Aaron Conner November 22, 2013 Guest Speaker: Dr. Wood Today we had Dr.

Wood come back and speak to us about gifted and high ability learners again and supplied us with a few mind opening activities. First we did an engaging exercise that required us to select a book, develop a series of questions based on Blooms Taxonomy, create a tic-tac-toe board, and then write a problem based scenario question. After the exercise Dr. Wood talked about our answers and then moved into the next exercise which was a true or false format sheet called Myth or Reality. We answered ten statements with myth or reality and then Dr. Wood went over all of the correct statements. My partner and I chose the book Space Travellers by Margaret Wild. We read this book together and then wrote two questions for the knowledge topic, two for comprehension, two for application, two for analysis, two for evaluation, and two for synthesis. We focused on the topic of space for the surface questions and then dug into the theme of homelessness for the higher end and deeper questions. We then transitioned into the development of the Tic-Tac-Toe activity for the book. There were nine squares and we filled each of the sections with a question dealing with investigation, teach, compare, summarize, illustrate, demonstrate, dramatize, combine, and design. Finally we developed a problem based learning question for the book. We learned that the vaguer the question is and the less it has to do with the book, the higher learning level it reaches. So we rewrote our question and made it vague enough for the students to need to dig into their minds and imaginations to formulate a problem. This also helped prevent the formation of set answers that the majority of the students would come up with. This was a very fun and beneficial classroom experience that adequately used hands on activity to make a point.