Enrichment with the Gifted Guy are videos that can be used with students to challenge them and to enrich their learning. These are not so much based on content as they are on skills designed to made students better thinkers.
EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONG SKILLS
Introduction to Executive Functioning Skills - Executive Functioning Skills or EFS for short, are the skills we use in order to achieve our goals. The bigger the goal , the more EFS we are going to use.
Focus
Self Monitoring - in order to keep one's focus, you have to be able to monitor when you lose it and get yourself back on track. This executive functioning skill is known as self-monitoring.
Attention to Detail - one indication of a lose of focus is when people are missing the details.
Study Skills
Organization - one of the best ways to ensure success with study skills is to be organized. This means organization of your space, materials, and time so that you can be as efficient as possible and avoid distractions.
Multi-Tasking - there are times when you are studying where you will have to juggle multiple tasks such as doing math problems, writing an essay, reading a chapter, or studying for a test.
Following Directions
Sequencing - following directions seems like the simplest of executive functioning skills and yet you might be surprised at how poor some people are at it.
Working memory - when you are trying to following directions one of the most important thing is to remember what the directions are.
Groupwork
Collaboration - you are going to use a lot of executive functioning skills when doing groupwork but one of the more important ones is the ability to collaborate.
Conflict management - when working in a group are you able to solve your own problems or do you rely on an authority figure to figure things out for you?
Projects
Planning - the executive functioning skill of planning is the act of having clear steps to go through in order to achieve a goal. This is great for lots of things but is especially important for projects.
Synthesizing - on a project where you've been planning and managing your time, there comes a point where you have to put all of your work together into a final product.
Reflection
Metacognition - the executive functioning skill of metacognition helps greatly with reflection because it involves thinking about your thinking and asking questions of why what you did worked or did not, and what might have happened had you chosen something different.
Follow up - under the executive functioning skill of reflection, you have to have space and place to follow up on whether you are indeed acting upon the lessons you learned from your reflection.
IDEAS
Self-Reflection - if you are going to learn from your successes and your mistakes it is important to reflect upon your previous actions and results.
Appropriate use of humor - humor can be a powerful way to engage and connect to people. But it can also divide people if it is offensive. How do you know if your humor is offensive or is crossing the line?
Taking the Abstract and Making It Concrete - ideas can be very abstract. Love, freedom, time, thinking. All of these are ideas that we cannot necessary touch or see. And yet when we want to express these ideas, we have to come up with concrete ways to do so.
Are your visuals communicating what you want them to? - a picture is worth a 1000 words so they say. But is it communicating the 1000 words you want it to?
21st CENTURY SKILLS
Taking notes - this is an important skill if you want to learn how to remember information. The average person remembers about 10% of what they hear so how do you remember the rest?
Details Matter - your teacher has probably said a thousand times to you, give me more detail, show your work, or explain more clearly. Details are the little things that paint the entire picture. If we focus only on the answer or the big picture, we are not seeing the entire story.
What makes a good citizen? - when someone says to be a good citizen, what exactly does that mean? This video will explore what it means to be a good citizen using the book "What can a citizen do?".
Time management - this executive functioning skill involves taking the time you have been given and using it well.
Goal Directed Persistence - we want students to be able to show grit, especially in longer term projects where the motivating starts to wane. But there needs to be a clear finish line for them to run toward.
Vulnerability - how is being vulnerable a skill? Well, if you are not vulnerable you are less likely to be open to change that comes with reflection.
Self Regulation is one executive functioning skill that helps you better to reflect. Once you have reflected and set new goals for your next piece of work, it is important that you control what you can control which are you emotions, your actions, and your decisions.
Answering an Essay Question - writing an essay question is one thing, writing an essay that clearly answers the question and provides enough supporting detail is another.
What Does Valid Research Look Like? - the good news is that there is a lot of information out there on the internet. The bad news is that there is a lot of information out there on the internet. The question becomes, what is good information and what is not so good?
Attention Control - being able to focus is a great executive functioning skill to have, but are you able to control that focus should you get distracted or have to sustain this? Attention control is all about using strategies to maintain that focus.
Prioritization - when you have to sit down and get some work done, having the skill of prioritization is very important. This allows you to determine what is the more important, or in some cases, more timely work.
Unpacking - If we do not unpack the important items from our directions, then we are just left with a bunch of stuff and we might miss out on an important detail.
Reviewing - just like checking your answer when you finish a math problem, you need to review the directions you have been following to make sure you have done it correctly.
Flexibility - in order to be able to work well in a group, you must use the executive functioning skill of flexibility. better.
Oversight - when you are working as a group it can be easy to assume someone else is doing something and so it doesn't get done.
December Holidays - we often associate the month of December with Christmas. However, there are other holidays that are celebrated in that month depending on your culture and/or religion.
HOW TO PLAY BOARD GAMES/PUZZLES
Learning to Play Solitaire - Want to play a game but there isn't anyone else around to play with? The good news is that you can still play solitaire, a card game that only requires one person.
How to Play Wordle - Wordle is a word game in which there are five blank boxes. You must figure out the letters that make-up this five letter word.
Codenames - is a game where there are players on opposite sides of a 5x5 field of cards with single word terms on them. One player has the indicator card which lets them know which cards are theirs, either blue or red.
Logic Grid Puzzles - these are grid puzzles where you are given a number of clues that help you either to determine an answer or eliminate others. The difficulty of the puzzles can be raised by adding more grids, having less clues, or having clues that do not share much information.
“HOW TO” VIDEOS
How to Get Started in Minecraft - With a guest teacher for this episode, my daughter, a Minecraft expert, takes folks through the basics of how to get tools, how to mine for materials, and how to make a simple house.
Creating Your Own Schoolhouse Rock - Schoolhouse Rock were catchy songs that appeared during breaks between Saturday morning cartoons during the 1970s and 80s.
BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS/READ ALOUDS
Read-Along for Younger Students