Friday 20 February 2015

February 16th - 19th

Here are a few of the things that we did... This Week In Gifted!

More On Maps

The Summerland and Penticton AIM groups (grades 1 - 3) started creating their own, aged looking treasure maps.  Students had fun creating and naming mountains, rivers, lakes, oceans and other geographic features.  They then ripped and crumpled their maps and painted them with tea to give them an aged look.  We will be working with these maps in future classes.

Project Time

The Penticton grade 4s and 5s continued to work on their treasure projects.  Some of the grade 4s presented their finished projects.  Max, Jimmy, and Graham presented their radio interview on pirates and Marcus presented his slideshow on rare gems and ores in Minecraft.  We look forward to more presentations in the weeks to come!

The Summerland ASPIRE group (grade 4s and 5s) continued to work on their 'Protect the Treasure' 3D models.  We have models with rolling boulders, hand scanners, snake pits and more!

Improv Bingo

The Penticton grade 5s continued to explore the process of working in choice versus no choice groups in Improv Bingo.  This week they did not get to choose who was in their group; I made did the groupings (ensuring that the usual pairings were not together).  They did a marvellous job with their skits!  Through this process I hope that the students are getting an opportunity to experience the pros (instead of focussing on the cons) of different sorts of groupings.  I think they are beginning to see the strengths of all of the members of our class and to trust that they can collaborate with anyone in the class to create good work.

Sunday 15 February 2015

Two for the Price of One

I didn't get a post out last week, so here's what we did This Week (and last) In Gifted.

World of Treasure Slide Shows

Below are the last two slide shows from the Penticton grade 1 - 3 classes.  You can see previous slideshows here and here.

Sophie, Ryan M, and Ellen (link).



Anya, Ryan A, Katie, and Gerry (link).



Improv Bingo

The Penticton 5s and 4s did Improv Bingo, the drama game where a person, place, goal, obstacle and object are all chosen at random and then incorporated into skits by groups of 3-4 with hilarious results.  Students brainstorm, collaborate, create and then perform their skits.  At the end of each skit audience members are asked to comment on what each group did well (appreciations).  This helps the whole group to critically think about what makes a good story or play so that we can all improve.

This week was the first time this year that the 4s had done Improv Bingo and they did wonderfully!  The 5s were pushed out of their comfort zone a little as they weren't allowed to go into their 'usual' groups; they were partnered up with people may not normally work with.  We talked about the benefits of 'choice' groups vs. groups that someone else chooses.  All went well.

Protect the Treasure

The Summerland ASPIRE (gr 4 & 5) group continued to work on their 3D models.  Students are creating models showing how they would hide and protect a valuable treasure.  They were busy with glue guns, modelling clay, pipe-cleaners and more and their plans are gradually taking shape.  

Maps

The Summerland and Penticton grade 1 - 3 groups worked with maps.  Together we created maps of our classroom.  Then students were given tokens to hide and mark in the corresponding spot on their maps.  Students then swapped maps and hunted down the each others tokens.

Zip Line Design Challenge

The Summerland AIM class (gr 1 - 3) were tasked with designing something to transport a ping pong ball from the top of a zip line to the bottom in 4 seconds or less.  The students tried different ways to balance their carriers and to reduce friction.  Everyone was successful and some even took on the challenge to transpire more than one ping pong ball at a time.

Treasure Projects

The Penticton 4s and 5s continued to work on their treasure projects, with many students finished or nearing completion.  Students have tackled lots of different treasure related topics and are presenting them using a variety of formats.  I hope to highlight individual projects here in the coming weeks.

Thank you for stopping by to find out what we've been up to!