Mark Hess & Portable Gifted and Talented

You will be a rock star! This collection is highly interactive, creative, and rich in age-appropriate critical thinking. SEE THE DETAILED PREVIEW DESCRIPTION This collection takes me through an entire year of lessons with my advanced groups of kindergarteners, 1st, and 2nd graders . . . but many of these lessons can also be used for middle and upper elementary kids, especially if you come into the regular classroom to teach whole-class enrichment lessons. 19 units and 419 pages of lessons!

Yes, we can teach reading, writing, speaking and listening, and critical thinking skills using this amazing graphic novel which has no “words!” It’s a journey about who we are, where we have come from, and the humanity we share. It’s about hope and love and understanding. At times powerful, at times breathtakingly beautiful . . . Shaun Tan’s The Arrival should be on every bookshelf in every classroom. This 100+ page teaching guide and unit has been developed over the past three years in my a

In From Putt-putt to Pebble Beach--Table-top Mini Golf, students will design and construct a playable table-top sized miniature golf course using the engineering design process. With these lessons, the teacher defines the problem, helps students gather background research, and specifies the requirements. The students do the rest: creating alternative solutions, choosing the best solution, doing development work, building a prototype, and testing and redesigning. The result is a classroom filled

115+ hours of class time, 374 pages. This collection is big and includes big savings--42% off individual purchases of some. Pretty much everything in the Portable Gifted and Talented store is rated 4.0, but take a couple minutes to peruse the comments for these individual units. I think you’ll like what you see. Designed for two purposes: A curriculum for Middle School STEAM classes with an engineering focus. Or . . . Upper Elementary GATE – Very Challenging! These units are big, fairly com

Every other teacher in your building probably has a handy curriculum to follow, a set of textbooks as resources . . . so why not you, the Gifted and Talented Teacher? Here is a complete first year GATE program adaptable to 3rd or 4th grades--all tried and tested, Common Core Standards based, and successfully implemented using best practices in gifted education. SEE THE BIG PREVIEW FOR MORE -- 33% off Individual Purchase Prices You get 263 pages of materials guaranteed to produce 45+ hours of con

In this GATE engineering journey, students will each construct a very cool Ferris wheel prototype as a final product. Along the way, they will examine primary source images, read primary source history, and integrate math, engineering, and economics in a learning process which incorporates best practices in gifted and talented education for 21st Century Learners. This is a challenging engineering project—teacher guided. I used it for GATE 4th grade; however, my kids are experienced builders.

I went about creating units for my youngest groups--KG and 1st grade--because I rarely saw any unit out there that was truly targeting these groups in a deliberate gifted and talented application. Here is the bundle! PLEASE SEE THE INDIVIDUAL PREVIEWS These are hands-on, cross-curricular, and contain best practices for gifted education. There are even social-emotional lessons built inside. They are all kid-tested and come with great enthusiasm behind them from these little guys. You will get

Your students will ask to stay in from recess for this. It is the most popular unit I've taught in 32 years, and it is packed with challenging critical thinking. We imagine students are training at the school for spies: mini survivor challenges, mini crossbows, a jewel heist, footprint mysteries, memory games, cipher disks, case files, messages hidden in gel caps. This unit is STEM and critical thinking at its coolest and finest, and we’ve thrown in reading, speaking and listening, and a social

Let’s get ready for the second semester, you rock star gifted and talented teacher, you . . . By now the students can’t wait for their next group with you, so let’s not disappoint! Priced at more than 44% off individual purchases, I put this collection together with several things in mind: 1. Best practices in gifted education. 2. Engaging, hands-on, and critical thinking. 3. Materials are easy to find and/or inexpensive. 4. Common Core and/or Next Generation Science referenced. 5. Variety to sp

In this unit, students will build a contraption to hit a small, wooden golf ball through a scaled version of a golf course which they and their classmates have designed. They’ll make a trundle wheel for measuring and marking the course, write down their scores on a scorecard, design putters, and learn background in physics through their work in the engineering and design process. The Playable Golf Course is not just fun. It’s a challenging engineering, design, and construction unit including

Here’s an applied engineering challenge in which—just like in the real world of engineering—a poor design means limited success or even failure. In the Iditarod Sled Challenge, students apply their background knowledge of physical science and use logic and imagination to construct a miniature sled that will deliver “serum” to Nome, Alaska, just like Balto once did. Use this challenge in conjunction with your study of the arctic or the Iditarod--or as a stand-alone engineering challenge for the

Proven to be among my most popular products, these Programs for the Year cover Gifted and Talented topics from primary to social-emotional, from STEAM to math challenges, and from literature to engineering. They are edited, kid-tested, and ready for success. I taught each of them in my classroom this past school year. PLEASE SEE INDIVIDUAL PREVIEWS FOR MORE DETAILS. These lessons and units are hands-on, very challenging, and full of critical thinking as well as engineering and literacy. They s

In this lesson, students solve geometry problems and learn background physics concepts as they build a working model of Leonardo Da Vinci’s parachute. Logic, critical thinking, a bit of Renaissance history, writing and supporting conclusions with details from a source—it’s all here too! Make this extended lesson a cross-curricular, standards-based mini-unit, or just make it a cool building activity. Pick and choose the level of commitment right for you and your students. With the suggested e

Kid-built in a few hours . . . this 7 inch tall basketball hoop can be assembled and re-assembled. We’re not going to toss a ball to make baskets with this project. Oh, no . . . we are making a little catapult to launch marshmallows at the hoop! Oh, yes! Sweet! Use this building project as a challenging independent study for upper elementary, as a whole-class engineering project, or use it to make math and science applications like percentages, measurements and geometry, action/reaction, tr

Welcome to the shark tank project-based learning unit. Let’s begin our entrepreneurial careers today! Build critical thinking skills, public speaking success, and bring creativity, language arts, and economics into your classroom in a purposeful and authentic way. Students will work in collaborative teams to solve a complex, ongoing, inquiry-based problem with a physical product for an authentic audience: • Brainstorm a product, citing a need that will be fulfilled. • Construct a prototyp

This bundle is a variation on my popular social-emotional curriculum which is going live and in print in the spring of 2021. These social-emotional units span the curriculum with creative, hands-on activities . . . because we need to make excellent use of our time in gifted and talented talent pools with best practices in gifted education. Lessons and units correspond to NAGC affective standards, the 8 Great Gripes of Gifted Kids, or common issues for gifted learners. 7 fantastic and engaging un

5th grade Volume 1 is the top seller of all of the 200+ gifted and talented products in my store, but here's a secret . . . this may be even better! Yep . . . almost half off the individual prices. Full units including the most popular unit I have taught in 32 years -- Spy Training -- and Pyramids (these two total almost 40 hours on their own!). Spies! -- An incredible adventure! 18 hours of talent pool challenges when student train to be spies. The Clubhouse -- creative and in-depth for a

On the very first day, your students will have created a personal metaphor, completed a cool 3D visual art nameplate which can be used as an effective classroom management strategy throughout the year, completed a public speaking opportunity straight from the Common Core Standards, and will have proven themselves to be a supportive listener in the classroom. Yep, all in this one interactive critical thinking activity . . . In this introductory lesson, students use a graphic organizer to brains

The beauty in The Lost Thing is that it settles into one’s soul in a casual and poetic way. What starts as a sort of amusing but sad story finds its way deeper into your heart. You begin to wonder, to ask questions. Soon you find yourself wanting to stand up and defend all the lost things in the world—including that lost part of yourself. Are you somehow guilty too, you wonder? Quite unexpectedly, you begin to really feel the world Shaun Tan creates. It is a wonderful experience in mindfu

Let’s have some fun along with the Pigeon and expand DOK along the way! This lesson will lead your primary GATE students through four challenging activities, culminating in an artistic response showing why they “never get to do anything!” either. Gifted and talented learners carry similar characteristics throughout their lives—even as kindergarten and first graders. One common characteristic of gifted learners is a strong sense of justice. Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus gives us a good o