Art in the Style of Roy Henry Vickers

For the past couple of classes, students have been learning about the work of visual artist Roy Henry Vickers.  Roy Henry Vickers is a BC artist who currently spends his time between Hazelton and Tofino.  Much of his artistic work focuses on scenes involving water.  We did a concept attainment lesson to explore the visual themes in a selection of Vickers's work.  Students then created pieces with the same visual themes.  Some students are still finishing their pieces, but you can see the process and some of the completed works in the slideshow below (link).

Water Fun Facts

This week the Wednesday classes did a fun activity to learn some more facts about water.  We started off with a quick multiple choice quiz (link) where students were asked to give their best guesses.  Then they did some research to find out what the correct answers to the questions were.  Then it was showdown time!  Kids pitted their wits against each other in a game of 'Kahoot!', an online quiz where students race to be the first to enter their answer.  Points are awarded not just for being correct, but for answering quickly.  It was tense at times, but lots of fun!  Now we know:

• how much of the world's freshwater is found in Canada
• the name of the longest river entirely located in Canada
• which province's name means "river that flows swiftly" in Cree
• how much of the earth is covered in water
• where Canada ranks in terms of our per person water use (hint: it's not great)
• and much, much more!

Thanks for checking in to see what we've been up to... This Week In Gifted!

Project Work

Here are a few things we have been doing this week in gifted.

Flight Lesson

Students were presented with the following slide show (link).   As we progressed through the slides the students were asked to come up with a hypothesis to explain why the things grouped under the 'Yes' column were grouped together.  As they were presented with more images they revised their hypotheses.  Eventually all of the groups figured out why the 'Yes' items were grouped together -- can you?  Go through the slides slowly and one at a time.



The above activity lead to a discussion about the different types of flight we see in birds.  I asked students to try and notice the different ways that birds fly as they are out and about this week.

Project Work

For the past month students have been busy on their projects.  The slideshow below shows some of the projects students are working on; there are a lot of students using the computer coding program Scratch to create games or animations, but there is also a lot of variety!  If the slideshow isn't showing up for you, or if you'd like it full screen, then click on this link.



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

What's Your Style?

Architectural Home Styles

This week students explored different architectural styles for homes.  We did a concept attainment lesson where students were shown images of homes.  Homes were grouped based on whether they belonged to a certain architectural style.  One group were the 'Yes' homes.   The 'No' homes were homes that came from a variety of different styles.  Students had to come up with hypotheses as to what made a home a 'Yes' home.  As we went through the images students shared and refined their hypotheses and tested them against the new images they were shown.  At the end, they were able to come up with the key architectural features of the 'Yes' home style.  Then we went to this website to find out what the name of the architectural style is.  The lesson slides are shown below (link).

Project Time

Every week for the next little while students will be working on their big projects.  They are making wonderful progress and learning new information and skills as they go.  Below are some photos of the students at work (link).

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