FEATURES
historical study.Kimberly Dodds, elementary teacher in Newport Mesa, CA demonstrates how she incorporates social studies into the curriculum in her article, “Social Studies in the Primary Grades: Using Learning Centers as a Vehicle.” She includes specific center tasks and correlates them to state content standards at several grade levels. Finally, Kimberly Chandler, Curriculum Director at the Center for Gifted Education at the College of William and Mary, provides rubrics to use at both primary and upper levels to train students to examine primary source documents with a critical eye. She shows us how in her article, “Using Primary Sources in
Social Studies with Gifted Learners.”We also have a full slate of department articles in this issue. As stated above, Carolyn Cooper joins us with a new column entitled Administrator Talk. We believe this to be an important addition to our continuing departments of Teacher Talk and Parent Talk. It helps us meet our goal of providing practical information for teachers, parents, and administrators. Cooper is a recently retired administrator who served at a variety of levels including district gifted coordinator and head of the gifted program for the Maryland Department of Education. Please note that we have a guest student author writing for the Hands-on Curriculum department. Evan Morikawa, who just graduated from High Tech High School in San Diego, shares the process he and his classmates used to develop and publish a field guide to the San Diego bay. His article is entitled, “Student-centered Environment: Interdisciplinary Perspectives Through Field
Studies and Publishing.”Another change in this issue concerns Internet addresses. We have adopted the newer practice of omitting the www or http:// as prefixes to most individual Internet addresses. Almost all Web addresses can now be accessed without this prefix, and it makes formatting much simpler for us.
Finally, we wish to thank our designers at Barbara Brown Marketing & Design, for creating the new look of our cover. We appreciate their professional and creative work. As year-round schools are well into the new school year, and traditional schools have recently begun their fall term, we wish all our readers a successful, productive, and satisfying year. Our winter issue is due out on January 1, 2007 and will focus on serving middle school gifted learners.
—Margaret Gosfield, Editor