Glen Oaks Park is a team of staff, parents, community, and gifted and talented students who are empowered to achieve academic excellence and social growth for all.  Students accept the responsibility to develop their potential and to serve the community with their gifts and talents.

Welcome to Glen Oaks Park Elementary School!

Open the doors to Glen Oaks Park and what do you see?  A thriving gifted program servicing one hundred four self-contained and resource students.  Much excitement is felt in our school as teachers and students work together to place the students at the center of their educational experience.  You’ll see children actively engaged in taking responsibility for their learning by completing research, creative activities, simulations, hands-on activities, independent projects, group activities, experiments, and traditional instruction.  Children are encouraged to reach beyond their academic, creative, and cognitive “comfort zones” by participating in a differentiated curriculum designed to challenge young gifted minds.  You’ll see children developing many academic concepts and real-life skills as they assume the responsibility to make decisions, choose materials, ask questions, problem solve, think critically, read, write, and learn for authentic purposes.  The one thing you won’t miss is the atmosphere here!  Children develop academically, cognitively, socially and emotionally in a supportive, trusting environment.  Teachers and students alike wear smiles and feel at home here.  Experience the excitement of Glen Oaks Park through the descriptions of our latest activities.  If you’d like to visit our school, located at 5656 Lanier Drive, please contact the Gifted Site Coordinator, Barbara Nosacka, at 356-4521.

Glimpses of Gifted at Glen Oaks Park Elementary

   Authors in Action (Click Here for sub-page)
   Inventions (Click Here for sub-page).

 
Field Trips and Special Projects are key in a differentiated curriculum

    Declaring Freedoms (Click Here)
    Up Up and Away (Click Here)
    Out of this World (Click Here)
    Building Bridges (Click Here)

Declaring Freedoms

Glen Oaks Park gifted students in second, fourth, and fifth grades visited the Old State Capitol to see one of the twenty-five existing copies of the Declaration of Independence.  A short video introduced the students to the history of the important United States document.  Although two hundred copies were made in 1776, the one which traveled to Baton Rouge is one of the rare twenty-five copies left.  After viewing the Declaration, the students toured the beautiful old capitol.  For many of the students, this was their first visit to the historic building.  A second grader, A.J. Holloway, said, “My favorite part of the field trip was getting to see an original copy of the Declaration of Independence.”  Our students were fortunate to make this trip to see the documents owned and sponsored by Hollywood producer, Norman Lear.  Students also celebrated Louisiana’s bicentennial by viewing the original Louisiana Purchase documents at the capitol.  Flags and military uniforms representative of the different countries that have owned Louisiana were on display.  Students visually enjoyed a piece of their state’s and country’s histories.

  Up, Up, and Away!

Fourth and fifth grade gifted students recently traveled to the BREC Observatory where they created hot air balloons.   The students discussed the history of the hot air balloons, learning that the first flights were made by burning straw to create heat for the balloons.  At that time, people thought the smoke is what made the balloons rise, not the heat. This myth was quickly dispelled as students participated in a demonstration and discussion of how heat causes molecules to move. After the discussion, the students were ready and eager to create their own hot air balloons using wire, garbage bags, and tape.  The students attempted to launch their balloons outside using heat guns.  Imagine the excitement when the sky became filled with soaring “balloons.”  What a high flying trip!

Out of this World

With the help of Mrs. Karen Burks, third grade gifted teacher, and Mrs. Tricia Hale, fifth grade gifted teacher, every class at Glen Oaks Park had an opportunity to experience StarLab, an inflatable, mobile planetarium.   Different space concepts were taught at each grade level with teachers doing many hands on experiments with the students. Mrs. Hale also offered a school-wide parent workshop to allow parents to experience the Starlab planetarium and share what their children learned while inside the StarLab.

Students in Tricia Hale’s fifth grade gifted class enjoyed studying astronomy. They fine-tuned their brains and looked to the stars searching for knowledge about all things “out of this world”!   Students designed their own constellations and wrote myths explaining their creations.  The junior astronomers went to the BREC Observatory to do hands-on activities and experiments related to space.  They spent several afternoons in the StarLab, where they learned about the stars, constellations, moon phases and much more.  They also found themselves outside, tracking the sun, tracing shadows, and telling time with student made sundials. The unit culminated with a trip to the Louisiana Arts and Science Museum’s Challenger Learning Center, where students performed a simulation of a spaceflight rendezvous with Haley’s Comet.  The Junior Astronauts located the comet, put a space station into orbit, built an electronic probe, and launched the probe into the coma of the comet.

Guest speaker, Tracie Meeks, from the BREC Observatory, presented a slide show to the gifted fourth and fifth graders which illustrated first hand the surface of the sun.  She also brought telescopes with solar lenses that allowed each student to see the sunspots on the sun’s surface.

Building Bridges

Truss, arch, clapper, suspension- these are words students in Tricia Hale’s fifth grade class are learning as part of their everyday vocabulary.  They are participating in a bridge building contest.  Students work in groups to design and build a bridge built out of toothpicks!  They learn about the history of bridges and the different designs that are possible for their project.  They must purchase materials they need from the “warehouse” and an accountant keeps their financial records.  Architect, Bryan Hume, has been a guest speaker and is working with the children to help them design the best bridge.  The project will culminate with a contest on which bridge can hold the most weight!

A Living Wax Museum?

You have probably heard of a wax museum, but what about a “living” wax museum?  Miss Swander’s students from the fourth grade-gifted classroom at Glen Oaks Park Elementary School entertained other students in the school with a special tour through their version of a wax museum.  After reading, studying, and researching the person of their choice as part of a unit on the genre of biography, students collected clothing and perfected a speech they wrote in order to become that person for one very exciting afternoon.  As the visitors entered the museum, they were able to view “statues” of very famous people from both the past and present.  With the ring of a bell, those statues came alive and became a living version of that special person in order to share the important, exciting and interesting aspects of their life.  How exciting to “meet” such famous people!