Starting off with the Big Picture

One of the things we know about gifted students is that they are often "big picture" learners -- conceptual thinkers who look for and can understand deeper meanings, patterns and connections in and between different concepts and subjects. This is one of the reasons we build our curriculum around overarching concepts, which differ for each year and grade level. This year the 1st and 2nd graders are exploring the concept of "treasure" and several of our early lessons and writing have been about what this means and how it relates to what we will study this year (see previous blog post for a list of this year's subject areas). Here are some of our early musings as a group:

And some individual reflections on things we treasure and what treasure means:

"I treasure my inventions because I can post them on kick starter..."

"I treasure science and art projects because they have results."

I treasure nature "because it is beautiful and all around us," and also "because it gives us what we need."

Some of the things we determined to be characteristics of treasure: rare things, things you work hard for, things you can sell, things that can be given as presents. This led to a discussion about the fact that treasure is associated with having value - both monetary and other types of value. We will delve into the idea of value more as the year progresses, as we discuss what motivated explorers to risk their lives to go into the unknown, and what kinds of ideas and values shape different cultures and the different ways people live.

Non-Examples of treasure: dirt, sand, garbage, germs, REPTILES. This led to an interesting discussion about the fact that there are always differing viewpoints and some people would treasure these things -- Herpetologists, for example, do treasure reptiles. And how would we grow food without dirt? And some germs are good germs, or have provided us with vaccinations or protections against others or serve useful purposes. And what about the expression "One man's trash is another man's treasure?"

This one has some of my favorite examples of treasure: A treasure box with magic words, and of course, unicorns! I also share this student's love of huge maps. We also listed a lot of valuable stones and minerals, and gold and money made almost everyone's list. This led us to an interesting discussion about gold vs. paper money and what gives things value.

So far, we are loving learning about treasure. You could even say we treasure it!

See more about gifted conceptual learners and big-picture thinkers at the fantastic blog of the Eide Neurolearning Clinic (experts on brain-based learning and twice exceptionality): http://eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/gifted-big-picture-high-conceptual.html