Logos and Radio Plays

This week we worked on Logos, Charades, and a Radio Play!

Logos

The ASPIRE class as well as the Penticton grade 5 classes learned about good logo design and then got to try their hand at designing a logo for the Creation Station or their own radio show!  Prior to our logo activity some of the students had already been working on logos.  It was interesting to see how they reworked their designs after our activity taking into account the principles of good design.  I'll describe the logo activity in more detail next week after the other classes have completed it.

Charades

The AIM class as well as the Penticton grade 3/4 classes participated in the Charades activity which I described last week.  There are a few students who have an amazing ability to guess the right answer almost every time and many more who do an excellent job of communicating their clues non-verbally!

Radio Play

The Penticton grade 1/2 class knocked my socks off with their reading of the story 'Chicken Little'.  We did it as a radio play with each student reading the part of a character or the narrator.  Once the recording has been edited I'll post the link here.  There are many versions of Chicken Little; here is a link to the script that we used.

Audio Thank You Card

This week we sent off our audio thank you card to Chris Walker.  Chris visited the Penticton grade 3 - 5 classes in January (you can read about it here).  Here is a link to the card (https://soundcloud.com/ctworkschool/thank-you-chris-quiet)  The choral parts were spoken by the Tuesday grade 3/4 class and the Thursday grade 5 class.  The individual comments were made by students from the Wednesday grade 5 class.  We received the following in response:

Thanks for taking the time to read about a few of the things that we did... This Week In Gifted!

Radio Show Brainstorm & Chris Walker

It was a busy week.  Here are a few of the things we did, this week in gifted!

Radio Show Brainstorm

All of the students are or will be creating mini radio shows.  These mini shows will be packaged together as part of one large radio show.  The challenge is to come up with a name for the large radio show.  (One of the AIM students suggested the analogy that all of the students' mini radio shows are like chapters in a book.  Now we need to come up with a title for the book!)  All of the students from the seven gifted program classes will be suggesting names and helping to decide which one will be 'the one'.  This week most of the classes spent time brainstorming possible names.  We talked about the DOVE principle of brainstorming:
Defer judgement
Oddball and outrageous ideas encouraged
Vast number of ideas
Expand and elaborate on the ideas that you have and the ideas of others
Over the next few weeks we will go through the process of narrowing down the list of names and deciding upon 'the one'.

CBC Radio's Chris Walker Visits

On Thursday Chris Walker, the host of CBC Radio's Daybreak South, visited the Penticton grade 3 - 5 groups.  Wow, what a presentation!  Chris talked about the technical aspects of radio (what radio waves are, how the sounds are transmitted from the radio studio to our radios etc).  He shared with us some video that he'd shot the day before with a couple of his colleagues who talked about what they do.  Chris also set up a mini recording studio in our classroom complete with mixing board, various kinds of microphones, speakers, and his laptop with his editing software.

We got to listen to one of Chris's favourite interviews.  It was interesting to hear him explain how the interview took an unexpected turn, and how he put the piece together.

The students had lots of excellent questions for Chris.  Some were based on what Chris shared with us and some were based upon the research students had done the week prior.  These are just a few of the highlights from Chris' visit.  If your child was at the presentation, hopefully they will tell you more!

Flag Finale

This week the Penticton grade 1 / 2 class presented the flags they designed to their peers and explained the symbols that they used and why they used the colours that they did.  Students did a great job of incorporating what they had learned about flag design.  The completed flags will be displayed in the classroom for the next few weeks before heading home.

ASPIRE Experiments with Audacity

This week was the ASPIRE students opportunity to try out Audacity.  Students learned how to record, delete, and cut audio.  They were then encouraged to explore the different effects that are available in Audacity.  Students experimented with effects such as echo, reversing audio, wah wah, changing pitch and many more!