blog post. To find them, click on the "reading" tag on the right sidebar.
  
  

See March 18 post below for a list of other local summer programs. They might still have openings!

Have you seen ... ?

• This article on Mind/Shift, "For Frustrated Gifted Kids, a World of Online Opportunities," describes various online options enjoyed by gifted learners looking for more.

• The Spring 2014 CTD Newsletter focuses on twice-exceptional students.

• The Davidson Institute brings us this Q & A from Tamra Stambaugh, a researcher in gifted education at Vanderbilt, that explores the impact of the Common Core on gifted education.

 On May 17, the Three Fires Council (Boy Scouts) are sponsoring a STEM-o-rama at the Kane County Fairgrounds in St. Charles. See details for this fun event at this link. STEM-o-rama is open to the public! (Science Technology Engineering Math at Kane County fairgrounds. $10 tickets for entry)

Also on May 17, NIU STEM connection presents Bright Futures: Explore the Science of Music! On the DeKalb campus of Northern Illinois University, experience the Circuit Bending Lab May 17th from 9 AM - Noon, NIU Swen Parson Room 146. Learn about electricity and have fun experimenting with circuits. We’ll take apart electronic toys and then rewire them to make crazy cool electric sounds! Bring a used toy or destroy one of ours. This free, hands-on lab will be fun for elementary and middle school students. Parents are encouraged to learn alongside their children!

On Tuesday, June 10, from 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM at Hopkins Park in DeKalb
Join STEM Outreach, the DeKalb Municipal Band, other experts for a night of free family fun with music, sound, STEM, face-painting, a musical Tesla Coil, and of course, electrocuted hot dogs! The fair will be followed by the Municipal Band's first concert of the season.

Rotolo Middle School is hosting a Common Core info night: Monday 4/21 6:30-7:30 p.m. at the RMS LMC (library and media center). Also on the agenda is discussion of Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Come to hear about the implementation of these new standards, and how it will impact the curriculum at the middle school. The meeting will be repeated Wednesday 4/23 9:00 - 10:00 a.m. in classroom 232, for those who cannot attend the evening session.

How do the Common Core Standards relate to gifted education?

The two links below give an overview in an article from Education Week and a FAQ resource from NAGC (National Association for Gifted Children).

Article: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/10/30/10cc-gifted.h33.html

FAQ gifted education and Common Core State Standards: http://www.nagc.org/index2.aspx?id=8980

Thank you to all who attended the March 24 seminar co-sponsored by CANDO and BPS101. Liz Selander Hutchins' presentation, “How Well Do You Know Your Gifted Child?” identified a cluster of characteristics common to gifted learners, dispelled prevalent myths about gifted students, and provided a number of suggestions and strategies to work successfully with and nurture this unique population of students. In addition, Ms. Hutchins shared valuable insights from her many years of experience working with gifted students while teaching at BPS101, and invited parent discussion to share strategies that have helped their children with some of the challenges associated with giftedness. We hope you were able to join us and benefit from Ms. Hutchins' considerable expertise.

Below are links to some of the books and resources that she mentioned.

• Genius Denied by Jan and Bob Davidson
• Some of My Best Friends Are Books by Judith Wynn Halsted
• articles by Sylvia Rimm on giftedness and underachievement

We hope to offer more such seminars in the future!    

At 7 p.m. on Monday, March 24, we are hosting a seminar for parents and educators about common traits of gifted students: "How Well Do You Know Your Gifted Child?" presented by Elizabeth Selander Hutchins, BPS101's retired gifted coordinator. Please join us in the Rotolo LMC (library). More details are available here. See you there!

Summer is coming! A number of local summer enrichment programs are open for registration:

• summer camps at IMSA for students from 3rd through 8th grade
• NIU STEM summer camps for students from 5th through 12th grade
• Waubonsee Community College offers Xcelerate summer camps for kids ages 4-14
• NUMATS Center for Talent Development  summer programs for kids from pre-K through 12th grade
  
• Camp Invention has an early bird discount for signing up before March 28
• The Center for Gifted has a spring weekend series and summer programs

Does your child enjoy creating things? Entries are now being accepted for the 2014 Torrance Legacy Creativity Awards. These awards honor the legacy of C. Paul Torrance, a pioneer in research on creativity in education. Children from ages 8-18 are encouraged to submit their original work in writing, the visual arts, music composition, or inventions. The deadline for submissions is August 8.

Have you seen ...?

• In this article, Mindy Solomon, a psychologist at Colorado's Gifted Development Center, explores the question, "Are Individuals with Eating Disorders More Likely to Be Gifted?"

• The Twice-Exceptional Newsletter offers a list of issues to consider when faced with pronounced underachievement in gifted students. For those with 2e students, the newsletter and its free briefings are wonderful resources.
  

• Are you on Twitter? Check out #gtchat. It is a global forum that takes place at 6 p.m. CDT on Fridays for educators, researchers, advocates, and parents to share and discuss ideas about gifted and talented education. Find out more information or dig through the transcripts of previous #gtchat topics here (you can read them even if you aren't on Twitter!).

• NAGC's publication Parenting for High Potential has a page on Facebook that can be a great resource.

Fermilab has summer paid internship opportunities for high school students! Their TARGET and QuarkNet programs are open for application. TARGET opportunities are open to 10th- and 11th-graders in Illinois, and are due March 31. QuarkNet is open to all high school students; applications are due April 1. Visit Fermilab's internship website to learn more information about each program and find application materials.

A huge thank you to everyone who came out to meet the authors at our Author Fair on February 8. We are proud to say that the event was a success and everyone had a great time!

Events coming up in the next month or two:

• Educating the Gifted Child seminar, Feb. 22, given by Northwestern's Center for Talent Development (CTD)

• Also via CTD, the next NUMATS testing deadline is March 4. Many CANDO parents have found NUMATS testing to be a very valuable tool in understanding their children's educational needs.

• There is a Summer Resource Fair sponsored by STAGE, our Naperville Dist 203 equivalent organization, on March 4.

• Coming up on March 24 is CANDO's seminar for any parents and educators interested in gifted education, "How Well Do You Know Your Gifted Child?" presented by Elizabeth Selander Hutchins, 7-8:30 p.m. at Rotolo Middle School. Spread the word!

Have you seen ... ?

• Newsweek published an interesting opinion piece on gifted education entitled "America Hates Its Gifted Kids." Find the article here. 

• If you have daughters, this UK Blog post about gifted girls may be of particular interest:  "Gifted or Pretty:  What Do Parents Want?"
• Handouts from a number of presentations at the annual IAGC conference are available here.
• The blog for Northwestern's Center for Talent Development  can be a good source for information about gifted education and evaluation as well as a place to find discussion of related issues.

In addition to our own event hosting authors' visits at the Batavia Public Library on Saturday, February 8 there are a number of other interesting things happening in and around Batavia in the coming month.

• IAGC is holding its annual convention in Naperville from February 9-11. See the December entry below for the link to more information.

• On Monday, February 10 at 7 p.m., a Naperville parent group is hosting guest speaker Dr. Jim DeLisle presenting his talk "Parenting Precocious Kids." Get details here.

• On Thursday, February 13 at 7:00 p.m. there are two local events! Close to home and for families with students in or entering high school in fall 2014, Batavia High School is holding its AP/Honors Information Night in the Batavia High School Cafeteria. Both students and parents are welcome to attend this meeting. The presentation will provide a general overview of the AP and honors program. This is a great time to learn about the offerings and have your questions answered about AP and Honors courses.

• Also on Thursday, February 13 at 7:00 p.m. is a free presentation entitled “What's a Fractal?” at Waubonsee Community College on its Sugar Grove campus. Amy Del Medico, associate professor of mathematics at Waubonsee Community College, will discuss fractals and a number of their real-world occurrences and applications. For details, please visit the event page here. 

• This winter and spring there are still 5 remaining NIU STEM Saturday events in Dekalb or Naperville. See their page for more information about topics and registration.

Have you seen ... ?

• A recently-published study by researchers at Vanderbilt University followed 300 students identified as gifted over 30 years, from the age of 13 to 38. See their study here, a summary of the findings in their press release here, and a call to action by one of the study's authors here.

• If you are interested in innovations in all sorts of education, you may want to have a look at the blog Mind/Shift, in which the editor shares stories about new developments in education theory, practice, and policy.

• You may find the Eide Neurolearning blog of interest also. Run by two physicians (Doctors Eide and Eide), its mission is to communicate about learning-centered research done in neurobiology and the cognitive sciences. To use their own words, their interests are in “[b]rain-based learning and learning styles, problem-solving and creativity, kids, families, and parenting, gifted and visual learners, dyslexia, attention deficit disorders, autism, and more.” Its content often is of particular value to those interested in twice-exceptional (2e) research and issues.

Upcoming Events

• January 6 We are thrilled to co-sponsor with BPS Gifted Services a parent and educator seminar in early January! Guest speaker Elizabeth Hutchins, retired BPS101 Gifted Coordinator and current instructor for the gifted seminar at Aurora University, will give a talk entitled "How Well Do You Know Your Gifted Child?" and discuss some of the key and common characteristics of gifted children. This free event is from 7-9 p.m. at Rotolo Middle School LMS. All parents and educators are invited and welcome!

• February 8 is our second event of the winter. We are sponsoring an Author Fair at the Batavia Public Library on February 8 from 1-3 p.m. This event is open to all families. For more details on the authors and their books, please see our News and Events page.
• February 9-11 in Naperville will be the IAGC annual conference. See their conference website for registration information, schedules, meetings for parents, membership information, and more.
  

• Also this winter: Local math and science events at IMSA! IMSA runs FUNshops, 3-hour events in the fall and spring for children in grades 3-6. Students can register for individual FUNshops, scheduled for 2 different Friday evenings and 2 different Saturday evenings in March and April of the new year. The spring topics include circuitry, web design, and flight.
  

Have you seen ... ?

• As part of a series on math and science education, the New York Times Editorial Board recently published an opinion piece about gifted education in our country. They write, “It is vital that students in the middle get increased attention, as the new Common Core standards are designed to do, but when the brightest students are not challenged academically, they lose steam and check out.” Read that Op-Ed here. The editor of the Editorial Page sums up reader reactions, both pro and con, here, in his Editor's Blog.
• The blog Teach a Gifted Kid is written by a teacher of gifted students in Texas. Her entries provide resources and food for thought for both parents and educators.

Upcoming events and deadlines:

• The schedule is out for Northern Illinois University's STEM weekend events for kids, recommended for 4th grade and up. Events take place on Saturdays in DeKalb and Naperville through December. Click here for more information.

• IAGC's Parent Academy offers an afternoon of talks and round table discussions entitled "Throw Your Arms Around Gifted Children," covering a range of issues for parents of gifted children, on November 16 from 12-4:30. The location is close by, at the Da Vinci Academy in Elgin. Click here for the details and registration information.

Have you seen … ?

• A recent article discusses the relationship of gifted education and implementation of the common core.
• The new newsletter from NUMATS is available. The link is at this website on the left menu under "announcements." This fall's newsletter features an article entitled "Problem-Based Learning 101."
• In a recent podcast on Spotlite Radio, Susan Winebrenner, author of Teaching Gifted Kids in Today's Classroom and The Cluster Grouping Handbook, talks about the challenges facing gifted education and some solutions to those issues.
• The Brilliant Blog by writer Annie Murphy Paul discusses articles and current research on intelligence and learning.