Photography

Endeavour is when you get to choose your own project and do it for the whole year. For this year’s project I choose to do photography because I really like taking photos and I really wanted to see what it was like to take photos and display them to lots of people. Only p5/6/7 do Endeavour but the rest of the school do mini projects. This year I achieved lots, I also learnt new things, I had to overcome lots of problems and I learnt new skills.

I learnt lots of things ; learnt how to take photos, how to hold a camera properly and how to print photos. I learnt some skills ; learning how to write an email, time management, learning how to use a printer, learning how to use photo paper and be organized. I came across a big problem. The big problem was the camera died when I was in the middle of taking a photo, I also got an even bigger problem that the printer ran out of ink. My mum helped me print my photos and she also showed me how to use the printer. Mrs Macfarlane helped me make my photo booth and so did my mum, Mrs Clark gave me some props to go with my photo booth.

By Abi Logan

Magic Endeavour

When you go into p5/6/7 you do endeavour. Endeavour is a long term project that lasts from December to June. When you do endeavour it has to be something you have never done before and it has to be ambitious. This year my endeavour was magic. My endeavour was ambitious because I doing magic is a really big push and you need to be very patient and I have never done magic before and I wanted to try it out. I chose magic because I have seen my dad going around the house doing his magic and I want to be like him one day. Also I have seen dynamo on the TV and I have always wondered how you do the magic tricks so I decided to give it a go. Throughout this endeavour I have achieved lots of things, developed new skills, I learned new things, I had to overcome problems, get help and then I shared my learning with the rest of the school and some of their parents.

For this endeavour I have achieved lots of things like learning eight tricks, a sway about famous magicians and some from the past, a magic show for the nursery, a poster about different types of magic on them, and I did a magic trick on the laptop and in that movie I was through the monitor reading people’s minds. I also developed new skills throughout endeavour. One of the skills I developed was being patient when learning the tricks because you won’t just learn the trick in a night you will have to be patient and keep on practicing, I also had to manage my time well because sometimes you set yourself to much and you don’t have time to do it all but make sure you set yourself a reasonable amount to do and I had to be organised as well I had to be organised because I had to remember all of my things to learn my magic with.

Also when you do endeavour you will have problem you had to overcome. One of my problems with my endeavour is learning the tricks and getting them perfect, another problem that happened throughout my endeavour was being organised because I mostly forgot all of my magic tricks. When you do your endeavour you write to someone that knows things about your endeavour. This year I wrote to Dynamo and so far he has not sent a letter back. I also got help from my dad he has taught me all of the sneaky trick when you are doing the tricks and he helped me learn the magic tricks. My mum also helped me with the posters and putting on the QR code they have been very helpful.

When everyone has finished their endeavour at the start of June all of our mum’s and dad’s will come in and sees your endeavour and other people’s endeavours. I had lots of things to show at the endeavour fair. At the endeavour fair I thought that my endeavour was good and I think that some people liked that video that I made. Most of family came in to see my endeavour and I think they thought it was a good endeavour fair. I thought that there was a lot of good endeavours there and soon enough I wat to be as good as my dad at magic and as good as dynamo. Some day! Here is a little bit of advice for you don’t do something to difficult, don’t expect yourself to get lots done and do well!

Rowan Morris

Holly Birds Endeavour

Endeavour is a long-term project that you can pick to do all through the year for my endeavour was birds. For my endeavour I made three bird boxes, bird food, a sway, a book creator, a photo album of what I’ve done for my endeavour and what I’ve saw, a scrap book with photos I printed out and writing to explain about the photos.

When I was doing endeavour I had a lot of problems to overcome like making my sway, getting photos for my book creator, measuring the right size for my bird box, figuring out how to layout my stuff at the endeavour fair, how I was going to finish everything in time for the endeavour fair.

The skills I learnt through my endeavour is how to blog, how to make a sway, how to make a book creator, how to manage my time, patience, how to build bird houses, how to do a good layout, how to give a report.

My endeavour is ambitious because I didn’t know a thing about birds. Also because I planned to do a lot of things that are very challenging like building a bird box but instead of building one I built three, I also planned to make a sway all about migration, to make a book creator that related to everything in my endeavour, to learn all about bird anatomy, and share my learning with others.

A lot of people kindly helped me with my endeavour like David wood who was a big help he gave me tones of great facts about bird migration and he told me about what they do at work and why they do it. Mrs Macintyre was also a big help because she let me come into the nursery and do the bird watch with everyone.

At the endeavour fair you have to share your learning with others. When people came to my stall they asked me a lot of questions like why I chose birds as my endeavour, what I have done for it and they just asked me about the birds and other questions. I am very pleased with my endeavour and what I’ve achieved throughout endeavour.

By Holly Mckechnie

Endeavour Rebecca

Endeavour is a long term project that primary 5/6/7 work on. You can choose what you do yourself but it can’t be something you already know how to do, it has to be something new and ambitious. We do endeavour so that we can learn and be independent and not get your teacher to do it for you. This also means that you can learn for yourself and learn new skills.

When I was doing endeavour a developed lots of new skills. I learned how to use wix, how to be organised, time management and presentation skills. These skills have helped me a lot with my endeavour because usually I am not very organised and I think that this endeavour has helped me be more organised.

With this endeavour I have learned how to use a website builder called wix. For my endeavour I was creating a website for kids and what they can do on Islay. My website was called Islay Kidz Information. I wanted to make my website for kids because I am a child and I live on Islay and I would like children to know what a good island Islay is and what they can do on it.

I think that my project was ambitious because I have never made a website before and it was hard to get used to wix but I got there in the end. To share my learning I showed people my website and I asked them to evaluate my endeavour. I also made a quiz for them to do at my stall so that they wouldn’t be bored.

My Mum and Dad helped me with my endeavour because my Mum helped me with my website and my Dad took the videos that are on my website with his drone. I remember one day my Mum was helping me with my website and she deleted all of the writing on that page and we both got really annoyed. I also accidentally deleted a page and it was the only page I had completed.

When I was building my website I had to overcome a lot of problems. I deleted a whole page and my Mum deleted all of my writing as well. I was really proud with what I achieved this year for my endeavour.

You can see my website here: https://islaykidz.wixsite.com/islaykidz

Animation Endeavour By Sophie

Every Wednesday in the afternoon we do endeavour, endeavour is when you chose a topic to learn about and present stuff at the endeavour. For my endeavour I chose animations. I chose animations because as a kid I loved watching cartoons, my favourite was probably morph. Morph was a guy made out of clay that did silly things like annoy his friends and that kind of stuff, the cartoon morph was an animation!

At the endeavour fair I presented my Lego animation that I made for rejig, the animation was about how people drop litter on the beach and how they don’t think about what it can effect. The skills I learned while doing my endeavour was patience, time management and learning to use imotion. Imotion is the app I used to make my animations.

During my endeavour I learned that no matter how hard you try in your endeavour, you will still make mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes in my animations like; my hand getting in the way or the camera moving out of place or that I moved the character in the animation too far. Making animations is actually very stressful!

The problems I had to overcome was iPad glitches or that the animation was too short or something like that. Animations was a new learning for me because I had never made Animations before and I had never made animation be for either. It was a bit tricky at first but I got there in the end.

The person that helped me with my endeavour was Mrs Clark, she taught me how to make animations and how to keep the camera steady, and she also showed me how to get good lighting so thank you Mrs Clark! I shared my learning by putting my animation on a key and they I put it on the screen at the endeavour fair with a lode of other amazing videos. For people that do endeavour next year I just want to say whatever you chose you need to make it interesting or else it won’t be as good as an endeavour project that you will enjoy! Good luck to people next year!

https://vimeo.com/223449885

Taylor’s Endeavour on Sports on Islay

Endeavour last from December to June which means we have seven months to prepare for endeavour. Endeavour is a long term personal project where you can choose a project to do and this year I done sports on Islay.

For my endeavour lots of people helped me like my dad and my mum. I was also helped by muc-off because they sent me some stuff after I write a letter to them. Muc-off sent me a signed poster, a sighed t-shirt, a hat and twenty five stickers. My dad helped me with my cycle and my mum helped me plan different routes to draw out.

To share my learning I made a documentary of me doing different sports and other people doing sports. I done a sway on all the different sports on Islay. I made a kayak from Lagavulin bay round Texa and back. I also write down on a piece of paper what I did in my endeavour.

I made my project ambisous by giving my self-time limits to get stuff done some times it did get me to work others it didn’t and I would not get that thing done which meant that the time I should be doing something else which means my endeavour won’t be as good as I want it.

I had come over a lot of problems like my computer with my documentary had to go away so I had to restart it which meant I didn’t have everything. I also had to come over that the letter I sent was sent back to me is my mum helped me send it to a new address muc-off that my mum found.

I learned that Islay do lots more sports than you actually thing Islay do football, rugby, rowing, cycling, running, kayaking, swimming and lots more. I also learnt that you can send letters to a huge company that works with big people and get replied that is breath taking.Taylors Endeavour on Sports on Islay

Bath and Beauty

For my Endeavour topic I did Beauty and Bath. Endeavour is a long term personal project where you get to choose something to do that you might not be good at or might have never did before. In Endeavour you don’t pick something that is easy or hard you pick something that you will find problems to overcome and maybe a wee bit challenging. Because I was doing Beauty and Bath I decided to make Bath bombs. I chose to make bath bombs over anything else to do with beauty and bath because when I was little I always loved getting bath bombs from different stores like Lush so I wanted to make them for everyone to buy at the Endeavour fair.
When I was making my bath bombs my mum helped me because I was needing someone to help film the video I made on how to make bath bombs, making sure that I was measuring everything correctly and to make sure nothing went wrong. A funny thing/problem that happened while I was making my bath bombs was that when I was making my first set I put too much food colouring into the mixture and they kept on swelling and swelling until they turned into the shape of cakes!
The skills I learned  was being able to space out everything I did, being able to be patient, overcoming challenges like the bath bombs that turned out like cakes, making a questionnaire on excel and making bath bombs. The main thing I achieved was having time to do everything and getting on with work even though I could of did more stuff if I focused at the start of the year. My endeavour was ambitious because I had never did bath bomb making but during the end of the year I felt like I had achieved a huge amount of things. I also feel very proud of my endeavour this year because this was my first year doing endeavour so that means that everyone else has had a head start and knew what was expected to happen. This means that hopefully I can do even better next year for endeavour.  See my video below.
By Lauren Macdonald P6

https://vimeo.com/223445479

 

Endeavour 2016 Final Thoughts

Lots of community interest
Lots of community interest

The purpose of this blog has been to share the Endeavour project at Port Ellen Primary, and over the past year we have detailed the challenge and enjoyment of this learning  journey.  It was also set up to highlight how Endeavour can help children make links and develop skills for future careers, as part of Education Scotland’s Developing the Young Workforce.

Upcycling
Upcycling

In their final evaluations all children were able to make successful links to how their projects would help them in future careers; with some of the projects like architecture, interior design or card making business the career links were obvious, but all were able to identify specific skills like time management, risk assessment or presenting to others.

Children could say what new learning they had achieved; learning how to use a sewing machine, working a jigsaw cutter to make a wood toy, reading a map, building a model plane, coding a game, creating a mood board, filming and editing a documentary.  They were also able to identify problems they had solved in the process of their project; how to read scales correctly when cooking, how to reinstate accidentally deleted video footage, understanding Shakepeare’s language, correct use of a knife for chopping and getting notes out on time for advertising a jewellery sale.

Sweet making
Sweet making

Sharing their learning during the Endeavour fair was the final stage of the process and the variety and depth of learning on show was excellent, with those who had truly pushed themselves in their learning able to talk in depth about their Endeavour projects.  There was jewellery, wooden toys, graphic design t-shirts and cards for sale; a video game to play; cakes, sweets and mexican food to try; videos on Shakepeare, horse riding, fitness, card making and diving to watch;  a book and magazine to buy and read and lots of models of farms, houses and planes.

And those who took part this year were already coming up with exciting new ideas for next year…

Diving Endeavour

Here is the video produced by Bronagh for her Diving Endeavour.  She learned to scuba dive with her dad and wrote about the wrecks around Islay and created a risk assessment as well.  Bronagh was the winner of this years Endeavour Award for her independent work, successful management of time, learning of challenging new skills and excellent self evaluation.  Well done Bronagh!

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