Saturday 23 February 2013

Scratch & Other Things

Here are some of the things that we did, This Week In Gifted!

Scratch

Scratch Logo
Last week the Thursday afternoon class got a start on the programming language Scratch.  This week the Tuesday classes and the Thursday morning class got their introduction to it as well.  The Tuesday morning class and the Thursday morning class had a few students who were already familiar with Scratch.  These students did a great job showing the potential of Scratch and providing tips for their peers.  A big shout out to Kehler in the Thursday afternoon class who volunteered part of his time helping out his peers.  He also gave a wonderful intro to Scratch for those students who were away last week!

Warm Up Games

Almost every class we play a warm-up game.  The general purpose of the games is get everyone participating and having fun.  This week some of the classes played Improv Bingo; a drama game that focuses on collaboration, creativity, and presentation skills.  Other classes were introduced to the game Password.  It is based on the old gameshow of the same name and it focuses on creative and critical thinking.  The Thursday morning class played a mean game of Concentration where the focus is on staying sharp and concentrating on the quick play.

MaKey MaKey and Pivot

The Wednesday afternoon class continued to work on the MaKey MaKey's and Pivot Stickfigure.  They are becoming quite adept at setting up the MaKey MaKey.  We also have quite a number of short, fun Pivot animations that students have created.

More Presentations

The Tuesday and Thursday morning classes had some more Inventor Project presentations.

On Tuesday the class got to play Joaquin's Smart Board Jeopardy game.  Joaquin's peers thought that he did a good job formatting the game and that the difficulty level of the questions was just right.  I loved how he set up the Final Jeopardy question.

There were a number of presenters in the Thursday morning class.  Paul presented his comic strip about a fictitious inventor.  Paul's comic told a good story and his peers like the effects that he used.  He conveyed his enthusiasm for the project in his presentation.

Braiden and Carson presented their radio interview of Thomas Edison.  It was full of lots of great facts and it was clear that the boys enjoyed performing the interview.  Braiden and Carson's peers thought that they had put together a good script and they appreciated the fact that they took a risk in working with a format that was new to them. 

Danica and Ronesca presented their diorama on the life of Thomas Edison.  They gave a great presentation highlighting a lot of interesting and perhaps not well known facts about Edison.  Their peers appreciated Ronesca and Danica's attention to detail including the chalk dust to make it look dusty and the way the facts were displayed.

Front shot of Danica and Ronesca's diorama

Close up shot.

Workshop Update

All of the classes have been contributing ideas to the Inventors' workshop and gradually working on it.  This week both Thursday classes had some time to work on the Inventors' Workshop.  Chloe selected some great fonts and printed them up for our sign.  Connor and Fynn took Paul's idea to use gears to represent the letter 'o' in the sign and found and printed up some good images.  Harry and Olivia K helped to start arranging and taping together the letters for the sign.  Gina, Koen, Carson, Olivia K, and Olivia L all printed up photos of inventors and their inventions to go on our timeline.  We've also added a side door to the tunnel.  

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