Week 3

This week both classes headed down to UCOL to participate in a tutorial on the brain...... including a brain dissection!! We visited UCOL a few years back when we were studying SYSTEMS to perform a heart dissection. It was such valuable learning for the ODC students, I just knew we had to head back there again for our study on the brain. Thanks so much to Trish who welcomed us, once again, into her lab. She treated us like she would any of her nursing students and gave the ODC students a taste of what tertiary education is like....even though for some that is a looooong way off!! I am going to put a mish
mosh of pictures up. Click on them to enlarge.























See if your child can identify the following from the picture above and explain its function.
Parietal Lobe, Amygdola, Frontal Lobe, Optical Lobe, Temperal Lobe, Pituitary Gland, celrebellum, Spinal Cord, Pons, Thalamus, Hypothalamus, Mid Brain. It was quite hard to find these parts in our wee sheeps brain, but the children did a pretty awesome job at looking. I think everyone found the pituitary gland. The saying of the day was..."You have broken my amygdola" ask your child why!!

After saying goodbye, it was back to ODC for talent.







Tuesday and Wednesday Readers/writers Club running through their lines with Micheal Wilson. Tuesday will be performing A Midsummer Night's Dream and Wednesday will be performing McBeth.







Tom is doing cartooning for exploring talents. he needs to create a "beginners guide to cartooning" booklet. Here he is doing some research, looking up examples of cartoon characters.








Naomi -Rose is looking up Piet Mondrain. Here she is researching his artistic style. She will then create her own artwork based on his style.


This afternoon I introduced the children to The Ignorance Map. Ignorance logging is attributed to Dr Marylis Witte, a surgery professor at the University of Arizona. She wanted medical students to understand that what is unknown about diseases far outweighs what is known. This resulted in students formulating questions about what they did not know.This technique has been modified and developed into a useful thinking tool.



It is said that any question could fall into at least one of the categories above. We discussed examples of the types of questions that would fall under these headings. When we Iglog, or do an inquiry, we usually ask known unknown questions. Today we wrote known unknown questions to do with the brain. In otherwords, what do we know we don't know, but want to find out?

We used 2 questioning tools to help us generate known unknown questions; The Question Matrix and The Key Words to unlock Big Ideas









A group of children from Tuesday Class using The Question Matrix and The Key Words to Unlock Big Ideas questioning tools while logging their ignorance on the brain.

Here are some of our questions;
Why are humans so smart?
Does your brain grow?
How can your brain keep all the information?
What controls the brain?
How does a brain send messages to your body so fast?
Do you need to exercise your brain?
Why are female, male and animal brains so different?
Why is the size of brains different but the structure is the same?
Is mind readig actually possible?
How does the brain think?
Why is your brain in your head and not in your feet?
What keeps the brain going?
Why is it that the optic lobe is at the back of your brain and your eyes at the front?
Do animal brains and human brains have different parts?
When is your brain at its finest?
Who created the names of the brain parts?
What makes human brains more advanced than other species?
Are there any useless parts of the brain?
If you lose a body part, what happens to the part of the brain that controls that body part?
What is the largest part of the brain and what is its purpose?
What will be the next big achievement in nurosurgery?
How many nurons are there in the brain?
How is it that human brains have evolved over thousands of years while other creatures have stayed the same?
What will our brains look like in 1,000,000,000?
Are animlas dumber than us because their brains are smaller?


An finally, here is a picture of Gallagher and his experiment he shared for headspace last week. He saw it on mythbusters. If you place 1 page of a phone book between another page of another phone book, and repeat it until all the pages are on top of each other, it is physically impossible to pull the two books apart!! Even (apparently) with tanks!










Gallagher's two phone books. It took quite awhile to place the pages in the correct place!







Grace and Gallagher trying to pull the two books apart!


IMPOSSIBLE

Week 1

We began our first session of Term 2 with some creative thinking. For this session the children
had 10 minutes to draw for me a CROCODOODLEBUGGABOO.....a what you say?? The creative juices began flowing immediately with this one!! Once the 10 minutes were up, they then had 5 minutes to elaborate their ideas by adding detail, labels and distinguishing features. They also had to describe their character. Creative Thinking is all about flexibility, fluency and elaboration.

Here are some examples...


















Judah decided that a Crocodoodlebuggaboo wasn't a thing, but a place. Here is the land of Crocodoodlebuggaboo.








For Affective this term we are unpacking 2 'experts' ideas on Giftedness. Joseph Renzulli and his 3-Ringed model and Francoys Gagne's Differientated Model on Giftedness and talent. We began today though by discussing what we thought giftedness was and what it 'looks' like. I got everyone to draw a picture of how they think other people see gifted people and it was interesting to see that many of them drew boys or girls with glasses.

I then asked them to write their thoughts on what gifteness is. I was going to type some up, but some of them are quite personal. Ask your child what they think it means to be gifted.

This afternoon we got right in to THE BRAIN!!! In 2 weeks we are heading to UCOL for a dissection, so we need to know lots before we get there!!
We had 4 activities to complete as a bus stop rotation.
1. Read, read, read!!! What interesting things can you find out about the brain?? The children had the choice whether to write interesting info down or to just read. Wednesday Class also got to look at an awesome 3-D brain puzzle and a pop out book on the brain.











2. Brain Word Glossery. The children to find out the meanings of the following words. I am in the middle of typing them all up for our Discovery Topic Board!
axon, basal ganglia, brain stem, cerebellum, dendrite, cortex, cerebrum, frontal lobe, glial celis, memory, mind, myelin, neuron, occipital lobe, parietal lobe. Some very tricky words indeed!










3. Visual Brain. Using plastercine and reference books, the children had to create a model of a brain, and then label all the parts. I will post pictures of these next week, as not many were completed.










4. MENSA. The children visited the MENSA website and found out what MENSA was and who could join. They then had a go at the Mensa Workout. To try the workout visit tehir website.
http://www.mensa.org











Keep those brain facts coming on our wall wisher!! They are very interesting to read.

http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/7IHkoi7gQS

Week 11

We finished up the term frantically getting work up on our individual blog pages. What an incredibly busy day!!
We do this on the last day of every term. It is completly exhausting, but very satisfying at the end. The students basically have the day to themselves. Our regular timetable goes out the window (so the saying goes!) except for Roll Time, Language Time and Reflection/tidy up time. Everyone has set items that need to be to completed which also need to upoaded onto their blogs. Evidence also needs to be on their blog from other aspects of their ODC term. It's all about managing self during this time, and as to be expected...some step up, and others need a bit more guidence from me.

Please check out everyone's work.....Solway students were away on camp though, so they don't have anything on their blogs!!

Week 7

We had a fantastic start to our week with Grace and Isaac sharing some fantastic creations during HEADSPACE.

On Tuesday Isaac shared some clay figures he had made which he is hoping to develop for his claymation. He is goingto develop one of these ideas further for his final claymation animation. We were all impressed with the detail and we all had our own opinions as to which character we thought he should develop.













Grace has been working on her aquaduct for several months and finally it is finished! She based her design on an aquaduct in France (she thinks it is Paris) As a class we had a great discussion on the use and history of aquaducts. Grace shared with us what she had learnt and how she made it. She let us in on a little secret....she made it look old by using coffee!! Well done Grace, and thanks for sharing your passion with us.












The Habits of Mind

The Habits of Mind are are a collection of 16 thinking dispositions identified by Professor Art Costa. Costa defined the Habits of Mind as the dispositions skillfully and mindfully displayed by characteristically intelligent people when confronted with problems the solution to which are not immediately apparent - The Art Costa Centra for Thinking

At GKP and ODC we use The Habits of Mind alot. Today we had a puzzle to solve. For some of us, who have been at ODC for a while, this was fairly easy (although we still had to think about it!) and for those who are new, we had to use our best deduction and inferring skills to work the answers out. We had a habit picture, name and definition that we had to match them up.....no easy task!










Lots of discussion took place. At the debriefing at the end, we discussed which habits we used while completing this activity....since that's what The Habits of Mind are all about!! We used some or all of these; Applying Past Knowledge, Persistance and Thinking Interdependently to solve the problem we were faced with. We then discussed with Habits we thought we were good at and which ones we didn't really understand or wanted to know more about. The habits of Mind will be taught explicitly each week.....as well as practised....sometimes without knowing it!

Our temperament research is all completed and the children have begun their visual presentations. Some have decided to combine their temperament work with their Day they Were Born work, and that is fine.

Poems were put on hold this week (we ran out of time basically!) so we will get back in to these next week.


TALENT TIME...our favourite time of day!


Niamh and her 'Ugly Creature' in the making










The girls putting the final pieces together on their 'Great Shakespeare Fact Find'






Taine working with his buddy Isaac on claymation.









DISCOVERY

Our activity this afternoon was to look at different discoveries and then catagorise them according to which field we thought they belonged to. (If you click on the pictures you will get a larger version one whcih you can read!)













Lots of thinking was done, and yes, we really did need to think about it. Some where more obvious than others,and some weren't. This made for interesting discussion at the end of the day.

Tuesday Wednesday Weeks 5 and 6

We have been looking at creative thinking over the past few weeks...it's always a fun one to start with!!......We used Tony Ryan's THINKERS KEYS to help us think creatively with a focus on flexibility and fluency.

Our task was to come up 3 different ways we could;
Brush our teeth with the use of a toothbrush and then eating dinner without the use of utensils.

Hmmm, lots of weird and wonderful ideas were suggested including using corn kernels to brush your teeth and a flying machine that deposited food directly into your mouth! I remember also the mention of mice fur???

I introduced 'Headspace' to the classes this week. Headspace is a time when the children (and I) can share things we have read, watched, listened to...basically anything we have discovered....over the week. Sometimes gifted kids don't feel comfortable sharing things they have discovered with their regular class and friends because it may be beyond their peers' understanding. 'Headspace' is a time where they can share with a group of like minds. Last week I shared with them a new theory on the Bubonic Plague 'Black Death' from the 14th century. This week Isaac shared a stop animation he found on the internet as part of his research on claymation. Check it out. It is very clever!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKWdSCt4jGE

We are all busy writing our Like A poems and most of us have now discovered our temperaments. There seems to be a huge amount of Artisians!! The childrfen are now reading up on other people aroiund the world who have the sme temperament as them. The next stage is to work out which Hogwarts house they would be in and which character out of The Wizard of Oz they are.

Here are a couple of photos with their language tutors Betty (Tuesday - Mandarin) and Jcaqui (Wednesday - Spanish)

Both classes are learning songs.







****Tried to upload Wednesday's video, but it is toooo big!!****

TALENT CLUBS

Taine and Isaac have figured that 2 brains are better than one when trying to solve some of the complicted maths problems in level 5 Mathmate







Edward and Tom working on POLYHEDRA as part of their maths talent






Jean and Melissa working on their massive Shakespeare fact find. Only one more of week of hunting before they have to start putting together visual presentation showing us what they have discovered.





EXPLORING TALENTS - A chance to try something new


Taine working on some characters for his calymation animation








Anahere using the music programme ACID to compose music








Sara and Lily working on their story board for their claymation animation







A group of children working through some electrical circuit tasks








Oli working on a science activity








After lunch we have begun to look at philosophy and what it means. last week I introduced the children to P4C (Philosophy 4 Children) and this week our P4C was based on a book by John Steptoe called Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters.

'Both Mufaro's daughters are beautiful but one is bad tempered and one is kind. When the king of the land asks the daughters to apper before him so he can choose a queen, the prideful, bad tempered daughter decides to set out in the night so she can get there first. Along the path are many opportunities to show one's true character. The kind daughter who follows the same path the next day makes different decisions - with different results and a surprising ending!'

The moral of the story, which seems to be that kind, selfless people are deserving of reward while selfish, power-hungry people are not, raises the philosophical question which is: "What is the best sort of life to live?"

We discussed what makes someone 'worthy' and if it is ok, in general, to deceive people? and if so, why? If not, why not? It was interesting to hear most of them said it was ok to deceive their siblings!!! Philosophy is a great way to get these guys talking and believe me...they all have plenty to say!!

You can find out mre about P4C on these websites:

www.p4c.org.nz or www.mtholyoke.edu/omc/kidsphil/

Enjoy!!

Tuesday- Wednesday Week 4

Last week I asked all the children to bring something along today that made them think DISCOVERY. We had a great collection of items brought along and shared. I think one of the most interesting was Naomi Rose's Great Great Grandfather's box.We discussed firstly our thoughts as to what was in the box.....














Her Great Great Grandfather used to be a teacher....and this was his box (collection) of resources. Inside we found.......samples of seeds, wood, skulls, birds feet, precious stones, liquids and a note book/journal where he had written notes on the things he had collected!!!









His notebook was so interesting and the script just perfect! We discovered he loved and cared nature as everything within the box was natural (aside from the journal and a few tin boxes where items were stored)
Here are some of the items we brought that made us think DISCOVERY



















Why do you think these items made us think DISCOVERY??

For AFFECTIVE at the moment we are writing 'Like a' poems. poems that describe us and our feelings. we are also investigationg personality types. we are using the 4 Keirsey Temprements as a guide (http://keirsey.com) . We are reading to find out whether we are; Artisians, Guardians, Idealists or Rationals. From there we are going to see which famous people in our world we match personalities with. We are really excited about this!!! At the end, and just for fun, we are going to see which house we would be in at Hogwarts and which character we would best match on the story The Wizard of Oz........watch this space for more info (Tracey has left it school at the time of this composition!)


After language we began Talent Development.









Poets hard at work.......

We spent the first half hour on Talent Clubs. The readers/Writers club are doing a huge fact find on Shakespeare and the mathematicians are working on Mathsmate. After clubs we moved on to Exploring talent. What fun we had and what major diversity!! Some chose to continue on with their club work, but others are doing; model making, cartooning, creature creation, animation, science experiements........and more.

The afternoon was spent DISCOVERING all that we could about the day we were born....and the date, not necessarly the year. We had fun discovering which literary giants we share birthdays with and what movies were number 1!! We also enjoyed finding out about moon phases and what the moon was doing when we were born. Just for fun we discovered how to write our names in Viking Runes!!!