Comics

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

Creating Avatars

This week all of the classes got to sign on to BitStrips For Schools.  This site allows students to create comic strips.  This week we started by creating our avatars.  Though it was tempting for many students to sport mohawks, pink hair or monocles their job was to make their avatar look as much like themselves as possible.  Here's our class pic (the blank characters are students who were away and haven't had a chance to log in yet.)

A pretty good looking group!  After creating their avatars students experimented with making other characters; some were outlandish and some were pretty good representations of family members or friends.  We will be using this site in the weeks to come to create stories related to our theme, Operation Identification.

Visitor

Todd Manuel, SD 67 Director of Instruction for Student Services, dropped by the Penticton grade 5 class this week.  He chatted with students, joined us for circle, and generally got a sense of what happens in class.  The Gifted Program is one of the programs under the big umbrella of Student Services.  We look forward to welcoming Mr. Manuel again later in the year.

Mystery Prints

This week it was the Penticton 4s and 5s turn to solve the water bottle mystery!  One latent print from the scene of the crime and 28 suspect prints in our data bank.  They made quick work of identifying the culprit!  Some students then took their own prints and determined which prints in our suspect data base belonged to them.  We also watched the following video (link) on comparing prints.

Classes Wrapping up for Winter Break

Classes will soon be winding down for the winter break.  Here are the dates for the last classes--due to our staggered start, not all classes are ending on the same week.

December 2nd -- Last class for the Wednesday morning Penticton grade 5 group

December 3rd -- Last class for the Thursday afternoon Penticton grade 2/3 group

December 8th -- Last class for the Tuesday afternoon Summerland AIM/ASPIRE group

December 9th -- Last class for the Wednesday afternoon Penticton grade 4 group

Thanks for checking out what we've up to! 

February 11th to 13th

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

Radio Shows

Students in ASPIRE and in the Penticton grade 3 - 5 class continued to work on their radio shows.  Some of the older students have finished their first shows.  Those that have are deciding what to do next.  Here are some of their options:

• create a new show
• record a station ID
• create radio advertisements
• create a logo (either for The Creation Station or for their own show)
• create a poster (either for The Creation Station or for their own show)

Non-Verbal Communication

In all of the classes we continue to explore the ways that we communicate non-verbally.  The ASPIRE class and the Penticton grade 5 classes watched a short Monty Python clip involving charades in the courtroom.  It was funny and a great introduction to playing Charades!

The Penticton grade 1/2 class continued to work on Bitstrips, a comic strip creator.  This week they were given the following comic strip and asked to pose or replace the neutral faced character in each panel with a character showing the appropriate expression.

Template Comic

Here is a completed comic by Jayda:

Jayda's comic

Thanks for stopping by!

And The Winner Is...

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

Voting

For the past few weeks we've been brainstorming names for the radio show which will contain all of the mini radio shows the students have been or will be working on.  Each class put forward their top two names.  This week it was time to vote!  Here are the names that made it onto the ballot:

• Cfeffial Radio
• Chatterbox
• Communication Army
• Container of Pickled Doves
• Crazy Communication
• Drive 2 the Town of Secrets
• Ducks in a Bucket
• Gifted Kids On Air (GKOA)
• I do not know what to call this
• It's Called... Communication!
• Niobium Radio
• Radio Times
• Sky Fi
• The banana toaster bo meatloaf dryer Philly bob match stick broom duster pocket money grandpa whopper hobbler hobbler hobbler ehhhht quack show 
• The Cool Kids Radio Show
• The Creation Station

Because there were sixteen names to choose from, instead of just voting for their top choice, students were asked to rank their top eight choices.  This is an example of Instant Runoff Voting.  In the first round of counting, everyone's first choice was tallied.  The names that were in first to eighth place after the first round of voting were kept and the rest of the names were eliminated.  In the second round of counting I then looked at the ballots that chose an eliminated name as their first choice and assigned their vote to their second choice (if that choice was already eliminated then I went to their next choice, and so on.)  After the second round of voting, the last place names (there were three names tied for last place) were eliminated and their votes assigned as above.  This process continued until there was one name that had more than 50% of the votes.

Every student in the gifted program was able to vote (100% voter turnout, not bad!)  It took seven rounds of counting to come up with a winning name.  Gifted Kids on Air (GKOA), The banana... quack show, and The Creation Station were the top three names right from round one of counting.

And the Winner Is...

The Creation Station came out on top, but it was a very close race!  Now that we have a name we can start working on, logos, posters, station ids and more.  

Communicating Emotions

This week the Penticton grade 1/2 class looked at the different ways that we communicate that we are happy, sad, excited etc.  We discussed body posture and facial expressions.  We then went on to Bitstrips to create characters showing different emotions.  Students are learning how to pose their characters and change their facial features to match different emotions.  

This and That

The AIM, ASPIRE and Penticton grade 3 - 4 students all spent time on Audacity recording their mini shows, some classes also did the storytelling exercise 5 Card Photo Stories.

The Wrap Up

Thanks for checking out TWIG.  I hope you'll check in again next week.