The one curriculum I"m totally in love with is Michael Clay Thompson's language art series. Love it love it love it! It's not for every kid but it seems, from the WTM board, to work especially well for boys.
Here's our morning w/ it.
Here�s our Practice Island sentence: The nervous fish in a flash darted away.
I asked the boys what kind of prep phrase (after they completed their analysis) was it and what is it modifying? Nathan said "it's an adverb phrase modifying the verb" and anderson continues with "b/c it's answering how it darted." they weren't fooled by a prep phrase coming after a noun and thinking it modified the noun....they thought about the function!
MCT has really helped them to think of the function of words, their purpose rather than just blindly labeling them.
NIki - our district has a program which was only enrichment as well. It sounds great on paper and I'm sure the kids have a great time in it and it gets them out of class a few hours each week but it changes NOTHING in the regular classroom. And the math pullout was the same ....they played strategy games...which my son loves but also needs to be accelerated in academic areas.
our district was big on the creativity aspect of gifted. Well, some kids are academically gifted and need to go deeper, farther, faster and not just come up w/ new ways to build a better mousetrap.
