Wyckoff Students Learn Through Discovery

WYCKOFF, NJ — Wyckoff elementary students are researching to gain valuable insights about the world.

Students in the Discovery (gifted and talented) Program, led by June Weissman, have been busy with creative projects that inspire and push them to explore, school district officials said.

As part of the program, eligible third graders are researching the "diverse cultures" of Australia and New Zealand. Meanwhile, fourth graders have crafted parodies of Lewis Carroll's famous poem, "Jabberwocky", and fifth graders are developing science fiction fantasies to imagine life in the year 2223.

In a monthly newsletter called Weissman's Window, the program specialist further explained the key aspects of the projects.

The third graders, for example, are exploring the island, country and continent of Australia, and making stops in New Zealand along the way, the Discovery newsletter said.

"Students have considered recurrent themes in aboriginal cultures," the newsletter said. "We have explored origin legends and written our own."

Fourth graders, after analyzing the poetic features of "Jabberwocky," recreated the poem in a way that imitates the original though also populates it with their own made-up characters.

"Students experienced a variety of illustrated versions of the original poem to demonstrate the effect of art on the meanings we construct," Weissman said.

Fifth graders researched topics including cryonics, terraforming, artificial intelligence, and time travel, all to serve as a springboard for "collaborative science fiction fantasies," for which they will act out through an interpretive film that will be judged for the "Space-cademy" Awards.

"Settings may be underground lava tubes on Mars, floating space colonies, underwater dwellings, mile-high megastructures, clouds of Venue — the only options are limited by their research and their imagination," the program teacher said.

"Students are honing many skills, not the least of which is ownership of their learning and accountability to a team," Weissman added.