SCAMPER, the Tunnel and More

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

More Brainstorming

All of the classes spent time brainstorming on how to finish up the tunnel for our Inventors' Workshop.  Lots of great ideas were generated and the classes worked on:

• adding small coloured skylights at one end
• putting coloured paper on the outside so that it looks less like a bunch of boxes
• making a new cover for the porthole  

The tunnel is really starting to look good as cosmetic touches are being added to the outside!

Tuesday Morning Class

We had more inventor project presentations and almost all of the students are done their projects.  Angel and Melina created movie posters for each of their inventors.  Angel shared what she learned about Marco Polo and his discovery of paper money, also known rather whimsically as Flying Money.  Melina gathered quite a bit of information about Steve Jobs which she shared with the class.  Nathan created a matching card game about Tim Horton and was able to answer many questions from his classmates about this Canadian icon.  The entire class got to try out Marcus' interactive SmartBoard game 'Who Wants To Be An Inventor?' covering a variety of inventors and inventions.

Tuesday Afternoon Class

We worked on using the SCAMPER technique to develop our lateral thinking skills.  SCAMPER stands for:
Substitute
Combine
Adapt
Modify / Minify / Magnify
Put to other uses
Eliminate
Rearrange / Reverse
The lesson we did was based on Lesson 2 posted here.  The students did an amazing job using the SCAMPER tool.  We talked about how this tool can help us problem solve and how this type of thinking is one way that inventors can come up with new inventions.  We were looking at different ways a chair could be SCAMPERed.  Ricki thought about a chair made of globes, Liam turned the chair into a table and Joycey a frame for a tent.  And these are just a small selection of the great ideas this group came up with!

Wednesday Afternoon Class

Students continued to work on their Pivot Stickfigure animations.  Many students have completed one or two components of their Pivot certificate:

Pivot Certificate

 

Thursday Morning Class

We played the drama game, Improv Bingo.  This class is known for producing funny and creative skits and they didn't disappoint!  Much of the rest of the class was spent working on their Inventor Projects.  We're looking forward to more presentations next week.

Thursday Afternoon Class

This group made a lot of progress on the tunnel.  Students here are also working on the Pivot Certificates pictured above.  Those students using the MaKey MaKeys investigated some of the following:

MaKey MaKey certificate

Animations

To inspire classes with their Pivot Stickfigure animations, some of the classes watched the following videos:






And that was our week, This Week In Gifted.