Friday 24 February 2017

Designing and Researching

This week students were all busy working on their projects.  Many students have decided to design a house or other building and spent their time on drawing up plans and searching for ideas on the internet.  Other students are gathering information on a specific architect or building.  It is exciting to see things taking shape!  The photos below are of students from the Wednesday afternoon class at our 'drafting' table.




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Sunday 19 February 2017

The B I G Project

The  B I G  Project

Every year we do a major project related to our theme.  This year's theme is ArKIDtecture.  Students have the choice of designing a building or doing a research project on a famous architect or building. Each project is unique; students and teacher work together to decide what needs to be included in the project as well as what the final products will be.  This week was about exploring potential topics and brainstorming ideas.  Below are a few photos of what the Wednesday morning class was working on (link):



More updates on the projects all of the students are working on will follow in the weeks to come!

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Sunday 12 February 2017

Architect Visit

Here are a few of the things we got up to... This Week in Gifted!

Architect Visit

The Penticton Thursday afternoon class was visited by Penticton architect Calvin Meiklejohn.  Mr. Meikeljohn spoke to the students about the work of an architect and answered their many excellent questions!  Students were able to look at blueprints and other architectural drawings.  Mr. Meiklejohn also brought samples of different building materials such tiles, wood veneers, and cutaways of windows as well as a cutaway of the flooring system of a gymnasium hardwood floor.  A highlight of the visit was when Mr. Meiklejohn drew a scale drawing of the front of our students' dream house.  He explained how scale drawings work and, as he drew, he took in suggestions from the students as to window placement, roof style, siding, colours etc.  Below are some photos from the visit (link).




Paper Table Challenge Continued

The Tuesday afternoon Summerland class and the Wednesday morning Penticton class continued to work on their paper tables.  Check out last week's post for some background on this design challenge.   It is amazing how strong some of these tables were considering they were made from no more than 8 sheets of newsprint, masking tape and a 8" x 11" piece of cardboard!  Students did a lot of testing and refining.  I was really impressed with the persistence of many of the students; getting their table to support one heavy text book wasn't enough--they wanted to alter their design and see if could hold more--a lot more!  Check out the photos below (link).



Travels with Stick People

The Wednesday classes continued to work on their photo editing skills--sending their stick people off to visit more architectural sites.  Here are more photos from this week (link).



Thanks for checking in to see what we've been up to this week!

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Saturday 4 February 2017

Design Challenges

Design Challenges

This week we switched gears and all of the classes were given a design challenge to work on.  Before starting we talked about the design process.

The Design Process from the Design Squad Activity Guide (link

The Paper Table Design Challenge

The Summerland class and the Wednesday morning Penticton class were asked to build a table at least 20 cm tall that can support a heavy textbook.  The challenge?  The students were only allowed to use the following materials:
  • 8 sheets of newspaper
  • masking tape
  • one 8" x 10" piece of cardboard 
Below are some photos of the building process (link):


Students will continue to work on this challenge next week.

Straw Bridge Challenge

The Penticton Wednesday and Thursday afternoon classes were given the straw bridge challenge.  Check out the pics below to see what the challenge was and how they approached it (link).



More Guests

This week we had two visitors form the School Board Office.  Mrs. Thomson (she visited the Summerland group last week) visited the Thursday afternoon class.  Mr. Manuel visited the Summerland group as they worked on the Paper Table Challenge.  Thank you for checking out what the students are learning about!