GAME TIME!

Today in GATE is our last day working on fluency. Mrs Shepard has given us a challenge. We are having to make up our own fluency themed game in pairs or on our own.  Some of us are making board games and some card games. Everything that we are making up has to make the players come up with lots and lots of ideas. 

Our board game has a 'horror' theme. One of the challenges is to 'do ten press ups while naming five horror movies'. If you cant do it you have to move back ten spaces.

By Jonny Noble and William Rodwell

This is us hard at work...

WWW.WORDLE.NET

At GATE today we had our last day on 'fluency'. 

We went into groups and had to write a subject down and put a bubbble around it. Then we had to get lots of ideas on it. We had to do 30 ideas on our piece of paper!!! Then Mrs Shepard showed us a computer activity called WORDLE. We wrote all our words down and pressed GO. It turned all of our words into an awesome picture. You should try WORDLE at home. It's lots of fun. 

By Hannah Tregidga and Mia Yee

Jade, Mia and Joel chose 'games'.

Lucia, Ava and Chali chose 'movies'.

Mia, Maya and Hannah chose 'school'

This is WORDLE!!!

"You are always right in FLUENCY"!

This week at GATE we are learning about Fluency. We had to come up with lots of ideas. We had to choose four colours and then draw circles with the colours in the middle. Then we had to come up with as MANY ideas of things that are those colours.

I chose pink, purple, blue and red.

These are some things that are blue...

- Elsa
- A whale
- The sky
- Mia's headband
- Blue ribbon
- A blueberry

By Chali Routhan

This is Mia and Maia 

Why Fluency?

The next two weeks our focus in GATE is on FLUENCY!

Fluency is the ability to generate LOTS of ideas that are not necessarily different.

Fluent thinkers can also “hitchhike” on one idea to come up with many more ideas. E.g. when brainstorming ways to mop up an oil spill, one idea might be to use hair clippings. "Hitchhiking" on that idea would include using dog hair, cat hair, sheep's wool, etc. There are no 'yeah but' or 'wrong' ideas!

Why does fluency matter? 

The first step to problem solving or generating anything creative is having as many ideas as possible to choose from. Fluency loosens up the creative wheels. 

Try some of these activities and leave some comments below with your ideas!

- Name as many things you can think of that are blue.

- Make a list of things that are sharp.

- Write down all the things you can think of that are associated with October.

Let's go to Fiji!!!

For our warm up we had to use every letter of the alphabet to try and think of some words that are items that go in a suitcase. We had to think of different ideas for each letter. 

Here are some examples.

A - Air bed
B - Bottle
C - Costume
D - Doll
E - Earings
F - Fork
G - Goggles
H - Hat

Can you leave a comment and finish our alphabet?

By Jamie Hampson and Maia Hughes

Everyone say "FLUENCY"...

In GATE we have to come up with LOTS of ideas. We write them down and draw them. Another word 'lots of ideas' is fluency. Can YOU think of a 'use' for a spoon that does not involve eating?

Some of our ideas are...
- To make shapes with playdough - Hannah
- For finding worms - Chali
- For snowman arms - Mia Y
- A flagpole - Jade
- To hold a baby hedgehog - Lucia
- A doll - Tayla
- As poles for a baby swing set - Mia S
- A wooden spoon superhero - Joel
- Put bark on it and pretend it is chocolate - Maya

By Lucia Sasso

'Clever Creators', 'The Ultimate Smarties' and 'The Talented Ten'...

Mrs Shepard spent a lot of time doing lots of tests on heaps of children at Birchwood. She then was able to choose some groups for GATE. 

On our first day she said 'Lets come up with a name for our GATE group'! We were put into two teams and had to brainstorm lots of different names. Our group finally chose 
"THE CLEVER CREATORS". Everyone liked that name because we think we are all clever and we LOVE creating stuff. It was fun because we got to choose it ourselves. 

By Maya Ricciardi

 The Ultimate Smarties

 The Clever Creators

 The Talented Ten