Treasure Brainstorm

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

Treasure Brainstorm

Our theme this year is X Marks the Spot!  The Search for Treasure, so we did some brainstorming about the people, places, and things we think about when we hear the word 'treasure'.  After the brainstorm session, students got down to the business of choosing and researching a topic having to do with treasure.

Researching

The Summerland AIM students (grades 1-3) started putting together a collaborative slide show with images and information about various treasures that they are interested in.  They will continue to build on this in the weeks ahead.

The Penticton grade 4 and 5 groups started gathering information on their treasure topics.  Once they've collected enough information they will be choosing a format in which to present their information to their peers.  Possible formats include creating a game, recording a radio interview, drawing a comic strip... the possibilities are endless!  

Treasure Tasks

This week it was the Penticton AIM group's (grades 1 - 3) turn to do some treasure tasks as described in the last post.  Students created detailed drawings and complicated structures related to the different treasure puzzles we put together.

IEPS Home

This week and last Individual Education Plans (IEPs) were sent home outlining your child's strengths and the goals for this year.  If you did not receive your child's IEP, let me know and I will send you a digital copy.

More Photos Added to Name Plate Slideshow

In the last post there was a slideshow of student Name Plate posters.  I've updated the slideshow with more photos.  Check out the slide show here.

Thanks for checking out the TWIG blog!

Flags, Improv Bingo, and Brainstorming Online

Here are some of the things we did... This Week In Gifted!

Explaining Our Flag Designs

Last week the Penticton grade 1 / 2 class presented their flags to their peers.  They created their flags to represent real or imagined places.  Below is a video (link) with photos of the flags and the voices of the students as they explained their choice of colours and symbols in their designs.  Two students were absent and so their flags have no explanations yet.

Improv Bingo

The Summerland ASPIRE and AIM classes as well as the Penticton grade 5s played Improv Bingo.  In this fun drama activity students are given a character, goal, obstacle, place and object.  They then have a limited amount of time to create a short skit involving each of the elements, which are usually pretty wacky.  This week students worked in groups of 2, 3 or 4.  Successful groups had members who were very open to ideas, were inclusive and were also willing to compromise.  Prior to creating our skits we talked about the challenges of this type of activity and strategies for success.  The students came up with creative and very humorous skits.  It is amazing how the same starting elements can result in such vastly different skits!

Brainstorming Radio Show Names Online

This week it was the Penticton grade 3 / 4 groups whose turn it was to brainstorm a name for the radio show which will contain all of the mini radio shows that students are creating.  One of the grade 4s has been asking for a chance to use padlet again, and this seemed like a good opportunity to give it another whirl.  Padlet is a site we tried last year that allows you to post notes on a virtual wall.  I created multiple 'walls' and assigned 2 - 4 students per wall.  They did a wonderful job of brainstorming!  The neat thing about padlet is that everyone on the same 'wall' can add their ideas at the same time and also see the ideas of the other group members.  It is much more democratic and participatory than the traditional group brainstorm where one person in the group controls the paper and pen, and often only the louder/more dominant people in the group are heard.

Once students had brainstormed a list of names, they each submitted their favourite name for the class to vote on.  The top two names from each class will be put forward for all students to vote on.  Here is the link to the list the Tuesday morning class generated and voted upon.  The final vote for all students happens next week!

The Wrap Up

Thanks for checking in and seeing some of the things we did this week.  If you have a child in the program they can hopefully add to what is highlighted here and fill you in on some of the things I didn't mention.

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!

Brainstorming, Scytales and Straw Bridges

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

Brainstorming

This week all of the students in grades 3 to 5 brainstormed topics to research under the broad heading of communication.  We started out with each class as a group suggesting topics. 

Communication Research Topic Ideas

Then students worked individually or in pairs; writing topic ideas on post-it notes and sticking them onto large sheets of paper.  Using post-it notes meant that if a student wrote down an idea and wasn't happy with it (either the idea, or that it was misspelled or messy) they could just discard it.  Handy for those perfectionists in the group.  It also meant that they could move ideas around on their page and group similar ideas together. 

Post-it note brainstorm

We talked about the DOVE principal of brainstorming:

D--Defer judgement

O--Oddball or outrageous ideas encouraged

V--Vast number of ideas

E--Expand or elaborate on ideas

The hardest DOVE principal for most students is deferring judgement.  We talked about how the key is to start getting ideas down.  Because one idea often leads to another, and another.  Eventually you end up with an idea that really strikes your fancy!  At times in the brainstorming process we stopped and looked at the ideas others were coming up with.  The ideas we liked, we borrowed, or they made us think of new ideas.

After brainstorming, some of the classes were able to start researching the communication topic in which they were most interested.  All of the grade 3, 4 and 5s will be spending time more time on this research in upcoming classes.

Scytales

What is a scytale?  Ask our grade 1 & 2 Wednesday afternoon class!  We continued our exploration of steganography (hidden messages) by creating our own scytales.  Scytales have been in use since at least the 7th century.  A message is encrypted by wrapping a strip of paper (parchment or leather were used in earlier times) around a cylinder.  The message is then written on the paper.  When the paper is unwound, it just looks like a random collection of letters.  To decipher the message, it must be wound around a cylinder of the same diameter as was used originally.  We used long strips of paper and wound them around some wooden cylinders.  At home you could use cardboard tubes from paper towel rolls or wrapping paper rolls.

Straw Bridge Challenge

The Summerland ASPIRE class did the Straw Bridge Challenge.  Last week they were given the instructions for this challenge, but they were encrypted.  Students had to use their code breaking savvy to decrypt the instructions.  This week it was time to do the challenge.  Each small group of students were given 

• 15 thin drinking straws
• 25 cm of masking tape
• 1 pair of scissors

The goal was to make a bridge that spanned a 30 cm gap and was strong enough to support a coffee can.  The can could be rested on the top of the bridge, or suspended below the bridge using string.  The next part of the challenge was to see how many golf balls could be placed in the coffee can before the bridge collapsed.  

This activity encouraged students to think creatively.  They also had to be able to communicate well with their partner(s).  Below are photos of some of the bridges as they were being built:

 

The photos above show three very different approaches to the bridge structure.  The top bridge was the strongest; holding the coffee can and 2 golf balls.

Non-Verbal Communication

Finally, all of the classes have been looking at non-verbal communication.  Whether it is by playing Charades / Funny Faces or by acting out a narrative walk.  So beware; the students are becoming skilled at interpreting the non-verbal signs we all transmit! 

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

Brainstorming

Here are some of the things we worked on, This Week In Gifted.

Brainstorming and SCAMPER

Last week the Tuesday pm class learned the SCAMPER technique for brainstorming (described here) and this week it was the Tues am and Thurs pm classes turn.  All three classes also reviewed the DOVE technique for brainstorming:

D efer judgement
O ddball and Original ideas are encourage
V ast number -- the more ideas the merrier
E xpand and elaborate on other ideas

They were then challenged to brainstorm as many uses as possible for a brick.  I don't know if it was because the Tues pm class had a week to fully absorb the SCAMPER technique, but they got almost double the number of uses, at 81, than the other two classes.  We will put these brainstorming techniques to use as we start to design our own inventions in the weeks ahead.  

Being Good Listeners

In the elementary gifted class it is usually not hard to get students talking.  Being good listeners though, that's where we need some work!  This week we discussed how to let a person know, with your body and with what you say, that you are listening to them.  Some of the things students suggested were:

• turn your body towards the person who is talking to you
• nod occasionally to indicate that you agree with what the person is saying
• keep your body still
• ask questions
• think about what the person is saying 

We then partnered up and put these ideas into practice.  The students did a great job!  Apparently Hemingway once said; "I like to listen.  I have learned a great deal from listening carefully.  Most people never listen."
 

Inventor Projects

Brody and Evan from the Tuesday class presented their Pivot Stickfigure animation.  Their animation depicted what it would be like if an evil scientist from today went back in time and kidnapped Leonardo da Vinci.  The boys included some neat effects in their animation and they also added audio.

A number of students from the Thursday morning class presented their projects.  Tristan created a comic strip.  He also chose to have an evil scientist go back in time to kidnap a fictitious inventor.  Tristan did a great job incorporating realistic comic strip effects.  Brandon shared his comic strip on what Leonardo da Vinci may have invented as a child.  Chloe and Nicola showed the class the diorama that they created depicting Albert Einstein's home.  They also acted out an interview with Einstein in which they shared a number of facts about the inventor's life.

Chloe and Nicola's diorama

Over the next few weeks the rest of the students will be presenting their projects.

MaKey MaKey and the Wednesday Class

The Wednesday class gave the MaKey MaKeys a try for the first time.  It can be challenging at first to get the MaKey MaKeys set up correctly, but these grade K, 1, and 2s did an excellent job!  We only have 5 MaKey MaKeys so not everyone got a chance to work with them, but we will rectify that situation next week!