[camp823]

Hello All-
I would love to bounce some ideas off of your creative brains. I am a GT teacher for grades 1-4. Each year we do an involved research project that takes several months to complete. The kids select a topic and we train them on how to research and present the material. The students make a tri fold board of their information and we have a special night at school for the parents to come view their projects. In the past it has been just a gallery of their work and the parents come walk around and look at the different projects. The students are required to stay the entire hour but are finished looking at all of the projects in 20-30 minutes. I wanted to spice up the night a little by doing something fun with the info from the projects and make it a little more interactive. I've thought about doing a "Smarter Than a GT Student" game show type thing. The questions would come from the info from the project and parents could participate, but I don't know how to make it work with 30-40 students AND their parents. I've also thought about making a scavenger hunt with questions from their projects and they would have to move throughout the projects and actually read the info to find the answer. Help! What are some ideas you all have to help our parent night become more "spicy" and not so "bland".

[yesteach]

is much the same. We use the TPSPs, first grade has done the Kindergarten art project and the animal research, second did biographies, third has rotated through the math, toy business, and enigmas (from fourth) and Fourth has done the quilt (fifth) and We Are Texans.

With each group doing something different, it seemed to make it not so "stroll through" of trifold boards. With first grade they actually paint in all the styles, and we display their art work in one hallway; with the animal research they wrote and illustrated (with Pixie) thier own books; for the Math in Nature students created tri-folds, but also had to have some type of activity to go with their project (tessellation puzzles, symmetrical drawing, Golden Ratio demo), with the toys, they created a game and had them on display to play, We are Texans we have a "Museum" and they not only have their tri-fold about the country, but also "artifacts" from the country (real or created) and some have even served food from their country. The second graders always have a trifold display of their biographical study, but they also dress and answer questions in first person.

We are here about an hour...

[sbslab]

I've created a back-to-school bingo game that you might be able to adapt for this and have kids and parents working on it individually or as a family. It would work like a scavenger hunt in this case.

You'd have to fill in the questions you want them to find the answers for beforehand. You'd get the information straight from the projects themselves. You could do one bingo "board", or several different ones if you wished. If you did them on the computer, you could more easily randomize them and make it easy to do individual boards.

They look at the projects and write the name of the person whose project answers that "block." You could have them do the standard five-in-a-row or the whole card. Perhaps a little reward could be offered, fancy pencils or something else relatively inexpensive.

I'm going to try to attach a document that might show you better what I mean. In any case, good luck and have fun!