GPS Scavenger Hunts

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

GPS Scavenger Hunts

The GPS unit the students used.

The Summerland AIM and ASPIRE classes as well as the Penticton 5s learned how to use the new GPS hand held units.  In pairs or small groups students hid tokens around the playground and marked their locations on the GPS units.  Each group then swapped their GPS unit with another group and searched for the other group's hidden tokens.  We learned that the devices are sometimes off by about 3 or 4 meters, so you have to still be very observant to find the tokens.  We'll be doing more with the GPS units in the weeks to come!

Project Presentations

There were some more great presentations this week.  Maia presented her comic strip on Blackbeard and Ricki presented her and Gebrielle's magazine about ancient Egypt.  The presentations were top notch as were the questions and appreciations from their peers!  The Penticton grade 4s and 5s continued to work on projects with many students creating animations or games using the visual computer programming language Scratch.

Field Trip!

Every year the older students in the Gifted Program are invited to go on a field trip related to our theme.  This year's theme is 'X Marks the Spot!  The Search for Treasure.'  One of the things that we have explored this year is that many of the games we play involve the search for treasure of some sort.  Some examples are digital games such as MineCraft or Geometry Dash and board games such as Labyrinth or Settlers of Catan.

For our field trip we will be going to Scandia Golf and Games in Kelowna.  Students will get to be treasure hunters; winning tickets when they play games, that they can then retrieve for prizes!  This trip is for grade 3, 4 and 5 students in the Gifted Program.  Detailed information about the trip was e-mailed to families on Friday and paper copies will go home next week.

Word Link and Encrypted Scavenger Hunt

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

Two Truths and a Lie

The Penticton grade 1 - 3 class played Two Truths and a Lie; a game that allows students to share a few of the things they got up to on the break.  Each student tells the class two true things that happened to them and one untrue.  The class has to decide which statement is untrue.  Students had fun trying to trick their peers!

Project Presentations

More students in the Penticton grade 4 and 5 classes presented their treasure research projects; George demonstrated the Indiana Jones board game that he made, Jessica and Logan shared their Power Point presentation on treasure in Minecraft, Marcus shared his Scratch animation on diamond mines, and Max, Jimmy and Graham shared their Scratch animation about Blackbeard.

Word Link

The Summerland ASPIRE class and the Penticton grade 4 and 5 classes played Word Link.  The group sits in a circle and one person starts by saying a word.  The next person has to say a word that links with the first word, the next person says a word that links with the second word and so on.  It is interesting to see where you end up.

Project Time

The Penticton grade 1-3 class continued to work on their treasure directions.
The Summerland ASPIRE students also worked on treasure directions.  (Josh has been creating some really interesting clues--I wish I could tell you more about it, but they are top secret!)  The ASPIRE class also worked on putting finishing touches on their 3D models.
The Penticton grade 4 and 5 classes worked on wrapping up their research projects, and those who are already done created mini-projects in Scratch or Audacity.

Enciphered Scavenger Hunt

Deciphered Clues

With the Easter weekend coming up and with our theme focused on the search for treasure it seemed like a good idea for the Summerland AIM class to do a scavenger hunt!  I created enciphered clues using the Treasure Hunt Clue Generator on cryptoclub.org.  Students worked together to decipher Caesar Ciphers, Letter to Number Ciphers, and a Keyword Cipher.  They had had practice using the Caesar Cipher before, but not the other two which they quickly picked up.



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

Here are a few things that we did This Week (and last!) In Gifted.

The first two weeks of classes have been all about getting to know each other.  In order to feel confidant taking risks and being creative it is important that the students feel comfortable with each other.  All of the classes have spent a bit of time playing name games.  The Penticton 4s and the Summerland AIM groups are really fast with the Name Game Ball Pass.  The Penticton 1-3 class had fun with My Name Is... And I Like To... My favourite is The Name Game Shootout that the Penticton 5s and the Summerland ASPIRE class have been playing.

We've also been working on Name Plates.  Students are creating posters featuring their names and depicting family, as well as the things that they enjoy doing or are proud of.  The different ways that student have used materials (pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, tissue paper wrapped in cello tape...) has been inspiring.  Students have depicted family in a variety of ways; some depicting activities or items that represent family to them.  For example a few students have represented family with a Christmas tree, the Tardis from Dr. Who (as this show is something this student's family enjoys together), favourite colours of different family members, first letters of each person's name with pictures of things they enjoy, to name just a few.  To work on their presentation skills students will be presenting their posters to each other explaining what the different items and images on their posters represent.

This week we also touched on our theme, X Marks the Spot--The Search For Treasure, with a puzzle treasure hunt.  We will be getting more into our theme in the weeks to come.

Thanks for checking out what we did... This Week In Gifted!