Author: Mrs Clark

Last Tuesday P7 from Port Ellen Primary School took a trip to the Gaelic College along with Mrs MacDonald.   During school Mrs MacDonald has taught us about  food,  how to order it and prices, all in Gaelic.   A pound in gaelic is” not” and a penny is a sgilean.  When we went over, in order to get a cake and juice you had to order in Gaelic.    We had to say, “Ha me a geerie aun…” and then whatever we wanted.   Everyone managed to successfully order what they wanted in gaelic.    After we had our order we had to answer Gaelic questions.   Then we played Twister in gaelic colours and a Gaelic board game about how to take care of yourself.   Overall we had a great day and we all learnt something new and even Mrs MacDonald.

By Emily and Jodie 🙂

2 weeks ago we went to the High School for Science week because we were doing food science with all the schools around Islay and Jura.  We went to Mr Kitching’s room first and we were testing foods for energy.  We had Peanuts, Pringles and Bread and we burnt the food with a Bunsen Burner and then put it under a test tube that had water in it. We also had a thermometer in it and we had to check how much the temperature went up.  The peanuts had the most energy then it was Pringuls and then it was bread.

The next class was Mrs Moran and we made a really gooey thing out of cornflour and water and mixed it all together  then we put it on a big music speaker and it looked like it was dancing and then we tided up and went to the next class room.

The next class room was Mrs McNaughton’s class and we were testing foods for starch, fat and protein.   We had busen burners and we put different foods into test tubes and added Benedict’s to test for sugar.   You had to put the test tube in and out the bunsen burner and also used iodine to check for starch.    If it has sugar when you put the Benedict’s and add the heat it should go orange and if you do the same with the iodine it will go blackish.

I had a great time.

BY William Monaghan

Yesterday afternoon Keills P67 came to our school. They came because we were getting a visit from Child Line. Child Line is for children to support you if you are worried, sad or anxious about anything. They are open 24-7 and are confidential. They won’t tell anyone about the conversation You don’t need to tell your name and you can tell them a fake name. We got put in to groups to talk about pictures and vote what we thought of the pictures.  The child line mascot is a speech mark called Buddy. We all enjoyed it and listened well.

Child line number: 0800 1111

By Annie Farrell

Port Ellen’s Primary 7’s went on an Endeavour trip to Bowmore to share their Endeavour with Bowmore’s Primary P5-7 to inspire them and help new ways to improve their Endeavour. They came around different tables talking about what they wanted to do for their Endeavours and how Port Ellen can help and give them some good tips. They also asked questions about their Endeavours and what good skills and strategies they could use to help them. In the end we ended up playing bonding games and making new friends.

By Nicholas

We asked Bronagh questions about what she did in Westminster in London.  We firstly asked her a question on why she was there.  She went to Parliament because she was an young Scottish winner of an art competition for I love Amazon schools.  In Parliament they were taking photos and talking about the rain forest.  She had to go through lots of security when she was entering Parliament.  She was in there for 2-3 hours just listening about the rain forest and getting photos taken.  They also asked her questions like “How did you think of your slogan?”which was ‘Hands off our trees, Leaf them alone.’  She also learned that every minute a football pitch worth of trees is cut down and the situation is so critical.

But in conclusion she had a lovely time in Westminster and learned a lot about the Amazon rainforest.

By Nicholas and Torin with help from Bronagh

In school p7 we have been reading and writing short stores.  A  short stories that we read called the Examination is a story about a young boy called Richard that lives in an oppressive state. In the oppressive state when you grow to the age of twelve you have to get an I.Q. test to see how intelligent you are.  When Richard takes the test he get killed because he exceeded the test.  After reading the short story,  p7 then wrote a book review on the Examination.  We sructured the book review by answering questions like ‘how was the story structured’ and ‘what do you  think about the opening’ also questions like  ‘what is the theme of the book’ and ‘can you describe the setting of the story’ also ‘what do you think about the ending’.  I found the actual story was great but I most enjoyed  how the story is so unpredictable and twisted at the end.  Writing the book review, I found it most interesting because it makes you read in between the line to find out more about the story.

In class, p7 have been learning to convert fractions, decimals and percentages, we have been focusing mainly on fractions and decimals.         Fun Fact: If in a decimal, a number is repeated lots of times, like 1/3 is 0.33333333 etc. you would write 0.3 with a º above the 3.

We have learned lots more, like :

1/4 is 0.25 so 2/4 would be 0.5 you would keep doubling until you got to 4/4 which is 1.00

1/2 is 0.5 which is equivalent to 2/4

1/5 is 0.2 so 2/5 would be 0.4                     .

1/6  would be 0.166

1/10 would be 0.1 because there is 10 10ths in 1

We have also been learning to convert percentages to decimals for example:

20% as a decimal is 0.2 as a fraction is 1/4

25% as a decimal is 0.25 as a fraction is 1/5

50% as a decimal is 0.5 as a fraction is 1/2

75% as a decimal is 0.75 as a fraction is 3/4

80% as a decimal is 0.8 as a fraction is 4/5

100% as a decimal is 1.0 as a fraction is 1/1

These are just some of the vast array of fractions, decimals and percentages in the known world. Hope you found this intreaging and interesting. hopefully you have learned something new.

By Anwen and Izzy 🙂

On Thursday 5th March it was world book day, everyone had to bring in their favourite book and dress up as their favourite character. We dressed up as Sarah Midnight from the book Dreams and Tilly from Magic Spirit.  The first thing did was reading one of our favourite sentences from our book.  In the morning some of the p7’s had to go and read to the nursery, we read them their favourite book.  While the rest of us played games answering questions about books.  We then read a short story in our reading groups called Examination Day as part of World Book Day.  It was a really great story.   Overall we had a great day and everyone looked great in their costumes. 

By Emily and Jodie 🙂

This is our power point on Disability Discrimination. We have been learning in class all about discrimination so we chose to do this one!    By Emily and Jodie P7  🙂

Check out P1/2’s new blog…..Adventures with Dinosaurs to find out what these dinosaurs are up to! Follow the link from the Learning Blog.

P1/2 have just finished building their Space Station and are looking forward to their trip into space.  They have been been busy with their astronaut training – fitness and fine motor skills using different gloves, tweezers and litter pickers so that they can conduct space repairs in the Space Work Module (with tumble drier pipe and gloves!).  The astronaut food is ready and we are just waiting for our spacesuits to arrive…….

Every year our school has a Burns celebration and all the classes in the school take part to learn a Scottish poem and also some of the main Scottish country dances. We enjoyed learning Strip The Willow it was so much fun. On Wednesday 21st January all the classes got assessed and in all the classes only six people got through to the finals. Then on the Thursday each of the finalists took it in turn to say it on front of  three judges. On Friday 23rd January we had Burns Lunch and then everyone’s friends and family came up for a ceilidh where we also found out the results of the poem!!

Here Are The Results:

P7-Adress To The Haggis  1st Elizabeth Macmillan  2nd Abbie Morris  3rd Annie Farrell

P6- Twa Corbies  1st Bronagh  Newman  2nd Ross Thompson  3rd Mirren Brown

P5- My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose  1st Struan Colthart  2nd Ruaridh Macdonald  3rd Natalie Logan

P4- Oor Dentist  1st Rowan Morris  2nd Matthew Campbell  3rd Rebecca Morris

P3- The Brickies On The Building Site  1st Ellen Brown  2nd Holly Mckechnie  3rd Alexander Mctavish

P2- Sair Finger  1st Katherine Borthwick  2nd Dearbhla Newman  3rd Charlotte Rose and Millie Hollyoake

P1- Owe You Canne Throw A Sanne  1st Ricky  2nd Ciara  3rd Phoenix Davey

Overall we had a great time!!

By Emily and Jodie

Today Thusday 22nd Januray I had a visit from a lady called Maggie who makes bags. As part of my Endeavour i am making a bag from scratch and she was going to come in and talk about different bags. She taught me how to make handles and how to put lining  in the inside of my bag. Also she showed me some of her bags which has giving me some ideas. Thanks very much !!!

By Jodie 🙂

On Tuesday 20th January we went to the Woollen Mill.  We had  a look around the Wollen Mill and found out how they make tweed.  This was for our Endeavour projects on wool and making bags.

By Emily, Jodie and Emma 🙂

Last week  our class p7 entered a competition about photography and architecture run by the Scottish Civil trust.  We went a walk round the village looking for  photographs  to take. There were all kinds of photos like roof tops, paths & drain pipes and they were taken at different angels to make them look eye catching. When we got back from the walk round the village we looked though all of our photo’s and picked out the best photo and edited it a wee bit to make it look better.  Then they could enter it in to the competition.

by Logan Porter and William Monaghan

As part of our 10 Pieces music topic we have been creating art in response to pieces of classical music.  We have created abstract pieces and yesterday we made art based on the theme of flight in response to a piece of music.  This is Beth’s picture based on the piece Mars by Holst.

In class we have been learning a poem called address to a haggis for Robert Burns day, which is next week in school.  Have a listen here … haggie

For the past couple of weeks we have been doing a project from the BBC called Ten Pieces. We have been learning about it with P3/4 as well. It is all about classical music and their composers, plus we have to make our own body percussion to the songs and our own art. The three main songs are: Night on Bare Mountain, In The Hall Of The Mountain King and Mars, The Destroyer. When you do music you have to think about all the different techniques which are; Ostinato, Crescendo, Diminuendo, Surprises, solos, when they play altogether, call and answer, layers, gaps of silence and change of tempo and speed. We also were in groups of four to create our own piece of music using our voices and body percussion which we recorded and built up using Garageband. Our group had to make a piece that sounded happy and we used lots of different techniques. In pairs we all researched a song and their composer. We researched Firebird by Igor Stravinsky. Lots of other people researched famous composers too like Mozart and Beethoven. We really enjoy doing 10 Pieces because it lets us find out about classical music, composers and get the feel from different music.

By Emily and Eleanor 🙂

Jasmine and I went Islay High too learn about art because we are doing art for there Endeavor. It was really fun and we learned a lot of new techniques such as drawing and printing with Mr Galligan.  We hope to hold an art exhibition of our pictures in June when we are finished.