Haralson County Gifted Association

Dear Parents,

Discussions were held on the following topics:

• Rhonda Prather reported back on the GAGC convention -

  A Brief Summary of the Convention Topics: Our keynote speaker was Dr. Sally Krisel, a long time gifted educator/advocator/adminstrator. She is currently serving as the Gifted Coordinator for Hall County, and she delivered her message on integrating technology into the classroom. Along with Dr. Krisel, were three gifted educators from Hall County- one from each level (elementary, middle school, high school).
  From the elementary level was Cathy Dial (also the teacher of the year recipient) who presented how Hall County has implemented the Renzulli Learning Program in every classroom and how the program allows for differentiation in curriculum for each child, as well as saving precious school funds.
  From the middle school level was Kelly Schollaert who presented on the Da Vinci Academy offered to 123 gifted middle school students. In the program, all lessons are derived from internet based programs alleviating the costs of text books, in particular, the use of a free curriculum offered by the History Channel. The students in the program also participate in the History Channel competition, and Hall County has 3 students going to the National Competition.
  The last presenter was Jennifer Kellingsworth, who discussed the High School Honors Mentorship Program as an academic elective, and areas of participation in Hall County, including medicine and law. She covered the use of technology for communication with her students, including text messaging and Facebook.
  Of course there is much much more to share, including email address and phone numbers for the presenters should anyone want more expert information.

• The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) will be holding its annual convention in Atlanta, GA Nov. 11-14 at the Georgia Dome. They are looking for volunteers to help, and, if you think you can, please reply to this email or call Rhonda Prather @770-827-9477 for more information. We would like to see if we can sponsor one, if not two, Gifted Education teachers for the conference. If you would like to help raise funds for this, or can partly sponsor a teacher, again, please contact us.
• We again discussed the possibility of having a summer camp, as referred to at the previous meeting. Devin Prather gave an excellent PowerPoint presentation of how the SimCity 4 software works. More information needs to be gathered, and we need to get a sense of how many children would be interested in participating. We would like this to be interesting to a variety of age groups. We are asking for feedback. Please take a moment to reply and let us know if this is of interest to you and your children.
• The possibility of chartering a chess club was brought up. It could be a good idea for bringing the children together, developing their minds and reaching out to the community through competition.
  

Make sure to fill out your census forms and the survey from the Haralson County Chamber of Commerce. These are great ways to help influence the future of our community and funding for our education.

Next meeting will be held on Monday, April 19 @ 6:30 pm in the Georgia Power conference room in Tallapoosa. If you would like something to be included on next month's agenda, please reply to this email with "Agenda" as subject.

Thank you,

Haralson County Gifted Association