Gifted Jaguars and Eagles

Dear DA 10th graders and parents/guardians, Our current DA sophomores will have access to a 3rd year of DA which is a new feature of our program.  We designed this because of parent and student feedback that PSEO and current BPS courses were not meeting the academic and social emotional needs of our gifted students.   I have had some parents ask about the difference between DA and PSEO so I'm sharing this slideshow with you.  I am also willing to answer questions if that's not helpful enough.   Our hope is that your student will choose to continue in the DA program but we also understand that we cannot possibly design a program that is a perfect fit for all our high ability students.   If you are planning on sending your student PSEO next year BPS will still make you register this month as if you aren't because that decision will happen later but the college.  However, for our purposes the GT dept would like to know how many students will not be continuing so I can try to ...

November 4, 2021 Dear Parents and Guardians of DA 10 cohort, We have noticed that this semester is significantly more difficult for some of our DAHS students than previous years. We appreciate that many of you answered the survey the GT department sent out. The data demonstrated what we are seeing in class - we have a wide range of experiences right now in the DA STEM program and some of our students are very stressed. What we are seeing in Bloomington is similar to the experiences of educators (including other AP teachers and gifted advocates) across the country. Many of our students are struggling in ways which hadn’t manifested in pre-pandemic times. We are now seeing many members of our cohort struggle with self-regulation, the ability to focus on their work, their ability to ask questions, their ability to work with peers on an academic task, and are struggling with issues of depression and anxiety. We want to be responsive and support our gifted learners. I have met wit...

Dimensions Academy High School Graduation This year we have two cohorts completing our program for the first time! Congratulations to our DA STEM graduates who completed 34 college credits during a global pandemic! These students have been doing online learning since last March and continued to complete their program at Normandale Community College. Kennedy: Ahmed Dualeh Malachi Martichuski Jefferson: Elias Caspari Isabelle Janey Olivia Knight Amelia Lodwick Ben Lodwick Adam Lueth Snezhanna Medvedovski Abigail Pearson Arielle Swanson Tiffany Tian Abigail Valladolid Thy Bao Vu Congratulations to our DA Humanities graduates who completed 3 college writing and literature classes and 4 AP classes during a global pandemic. This was our first cohort to go through our program and we are very proud of what these students were able to accomplish! Jefferson: Olivia Busch Autumn Fuller Isabelle Janey Olivia Knight Abigail Pearson Arielle Swanson Tiffany Tian Abigail Valladolid Thy ...

Dear DA students, I hope your finals week at NCC is going well.  You have successfully completed two years of calculus this year.  Congrats!  If you are taking the AP Calc BC exam I recommend getting some tutoring so that you can be ready for the exam.  While you have learned a lot of content you haven't learned the nuances of the exam and what the College Board is looking for.  Therefore I have recruited Ben Harste to help get you ready for the AP Calc BC exam.   The exam is on Monday, May 24th.   Mr. Harste will tutor you from 7:50 - 9am on Tuesday 5/18 and Thursday 5/20 on Zoom.   On Monday 5/17 I will give some example Free Response Questions for you to work on so that you can practice with the College Board  format and have that experience when you meet with Ben.  On Wednesday 5/19 I will give you a previously released multiple choice exam.  I have reserved the red flex space at Jefferson for us each morning.  You can participate in the tutoring and FRQ practice online or in ...

Digital Exam readiness steps: Log out of your chromebook. Access the chromebook apps in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. Click on the digital testing app and log in using your My AP Classroom username and password. Try the practice exam to study for your exam (optional) 1-3 days before your digital exams, complete the exam set up: For each digital AP Exam, students must complete the exam setup step in the digital testing app. This step loads their exam onto the computer they’re going to test with. Completing this step is required 1–3 days before each exam. Without taking this step for each exam, students will not be able to test. Exam setup opens 3 calendar days before the exam date and must be completed no later than the day before the exam. Exam setup must be done on the computer the student will use for testing. Once setup is completed, the computer can’t be shared with another student until the exam is over and responses have been submitted to th...

Ms Brown (kbrown@isd271.org) is our AP Coordinator. If you have follow up questions be sure to email her. You can CC me so I can learn the answer too. DA STEM students will take their tests through KHS even though you take your class at JHS. The plan for testing is: AP Human Geography (May 4th) - in person AP Computer Science (May 17th) - in person AP Environmental Science (May 27th) - in person or at home if you are DL AP Comparative Politics (May 28th) - in person or at home if you are DL If you are a DL and don’t want to come into school on May 4th or May 17th then you need to communicate with Mr. Lang. The digital exam for AP Human Geography will be on June 8th and the digital exam for AP Computer Science will be on Wednesday May 26th. If you are absent or unable to take an exam during our scheduled time, you can sign up to test in the next testing window. You will need to let Ms. Brown know as soon as possible if this happens. She can only sign you up for the next ...

This is a video I made to replace the meeting we normally have in January. We can't meet this year because of the Corona virus so I'm hoping this can help parents and student who are trying to figure out which classes to register for. Feel free to email me any questions at maby@isd271.org. https://youtu.be/MEqx8jF1JN0

In February students will be asked to register for next year. If you were not able to come to this morning's meeting I encourage you to watch the video. I'm including links to the resources I used: Video from today's Post DA Planning Meeting - https://youtu.be/2FmnXmsSvXg My PSEO planning guide document - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YkEVqdHSB_JR_2Z1ofjscKp7VGv6-xQ1mGmWnyKItkg/edit?usp=sharing The slideshow I used - https://tinyurl.com/yd9epeuu After the meeting Carl Pearson and I found this list: https://www.mnmsa.org/files/8013/1723/8071/PSEO_College_List.pdf Take care, Meredith

Exam Length, Structure, and Format The exams will only include topics and skills most AP teachers and students have already covered in class by early March. We know that some students have lost more class time than others, and we want to be fair to all students. Like many college-level exams, this year’s AP Exams will be open book/open note.  Get tips for taking open book/open note exams. Most exams will have one or two free-response questions, and each question is timed separately. Students will need to write and submit their responses within the allotted time for each question. For most subjects, the exams will be 45 minutes long, and include an additional 5 minutes for uploading. Students will need to access the online testing system 30 minutes early to get set up. Students will be able to take exams on any device they have access to—computer, tablet, or smartphone. They will be able to either type and upload their responses or write responses by hand and submit a...

The College Board is asking professors and teachers across the country to make videos to teach students content during this pandemic.  I am attaching the schedule.  It sounds like they will be offered every day.  You are not required to watch but so far the presenters they have told me about are folks on the test writing committee so in my mind their opinions kind of counts for extra.  :)  I'll admit I'm going to try to check some of these out b/c I like to nerd out. Meredith https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-class-schedule-daily.pdf?SFMC_cid=EM289964-&rid=47280723

3/23/2020 Dear AP Government students,  Hello from quarantine! First off I want to acknowledge that this is the weirdest year of my teaching career and it has to be bittersweet for you as seniors. I want to let you know that even though I am not officially your teacher this tri I am still here for you. Please feel like you can reach out to me - regardless of whether you are even planning on taking the AP exam. I also wanted to let you know that the College Board has been changing their plans.  They announced on 3/20/2020 that they are developing secure 45-minute online free-response exams for each course.  The exam content will focus on what most schools were able to complete by early March.   This means that the AP US Government exam will only cover 3 out of the 5 units we covered together - basically Sept - January (foundations of the US government, the 3 branches, and civil rights and civil liberties).   You are a talented grou...

I had a great time meeting with parents tonight at JHS to talk about AP and PSEO classes to help them figure out how to advise their students for next year.  If you're interested in seeing the slideshow you can click here . 

I wanted to share these resources that I used in my presentation this morning with DA 10 STEM students and parents so that families could start having discussions about what their student wants to do next year.   Post DA High School slideshow PSEO course planning document Please feel free to email or call me with follow up questions as you start thinking about junior year. Take care, Meredith maby@isd271.org

Dear DA parents, We are making a change - DA STEM will be housed at Jefferson next year.  It will still be open to Kennedy students but it will be taught by Jefferson staff.  We are transitioning to a 4 year program instead of a 2 year program with an emphasis on Advanced Placement (AP) as opposed to Normandale Community College (NCC) classes.   We are making this change after 6 years of doing our program at NCC.  Current 9th graders will get to finish their program but our next cohort will not start at NCC.  We feel these changes will allow us to better meet the needs of our gifted students. We are going to build towards the following scope and sequence:   Math Science 9 th Graders Honors Algebra II/ Honors PreCalc AP Environmental Science/  AP Computer Science Principles 10th Graders AP Calc BC AP Physics C  11th Graders AP Stats/Probability & Adv. Stats Topics AP Chemistry 12th Grade...

The College Board Advanced Placement (AP) program has recognized 12 National AP Scholars, 40 AP Scholars with Distinction, 34 AP Scholars with Honor and 122 AP Scholars from Bloomington Jefferson and Kennedy high schools. National AP Scholars  are students with an average score of at least four on all AP exams and scores of four or higher on eight or more exams. National AP Scholars: Alexandra Janey, Abigail Larson, Neython Lec Streitz, Colden Longley, Charles Maki, Ryan Martz, Ryan Meany, Amelia Miller, Tomas Panvica, Isabella Phan, Jordan Thomson and Amy Wang. AP Scholars with Distinction  are students with an average score of at least 3.5 on all AP exams taken and scores of three or higher on five or more exams.  AP Scholars with Distinction: Ingrid Anderson, Jacob Bechtold, Promise Benson, Katelynn Brandwick, Hannah Butala, Jillayne Clarke, Ruth Claycomb, Elyse Cooke, Willa Countryman, Peyton Crombie, David Elliot, Jessica Greymont, Kaija Johnson, Ella Jones, Luca...

Today Ms. Cruz and I finished up AP Boot Camp at Kennedy.  We had over 40 students work with us for 4 days on study skills, time management, note taking, and pre-reading strategies.  Some of these students I'll be teaching in the fall!  I'm excited to see what these students can do this year! 

US News and World Report released their 2019 rankings recently and Jefferson moved into the top 20 in the state! These rankings focus mostly on academics and college readiness. Another item to consider is that US News greatly revised their ranking and data systems, which almost doubled the amount of schools they measured so moving into the top 20 is doubly impressive.  https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/minnesota/rankings

On  Saturday, May 4th  the GT dept will offer an opportunity to practice taking the multiple choice section of the AP Calc BC exam  starting at 11am in the JHS media center .   Roger will administer a released exam from the college board so that students can have a test like experience before the exam to practice.  Students will not be able to take the exam with them but they will have the opportunity to see the answers afterwards and to take notes on what types of problems they struggled with.  Students will get 1 hour and 45 minutes to take the 45 question exam and then they can take up to an hour to correct it and take notes.  Students should bring whatever calculator they plan to use on the exam to the practice exam so that they are practicing using it under test like conditions.   Please RSVP to Roger Skophammer <rskophammer@isd271.org> by Wednesday, May 1st so that we have enough copies of the exam for the s...

Both JHS and KHS will have their AP registration meetings this week in advisory.  JHS link:  https://sites.google.com/a/isd271.org/jefferson-ap-exams/

I had a great time at the Kennedy Honors Breakfast this morning.  Congratulations to all the hard working students who pushed themselves to take more challenging classes and stood out nationally on the AP and PSAT exams.  Here's a photo of some of the students recognized this morning.