The journey so far…

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

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

Endeavour is a long term project which you can pick your endeavour topic. At the end you must present your endeavour to other people. My endeavour is electricity and I have learnt new skills and have achieved lots.

I feel like I didn’t work hard enough because I was off track when I was doing endeavour and I usually chatted with other people and checked out their endeavours. I learnt the speed of electricity. I learnt what makes electricity and I learnt other ways of making an electrical circuit than the basic circuit building The problems I had where that I constantly needed help from teachers and also had to be watched when I soldered. The skills I learnt were better time management and better presentation skills. The people who helped me were Mrs Clark, Mrs Macmillan and Mr Kitching. I am most proud of my soldered kit as it took about an hour or two to complete. The hardest part of my endeavour was when I had to use the soldering kit and to actually not struggle you had to have a very still hand.

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 review

For endeavour I am doing Kodu lab game. Endeavour is an ambitious project which you have to complete in a few months and then you demonstrate it at the endeavour fair.

Kodu is a game which gives you tools which allow you to make your own game. I made 11 levels and 8 children came and 3 adults came too.

I think I did well because I managed to the time and all my levels were completed.  What I need to do next time is to be more specific on what to do in the levels and I need to make the levels easier.

In endeavour here are the skills I learnt: How to work independently, How to code a successful Kodu game, How to show what I have accomplished/achieved and how to effectively gather facts.

I hope to be able to use the information I learnt to code in a computer programming/coding company when I grow up.

A problem I had to overcome is when I didn’t know what to do for the levels but I overcame it by asking other people on what I should do.

My project was ambitious because I wanted to be able to create better Kodu games and to have knowledge of coding.

I shared my learning by writing down facts which people could read and by creating a playable game.

Mrs. Clark helped me by showing how do code and my friends helped me by giving me level ideas.

On Tuesday  21st February P5/6/7 of Port Ellen went to Bowmore Primary School to talk about Endeavour. We were all partnered with someone from Bowmore And they had to take us around their school and to talk to us about Endeavour. We had to fill in a sheet about what we had achieved and get our partener to fill the other side in. Most people found it better when we were working with Bowmore Primary but some of us didn’t.

This is what  people are doing for Endeavour –

Charlie- Cal Mac Boats Around Islay

Darren- Golf

Taylor- Sports On Islay

Jack- Golf Design

Kaitlyn- Cake Decorating

Sarah- Giant Pandas

Ciaran- Electricity and Engineering

Natalie- Horse Riding

Sophie- Animation

Aaron- Art

Rowan- Magic

Abi- Photography

Aidan- Deforestation

Lauren- Bath and Beauty

Matthew- Comic And Animation

Eva- Skin Care And Beauty Industry

Holly- Birds

Ellie- Toys In The Past

Rhys- Kodu Game Lab

Struan- Fitness And Bones In The Body

Kaya- Famous Poetry

Rebecca- Islay Heritage

Ruaraidh- Writing A Book

Andre- Graphic Novels

And we fell that everyone is getting on very well with there Endeavour. Good luck to everyone with there Endeavour prodject!!

by Natalie and Sophie.

 

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.

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.

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…