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Do you know the spell of 7?
The kids at the Pre-Algebra Pioneers (a Gifted World Course) do. Try it with me
Is your answer 7?
Gifted students frequently find that school is not challenging enough. Schools find it difficult to curate or deliver material that can engage gifted students at multiple levels of difficulty.
On 3 August 2024, we launched a series of innovative online courses on Gifted World. These are designed to support gifted students in challenging themselves, pushing their boundaries and exposing them to new areas of interest.
Our Model
Each of these courses are designed by amazing and highly experienced educators. The structure works like this -
At the start of the course, students attend an online meeting with the mentor, engage in stimulating discussions, try activities together and get introduced to the topic of the week.
They are then given a work plan for the week - curated material to explore and learn on their own.
There are a series of assignments to be submitted each week, of increasing levels of difficulty. The advanced difficulties are optional in order to complete the course, but strongly recommended for maximum learning.
The students can access support anytime they need it from qualified teaching assistants.
Assignments are to be submitted by Thursday. On Saturday, the online Mentor Hour session will discuss common mistakes and doubts from the past week's assignments, any open questions from the students at the session, and then push further towards the next week's material.
This format is geared to enable students to learn how to learn by themselves, while providing them sufficient challenge and support.
If you are interested to know more, check out our upcoming courses starting this September.
Stories from Mentor Hours
We asked our Mentors what were some of their favourite questions or moments from the mentor hours:
Navin Kabra, Harvesting GenAI:
The students seem very interested in this topic. In the survey and in the Zoom chat during the first mentor hour, students asked a total of 136 questions. Here are some interesting examples:
1. Sir, did you use ChatGPT to write the content of the lessons of this course?
2. Will AI make us think less?
3. Why is training data removed from an AI after training is complete?
While the number of questions asked is interesting, what I found even more interesting is that a good chunk of the questions asked in the chat were answered by other students.
Jayasree S, Pre-Algebra Pioneers:
We used Math Magic to kick off our course.
“How can you count something without counting it?” - Counting smartly was the topic of week 1 and we explored “spells” like the spell of 7 above. Students were surprised that everyone was getting 7 (even after starting with different numbers to follow the series of steps).
We did a “I can guess your birthday” spell too. While there was a section of students who were surprised and said that was indeed their number/birthday etc, one student said he knows another “spell” to find birthdays - He called it that, indicating that they were playing along. We have noted the “spell” and told them that we will analyse how it works in another lesson.
Some students have already made the connection between these “spells” and using Algebra to express patterns!
Ashish Kulkarni, Exploring Economics:
"what is a short crisp definition of economics" was a lovely question to get, and my answer was "the study of how to get the most out of life"
Dhanya K, Junior Explorers - Adventures in Scientific Inquiry
We did an activity inspired by famous physicist Richard Feynman. Students took dried spaghetti sticks and observed how many pieces the spaghetti breaks into when bent. We discussed the how it puzzled scientists for many years, and recent progress on it.
As appropriate in an inquiry class, the questions were flowing! Here are some examples: “Why did this length of spaghetti when broken give so many pieces when compared to another length, why did you choose spaghetti and not any other food? Why did the paper clips join? Is it because of the pressure from the paper or my hand? Does the spaghetti bending have any role in the number of pieces it breaks into? Can we do our own Google research - is it allowed?”
Some student feedback:
Student 1, Harnessing GenAI:
This was an experience that was something I never expected or thought. This makes undertanding topics a 100000% easier like 100000/100=1000 times better. This makes my note making a lot easier with those summary,table of contents,timeline. This timeline can help me tooo Much like I can use it for English lessons like the lost child where our ma’am told us to make a timeline, but then I hadn’t known about this but I bet this will come in handy again especially when it comes to social studies where I can make these summaries and timelines come to help at the perfect moment. I just wish that Google doesn’t make this a paid one ;) (btw I used it for my Harry Potter book and it gave me the summerization and timeline soooo well THANKS FOR SHOWING ME THIS AI)
Student 2, Harnessing GenAI:
I was surprised to learn that AI can lie, that ai detectors are fake and I learnt a lot about prompt engineering. According to me the course is amazing so it's 5 on 5.
Student 3, Exploring Economics:
The most surprising thing that I learnt in the course this week is that nothing can be obtained in the world for free. I joined this course to learn an introduction to economics and the way economists think. I have found the course to be a 5 on 5.
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We are excited to see what further learning the next few weeks brings for us.
Join us on our next course series starting in September! Use the coupon code SEPT24GIFT at check out for 20% off on the course price!!
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