What's Happening in GATAS Now...   Thanks parents for all your support.  A "wish list" of extra materials for use in our classroom includes these items for 2012-2013 school year: 4X6 white index cards boxes of colored pencils hand-held pencil sharpeners.  (We use these in our work spaces.) 2012-13 is sure to be a very "full" year of work and study.  There is just so much to learn and so little time to do it all.  Thank you for supporting our GATAS program with such positive comments.  Our students continue to do amazing tasks, and their critical thinking skills continue to expand.  Go to www.mathcats.com      You will find some interesting math activities there.  Explore "tessellation town" at this site and enjoy creating some unique tessellation patterns.  You will love it! Students are presently working on novel studies.  They are fantastic.  We will continue our focus on math strategies throughout the year.  These strategies encourage students to focus on math problem solving that requires logical reasoning, common sense, multiple-leveled skills, and knowledge.   Focus for April thru May:  Language arts will focus on the College of William and Mary's Literature Packets which include some poetry and interesting short stories.   Math with focus on Mentoring Mathematical Minds (M3) units for each grade.  Specifics are listed on the curriculum page of this site.  Caesar's English and our Latin word stems will be practiced weekly.   Go to our educational websites page and check out the websites for cursive writing and diagramming sentences.  We are enjoying the skills used in these tasks.  What a guy.... Thinking Skills and Brain Boosters...activities that stretch your mind Fluency Activity:  See how many words you can make with these letters:  springtime .  Rules of Play....Each word must have at least 3 letters; no abbreviations; no proper nouns.  Good luck.     2.  Scattergories:    Your beginning letter is M.  Give an example in each category that starts with that letter.  (Can you finish in 5 minutes?)  The categories are: 1. Name of a state  2.  City in SC  3.  Math word   4. Verb with 5 letters 5.  Something hot   6.  Summer clothing    7.  Board Game   8.  Something to ride 9.  An example of Onomatopeia   10.  Something that makes noise HAVE FUN WITH YOUR THINKING ACTIVITIES>  Exercise the mind!