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!

October Round Up!

Here's what we've been up to in the first few weeks of classes!

Back Into the Swing of Things

Students were keen to get back into things and the classes are really gelling.  Great conversations are happening during social time and during our class discussions.  See the photos taken during social time (slides below) to get a sense of this.

This Year's Theme 

As most students guessed, this year's theme deals with Water!  In our first class we talked about what we know about water and all the different ways that it impacts our lives.  Over the coming months we will be:

• creating an underwater scene
• looking at water in the art of Roy Henry Vickers
• researching underwater life

Sticky Water

Our first exploration of water was to look at water from the molecular level.  We learned that each water molecule is made of 1 oxygen atom and 2 hydrogen atoms.  We also learned that water is 'sticky'.  The hydrogen atoms have slight positive charges and the oxygen atom has a slight negative charge.  This means that water molecules are attracted to each other by these weak hydrogen bonds.

We explored the sticky nature of water by doing a little experiment with water and nickles.  You can see the results in the slides below.
 

October In Pictures 

Below are photos from October (link).  Enjoy and thanks for checking in to see what we've been up to!