To Scale

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

Some photos from the Wednesday classes (link).

Two Truths and a Lie

To get caught up with what everyone had been up to since Spring Break we played 'Two Truths and a Lie'.  Each person comes up with 2 true statements and one that is false.  They tell their statements to the group who then vote on which statement they think is the lie.  It's a test of how well the group knows you and the challenge is to try and trick the group into voting for one of the true statements.

Design Questions

Every few weeks we discuss a design question.  This week the Tuesday and Wednesday classes discussed the following question:

The kitchen in a new home is in a shady spot.  It is north facing and sheltered by tall trees.  How could you make the room seem brighter without adding a lot of extra electric lights?

Students came up with a number of great suggestions!

Earthships

This week the Tuesday and Wednesday classes learned about earthships.  The motivation behind building this type of home is to reduce the amount of energy and resources required to build and maintain it.  Here are links to two short videos we watched on Earthships; Garbage Homes - EarthShips,  and Ontario Couple Build Earth Ship.

Project Time

Students are deep into their projects with a view to having them completed near the end of April.  Examples of the different projects students are working on:

• Oscar and Anya are both researching famous architects.  Oscar is sharing what he's learned in a animated interview in Scratch.  Anya is designing a home that she thinks her architect would like.
• Rhett, Ezra, Ryan(s), Katie, Kyle, Jayda, Alexis, Dija, Charlotte(s), Kailey, Gerry, Finn, Hannah, Sophie, Logan, and Rowyn are all designing buildings such as homes, apartment buildings, ski chalets, and castles.  All of the students have drawn up plans, either with paper and pen or on the computer.  Some of the students are making 3D models of their buildings.
• Ellen, Iain, Damon, Ellis and Omar are researching famous buildings and presenting their findings in a Scratch animation or Slideshow.  They are all using their great photoshop skills too!

Thanks for stopping by to see what we've been up to!

Storytelling and Project Work

5 Card Photo Story

This week the students exercised their storytelling muscles with a round of 5 Card Photo Story.  Given the five images below (link) students were tasked with telling a story that included all of the images.  We talked about the elements of a good story and then the students had 5 minutes to plan their story.  Each student had a turn telling their story and the audience's job was to provide positive feedback.  The stories were wonderful and the feedback was excellent!

Project time

Students continued to work on their projects this week.  Ryan A, in the Wednesday morning class, has been showing his peers how to make really professional looking floor plans using the drawing pane in MS Word.  You can see some of these floor plans, as well as other student work, below (link).

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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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Designing and Researching

This week students were all busy working on their projects.  Many students have decided to design a house or other building and spent their time on drawing up plans and searching for ideas on the internet.  Other students are gathering information on a specific architect or building.  It is exciting to see things taking shape!  The photos below are of students from the Wednesday afternoon class at our 'drafting' table.

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The B I G Project

The  B I G  Project

Every year we do a major project related to our theme.  This year's theme is ArKIDtecture.  Students have the choice of designing a building or doing a research project on a famous architect or building. Each project is unique; students and teacher work together to decide what needs to be included in the project as well as what the final products will be.  This week was about exploring potential topics and brainstorming ideas.  Below are a few photos of what the Wednesday morning class was working on (link):



More updates on the projects all of the students are working on will follow in the weeks to come!

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Architect Visit

Here are a few of the things we got up to... This Week in Gifted!

Architect Visit

The Penticton Thursday afternoon class was visited by Penticton architect Calvin Meiklejohn.  Mr. Meikeljohn spoke to the students about the work of an architect and answered their many excellent questions!  Students were able to look at blueprints and other architectural drawings.  Mr. Meiklejohn also brought samples of different building materials such tiles, wood veneers, and cutaways of windows as well as a cutaway of the flooring system of a gymnasium hardwood floor.  A highlight of the visit was when Mr. Meiklejohn drew a scale drawing of the front of our students' dream house.  He explained how scale drawings work and, as he drew, he took in suggestions from the students as to window placement, roof style, siding, colours etc.  Below are some photos from the visit (link).

Paper Table Challenge Continued

The Tuesday afternoon Summerland class and the Wednesday morning Penticton class continued to work on their paper tables.  Check out last week's post for some background on this design challenge.   It is amazing how strong some of these tables were considering they were made from no more than 8 sheets of newsprint, masking tape and a 8" x 11" piece of cardboard!  Students did a lot of testing and refining.  I was really impressed with the persistence of many of the students; getting their table to support one heavy text book wasn't enough--they wanted to alter their design and see if could hold more--a lot more!  Check out the photos below (link).

Travels with Stick People

The Wednesday classes continued to work on their photo editing skills--sending their stick people off to visit more architectural sites.  Here are more photos from this week (link).



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

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Design Challenges

Design Challenges

This week we switched gears and all of the classes were given a design challenge to work on.  Before starting we talked about the design process.

The Design Process from the Design Squad Activity Guide (link) 

The Paper Table Design Challenge

The Summerland class and the Wednesday morning Penticton class were asked to build a table at least 20 cm tall that can support a heavy textbook.  The challenge?  The students were only allowed to use the following materials:

• 8 sheets of newspaper
• masking tape
• one 8" x 10" piece of cardboard 

Below are some photos of the building process (link):

Students will continue to work on this challenge next week.

Straw Bridge Challenge

The Penticton Wednesday and Thursday afternoon classes were given the straw bridge challenge.  Check out the pics below to see what the challenge was and how they approached it (link).

More Guests

This week we had two visitors form the School Board Office.  Mrs. Thomson (she visited the Summerland group last week) visited the Thursday afternoon class.  Mr. Manuel visited the Summerland group as they worked on the Paper Table Challenge.  Thank you for checking out what the students are learning about!