What the Magnet Classroom Has to Offer by Cami Rush

A Magnet Classroom...

...is a public school class offering a specialized curriculum, often with high academic standards, to a student body that meets predetermined criteria.

...is an opportunity for students who have demonstrated high academic ability in the general classroom environment to be allowed to study a curriculum that is more suited to their needs and abilities.

...provides an opportunity for them to work and collaborate amongst those that are their intellectual peers in a cohesive classroom community.

Research Shows That...

...one of the best ways “to support gifted and talented students is to help assemble a gifted cohort. [This] will encourage high achievement and reinforce the full use of students’ talents.

Special classes...help young people to value their talent and build constructive self-concepts and identities.”

“...gifted children prefer the companionship of gifted age peers or older children. . . Most children tend to choose friends on the basis of similarities in mental age.”

By allowing highly able children to learn in an environment together, they are provided with support and comrades that they may not be finding in a general classroom.

Past Students Have Stated That...

...they felt awkward asking questions in their other classes because a lot of the time the other kids did not know what they were talking about

...it is different in our room for other kids “got” where they were coming from.

...they felt like they could be more of “themselves” in the magnet class because the other kids understood them better.

A couple of girls in the past expressed that they didn’t want to come because they didn’t want to leave the couple of friends that they had made at their prior school, but are now glad that they came because they still have those friends and a “whole bunch more” that “think like they do.”

A Community of Thinkers

In general, each class becomes a community of thinkers and learners that challenge each other as well as allow them an outlet to be who they are in a safe environment and most would recommend others to join the class based on their experiences.

The Curriculum
(Click on the Course title for more details)

• Reading has No Open Court – utilize a variety of other literary works

-Focus of reading is to make connections and encourage a love to read
-Socratic (open-ended) questioning used to extend understanding of big ideas or issues across subject areas

-Spelling

• Language is project based where students become authors of various types of works

• Math projects demonstrate connections between math and real-world
-Students are allowed to work at a pace and level that best fits their needs

• Science is hands-on lab based whenever possible and how it connects to various professions through project based learning scenarios

• Math and Science supplemented with a weekly specials/block class

• Social Studies includes several simulations to help students connect and “experience” history. Limited text reading – learn note taking and scanning strategies

• Dramatic play production done each year –acting workshop given to teach strategies and skills related to stage performance taught by real actors

• Visual arts techniques, vocabulary, skills, and medias (in past have done grayscale sketching, acrylic painting, oil pastel, chalk pastel, watercolor, mixed media collage, origami, colored pencil, wax, ceramic sculpture, mixed media sculpture, etc.)taught as a separate subject and integrated in various subjects of the curriculum

• Music is used as a teaching tool for various subject concepts and ideas