Radio Sampler and Improv Bingo

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

Radio Sampler

Students listened to a short sample of the different audio segments that have been produced so
far this year.  The quality of the work is great and the students enjoyed hearing what others have been creating!  It seems to have spurred students on to want to complete segments they have in production and to start new segments.

Improv Bingo

The Students in the Wednesday morning class played Improv Bingo.  It is a fun drama game where students have to quickly come up with a short skit that they act out.  In this case the students had to include (link):

There was a lot of discussion about why you would have a blizzard in the Sahara, but eventually folks accepted that it had to be part of the skit.  Before getting into their groups to brainstorm ideas we talked about how to work positively with your group members, ensuring that everyone was able to contribute and participate fairly.  When it was time to get to work, the students were amazing!  They generated ideas and everyone looked like they were happy with how their group was working.  This is pretty incredible.  When I've done this activity with other groups there are always times I have to step in to help mediate conflicts or deal with tears.  Not with this class!

The skits were hilarious!  One skit involved a giant lollipop god who was generating the blizzard (which was actually a DQ Blizzard), another involved creative use of furniture to depict a character struggling with a beefy 5 foot tall butterfly.  There were creative uses of lollipops, amazing acting, excellent use of narrators, and so much humor!  At the end of each skit the audience members were asked to give appreciations and to comment on what the group did well.  This helps all of us understand what elements people enjoy and what makes a great skit.

The Wednesday afternoon class did a modified version of Improv Bingo.  Instead of doing skits, students worked alone to come up with stories which they told aloud.  Again, there were creative and humorous stories!

The Tuesday afternoon class had another go at My Favourite Thing, the storytelling activity described in last week's post.  The creativity from this group is wonderful!  One of our students from this class is moving away at Spring Break so we wished her well with some donuts -- but everyone had to tell a creative story about why donuts were their favourite thing in order get in on the food!

More Project Time

All of the classes had lots of time again this week to work on their audio projects -- either writing scripts, voicing them, or editing the audio.