From Sea to Sustainable Solutions and Products

My Endeavour is sustainable seaweed solutions I chose this because I wanted to raise awareness on how much better seaweed can be for the environment than other products like plastic. Seaweed can be used for many different things such as plastic; seaweed can be made into plastic by turning the plastic into sugars and then fermented into plastic. This is better because if the seaweed plastic gets picked up by the wind and blows into the ocean it will not matter because seaweed grows in the ocean anyway therefore it cannot harm the oceans, and the animals can just eat the seaweed. It can also replace paper and many other things.  

Seaweed is home to many different species because it protects them and provides food for them. Many animals choose seaweed because it has lots of nutrition for them. It also provides shelter from predators for them. 

I have made; one video on why we should save seaweed; some posters; dried seaweed; I made some fertilizer; a letter to the founder of Ishga (a seaweed beauty brand); I done an essay about some things to do with my Endeavour; wrote two pages full of notes about my Endeavour; cooked some seaweed. 

 

 

My Endeavour Project

My Endeavour project is soldering i chose this project because i wanted to try something new. I never done this project before so i though i might give it  a go. the first thing i done in my Endeavour was write a letter to colin furze about top tips in soldering i told him what i made  already and the fact i done and what i am trying to achieve and the first thing i should do in soldering.  And after that i done some research and then got in to soldering. the first one i made was tricky and hard because. I burnt myself a couple times and the rainbow LED didn’t work but i try the rainbow LED a couple more times but then i thought of trying the candle light.

And then the candle light work so then i made two. and both of them work so i thought if i can make a candle light i can make make a rainbow LED but i still couldn’t  the rainbow LED. So i done more research and thinking how i should make the rainbow LED and how people in world think of soldering world wide and how i should be a good job.

My Endeavour

My endeavour is landscape painting it is coming along very well I have made 5 paintings for the endeavour fair. A few weeks ago I sent Dietmar finger a letter about if he can help me with my endeavour I picked landscape painting because I have Allways loved painting things in primary 3 I painted a picture of a bird and in primary 4 I painted a picture of a cherry blossom tree. 

I will probably sell my paintings for £1.50 each I think that my project is going to be a little bit hard because landscape painting is very hard and challenging for me I think my 5 painting look pretty good. I think my endeavour is going to go really good and I hope I will make at least £35 when the endeavour fair ends. 

I think painting was a very good pick for me I hope that the people like them when the endeavour fair starts so far I have painted pictures of: mounters, and the moon in the clouds, and the woods 

By James baker

My Hydrogen Endeavour

My Endeavor is hydrogen. It’s a big topic and the reason I did it is because my dad works for a hydrogen company called Protium I was very interested in hydrogen and all its facts like it’s the most abundant element in the world. Also it can be used for cars and planes we could stop oil and fossil fuels. But its about what I have been doing let’s see.

So far I have made three sheets of information, mascot and a presentation but at my house where me and my dad make hydrogen we have made a model of a car and and we have clear water with no minerals just clear so we pour that into the electrolizer and it separates the o2 ( oxygen) and the h2 (hydrogen) we store the hydrogen and then release the oxygen and we put that hydrogen through a chute and into the model car  to power it . and that’s how I am making hydrogen but there is some obstacles like getting the clear water getting the time to do it but I just push through it I really enjoy doing this Endeavor finding out all the different facts like OVER 70% OF THE UNIVERSE IS MADE UP OF HYDROGEN! and there is even more facts and I just can’t wait  to tell everyone at the Endeavour fair.

Robotics Endeavour

My Endeavour is robotics and I wanted to do it because I saw a friend do it and after I really wanted to. I am really excited about this Endeavour. I was really happy when I built the first micro bit. I also was coding a robot. I coded the robot to follow a black track and too not bump into tables or chairs. What is an Endeavor?  Endeavor is a fun project what you can choose like game design. Endeavor is for p5 to p7 endeavor my last endeavor was games creation like on scratch and on Kodu games lab.

MY RECYCLED CLOTHES ENDEAVOUR

My Endeavour: Designing Recycled Clothes 

The reason why I chose sewing is because I have always had a passion for it. I think sewing is a really good hobby because of all the interesting techniques you can learn but some of it can be hard. My favourite thing to make is pillows because they aren’t as difficult. There are different stitches that you can learn. My mom taught me how to do most of it. Now I know how to do circles, squares and even know how to make scenes. The hard thing is trying to figure out where everything goes, what happens and what happens if the sewing machine breaks and where everything goes. I really enjoy it, and I think you will too. There’s a lot of things I don’t enjoy like when the wool runs out and I have to reset the whole thing which is really annoying.  

I think you should start to recognise it’s a really good hobby. And you can make your own clothes and not have to chuck things out and you can make your own business and then you won’t have to buy all this material. You can make teddies, you can make stockings and you can even make calendars for Christmas.  

Sea Story P12

This term our topic is the sea!  We went in search of sea creatures at our local beaches and planned in our floorbook.  Breagha had told us she had met a lovely wee fish and some hermit crabs at black rock and would like us to venture down to meet them. We took out friends from ELC with us and found all sorts of exciting things! Unfortunately thought we saw lots of rubbish too and we decided to go back and to clear up what we saw, we know this isn’t good for the marine life so would like to help them out a little.

🌟 WALT find sea creatures and learn about their habitats.

🌟 WALT be concerned about our environment.

Having looked at different varieties of seaweed on another trip we brought some back to school to cook and try! We were all very brave smelling and then tasting sea kelp which we thought was pretty good all things considered…some of us like the crunch and others the salty flavour.

Finally in our Sea Story learning from our Floorbook. You will see on page 16 we have adopted a sea turtle 🐢 as we loved learning about them so much and wanted to do something to support them! We are just waiting our welcome pack arriving!

Climate Smarter School

Last term we  have done a school topic on building and creating a climate smarter school. We had to put a renewable source like wind power ,hydropower and solar panels and we tested them outside and seen where the best place was to put them.  The best place to put a wind turbine was on top of a hill because we got the best reading.

Talking about readings we did reading for the wind turbine’s and also solar panels and we tested them with anemometer.  We put the solar panels on the school roof because it got the most sun light because it’s up high. The winning group were the P7 boys called the climate warriors, and the boys in the climate warriors names  were Alfie, Brody, Archie, Stephen, and Freddy. Also the boys that won are going on a amazing trip to Oban to talk about their model school and speak about renewables and also how it helps the environment.

Dinosuars P12

Our topic this term is dinosaurs and we are raising lots of money to have the Natural History museum in Scotland come and visit us!  We have carried out a bingo, a map quest and a sponsored walk.  We have also started a floorbook of learning.  We have been busy creating a dinosaur display for our classroom complete with palaeontologist lab!

Having talked about the extinction of the dinosaurs and the asteroid, we investigated how impact craters were made. We looked at some craters that you can see on the Earth and looked at the moon’s surface. Our idea was that the bigger craters were caused by bigger asteroids so we tested this out with a variety of balls, marbles and rocks. We also changed the angle of impact to see what difference this made.

We loved having the museum visit and learning about dinosaurs!

Harvest Topic

P45 have been doing an IDL this term on harvest.  We looked at harvest from the land and the sea.  We made mini carrot cakes using local carrots, we used the graters and peelers safely and responsibly. 🥕 🥕🧅We are learning to use different cooking skills, and we explored two different methods of cutting using a knife. We made soup using a lot of local produce, grown in Port Ellen.

The children met Fiona from Islay Natural Heritage Trust who helped us forage for seaweed in our local environment. We found lots of seaweed and used a key to identify the species. We then learnt that you can cook using lots of different types of seaweed and we made Carrageen pudding, the seaweed made it go really thick, like jelly! lots of use tried our pudding and some fried seaweed, there were mixed reviews!

🤿 Gordon visited us to talk to use about diving around Islay and Jura for scallops. We learnt about what we can harvest from the Sea. Gordon showed us his diving equipment and even allowed us to have a shot of his goggles!🦞We also tasted a range of produce that is harvested from the sea around Islay. We tasted mackerel pate, scallops and lobster. Laurie’s Dad kindly allowed us to see a lobster that he caught in his fishing boat. Laurie showed the class and talked about what his Dad catches and how the boat catches different shellfish. 🦞After tasting we voted on our favourite food and created bar charts to display our findings.

The children worked hard to create lovely invitations inviting parents to our Harvest Lunch on Wednesday 2nd October and we even wrote our own prayer.  Our invited guests, which included the OAP lunch club, came along to eat the lovely soup and crumble we had prepared with local ingredients.  All the classes performed for them and a great time was had by all!

Titanic!

P5 have been learning about the Titanic for their topic this term.  We went to the beach to observe boats by the peer. As we study the Titanic, we tried looking at how we might use perspective to help us draw a boat.  Then we went back in time to try and get a better understanding of what it would have been like to be a passenger on the Titanic.  We listened to a survivors story… it is so interesting! Finally the children braved the weather to set their Titanic models free into the sea. Some were slightly more successful at sailing than others… Everyone got soaked but it was so much fun!

Kildalton Trip

Monday the second of September 2024

We visited Kildalton cross with a few more people following which are 2 people from a computer science university named Saint Andrews and a person from Islay museum.

We and the scientists visited the Kildalton cross because of a school trip to investigate the cross because a fungus called lichen was eating away the carvings of the cross, that was made in the 8th century. The cross is about Christianity and had carvings about a lady holding a baby and had more cravings which looked really interesting which people think is Jesus.

We were split up into groups for different things like, making a little clip about Kildalton, taking photos, drawing anything at the place and 360 degree photo which was really fun because we had to hide from the camera when it takes a photo. After everyone finished each group we went back to the school a few kids that was: Hannah, Brody, Ella and Freddy. Went to take more 360 photos around the school, but unfortunately we couldn’t do much pictures outside because it was raining. But we still had fun! And that’s the end of our amazing and interesting trip Kildalton trip! Hope you enjoyed reading this!

 

 

COOPERING ENDEAVOUR

On the April 15th we started our Endeavour endeavor is when you get to pick your own mini topic  and It is challenging and it has to be learning you don’t know a lot of and you want to learn. Mine is coopering if you don’t know coopering is making whisky barrels.

I got to go on a trip to Bowmore Distillery and I got to learn about all the different tools the coopers use I also made my own cask. I also sent a letter to my uncle peter who is a cooper and to a coopering place in England. But since coopering Is quite dangerous I had to fill in a risk assessment. I have got a Website and I made stuff from barrels like candle holders which I’m going to sell. I picked this because I was interested in How barrels where made.

Here is a link to the website I made.

My Endeavour

On April the fifteenth we started a project called Endeavour. It is a project that we do every year in school you pick it on your own. It needs to be ambitious related to the world of work and and you need to know new learning (something you didn’t know before).

My Endeavour is bird and bat boxes the first thing that you needed to do was if it is something dangerous like drilling and sawing you would need to do a risk assessment. Then you would start off your plans and create a proto type . After that you could actually start to build the bird and bat boxes the best thing about this Endeavour is that you can easily do it from home. I have also created a power point and a poster.

Paddle Boarding- Ayla Denby

Hi my name is Ayla and my Endeavor is paddle boarding and so that means that I take photos when I am on the paddle board and make them into a video.  I get taken out of school by my mum to take photos for my video. i also have a sway and a trip to Texa.

I have contacted the life guard and they came on our health day and I will be doing paddle boarding safety with the whole school.

Zero Waste Fashion Show P34

 

Recycled Couture at Port Ellen

P3/4 in Port Ellen Primary recently put on a fashion show to highlight the issue of clothes waste. They have been learning about where their clothes come from and what happens to them after they are outgrown.  The children were shocked to learn how much clothing goes to landfill each year and how some designer labels end up being burned. They watched an inspiring video about a New York design label called Zero Waste Daniel that reuses left over scraps from the fashion industry to make unique items. The children brought in lots of old clothes and they designed and made new items of clothing that they modelled brilliantly at the Green Ninja Fashion Show, to parents and members of the community who had helped out teaching sewing skills.

Niamh Dunn, P3, writes..

Have you ever thought about the clothes you throw away? Did you know that 300,000 tonnes goes to landfill every year! Some people just bin their clothes when one button falls off and don’t bother to repair them! That is horrible so we need to do something about it!

It is bad for the environment because it releases toxic gas and can get into the water and harm the wildlife and the world. It also uses lots of the world’s resources.

Everyone can try to stop wasting beautiful clothes. Everyone can help. You could recycle your old clothes or repair broken ones, don’t just bin them!

Finn Shakespeare, P3, writes..

Have you ever through about the clothes that go to landfill? The average person in the UK spends £980 every year on clothes but 7kg of clothes waste per year goes to landfill! That is crazy so we need to do something to stop this!

It is bad for the environment because it releases bad gas and uses lots of resources. Some clothes get burned or get buried. Is that all we can do! We can do better.

Don’t just bin your jumper if one button falls off. Repair it! Another thing you can so is recycle at the clothes bank.

P12 are Pirates for the Day

Well me hearties, what a day we did have!! Today we learnt to be pirates, we dressed the part, found buried messages in bottles, used maps, followed and created instructions and problems solved to find the hidden treasure! Well done boys and girls, we hope you had a super day! A special thank you to The Copper Still Coffee for being awesome and providing us with our treasure! All part of our explorers topic!

CHRISTMAS FAIR

On the 10th of December, our school held a Christmas fair for the local community to attend. We had lots of merry raffle prizes for adults and children. The nursery and p1/2 had a stall, and p5/6/7 had 4 stalls for each of the tables in the class. The groups that were handling the stalls in p5/6/7 were called:

Santa’s Elves: Chloe, Teddy, Ayla, Evie, Freddy and Sani.

The Gonks: Iona, James, Jacob, Brody, Stephen  and Ellie.

Da Boys on Da Shelf: Aiden, Thomas, William, Finlay, Archie and Alfie

Santa’s little helpers: Rachel, Duncan, Ella, Hugh and Dylan.

These groups made:

Santa’s Elves made Block Christmas Characters, Snowman Face Tree Decoration and Stone Bird Tree Decoration.

The Gonks made Clay Gonks, Scrunches and Block Calendars.

Da Boys on Da Shelf made phyrogrithy cooking spoons and ornaments, Christmas trees decorations made out of blocks and sock creatures.

Santa’s little helpers made keyrings made out of thin blocks, coasters and sock snowmen.

Lots of people came along and we raised loads of money for the school.  There was Santa’s Grotto run by the parent council and also waffles to buy and eat.  Ms Brown did face painting too.  It was a wonderful Christmas Time!

SUNFLOWERS AND CATERPILLARS IN P12

 

We were very excited to receive some classroom pets this term! We have ten tiny wriggly caterpillars we are watching metamorphosis into beautiful butterflies. We’re very much looking forward to watching this process.

We were very excited to see how much our caterpillars had grown after a few days, they’re huge! We’re wondering how long it will be until they go into cocoons? Some of us were also delighted to see that our sunflowers have started to grow! We’ve added another page into our diaries to track their progress. Laurie’s is 4 cm tall already!

The Panto

We are doing a panto this year. A panto is where we do a show for our family and school. The panto that we are doing is Pirates of the Curry Bean!  We have all got our parts. I am Dead Eye which is the narrator. The panto is on the ninth of June in the primary school hall.

The Curry Bean is hilarious. Its where a fearless pirate called Captain Swaggersword buried all his booty in a far distant land. But then the captain vanished! All his treasure lost forever never to be seen again well that is until now…

This is going to be funny, dangerous and a big adventure!  We are learning lines and what to do on stage just now, and making props.  We hope everyone will enjoy the play!

 

Port An Eas Distillery

In school we made a distillery and a company for whisky.  Our group was called Port An Eas.  We made the distilleries in groups of five people and our group had Evie, Hugh, Connor, Iona and Calin . Everyone in the group had a different role in our Distillery: Evie is milling and mashing, Hugh is casks and ageing Connor is distillation, Iona is malting and peat and Callin is fermentation.

To make our whisky drinks we had lots of whisky smells and we had to pick the three smells that we liked best.  Together we chose rose, caramel and coconut. A few Days later we made teas that replicated the smells that we chose with different flavours of tea.  You can make it with 4tsp of black cat caramel tea, 3tsp of rose black tea ,1 pukka relax tea bag and 6 leaves of stevia.

We made are distillery with card and some modelling card to make it stand up because it is a circle it couldn’t stand up on its on own so we cut up strips of card to hold it up.

 

 

Our Loch Lili Distillery

Our Loch Lili distillery is near a loch and it is located there because it is near water. Our distillery’s special features are we grow our barley on the roof and we have  a windmill outside.  It is located there because it is near a ferry so we would have  some tourists around. But the negatives are too many tourists about  and that could be a problem. We made a model distillery and this is a picture.

 

P12 Distilleries Presentation

Yesterday afternoon we presented our distilleries to our class. We needed to think about how we built our model, ensure we spoke clearly and used as much distillery language as possible and could answer questions from our friends. We gave each other feedback on our designs using 2 stars and a wish.

Distilleries Timeline

P234 were revisiting the past, present and future and making a timeline for Islay distilleries, including some of the early ones which closed. We discussed how distilling had changed over time and what it might be like in the future, remembering our Googlemeet with Georgie Crawford about the new Farkin distillery.

Barley Germination P12

Last week P12 had the challenge of trying to get barley to germinate. Some of us decided we should put our barley outside (picture 1) this had two different outcomes. The barley which were left under/beside the train disappeared! We think some visitors ate it….. The barley that was protected by the creel was very wet but did begin to germinate slightly. The barley that was in the fridge (picture 2) went mouldy although it did begin to germinate too which Mrs Hannett was surprised at! The barley which was left in the classroom by the window and kept damp germinated beautifully and we will attempt to plant this tomorrow. Fingers crossed the deer don’t get it!

My Joinery Endeavour By William Allan Campbell

This is my Endeavor and it Endeavor is a challenging  project that you know nothing about but at the end of endeavor you’ll know every thing about it.

I chose joinery for my E ndeavor because  I have always wanted to be a joiner because you always are working with wood and that is one of my favorite things to do.

The people that helped me was Mr. Pollock  for the ladybird book and the wood that he sent me. My dad and brother have also helped by showing me how to use the tool and  how to identify the type of wood and how old it is.

So far in my Endeavor I have made a butt joint, lap joint and a miter butt joint. My favorite thing I had built was a copping board but I’m going to build a bird table for my mane project. I have been doing some designs for my bird table and chopping board and hopefully I will get  my bird table soon.

Here is my sway on joints and quiz.

wood work (Edit) Microsoft Forms (office.com)

Robotics- Learning New Digital Skills In Context

This year we received an Education Scotland CLPL grant to train staff in digital skills; for part of the project we have been learning computer science and technology to do with robotics.  A grant from the DigitalXtra fund has also  allowed us to purchase robotics equipment from early years up for the cluster, and has enabled the children to learn computer science outcomes in a meaningful way though programming their own robots.  This has been a really engaging way for pupils and teachers to engage with what can be quite tricky computer science concepts.

In Early years we used coda-pillars, Dash and Dot, Rugged Robot, Beebot and Spheros to show our understanding of computational thinking by coding the robots to follow an algorithm.

We learned all our computational thinking concepts using Barefoot Computing online, a fabulous and flexible resource.

We found there were lots of online resources that worked well even down to Early years and we made good use of them- lots of tinkering going on!

We made maps for the robots to move around and made them flash and play music as well as they followed the algorithms.

We then came up with our own designs for robots using engineering design principles and built them out of junk.

 

We think the robots looked fantastic!

Primary 3/4/5 have also been learning about robots and designing their own.  They learned about computational thinking and applied their skills making jam sandwiches and in Scratch.  They experimented with different robots like Spheros and Dash and dot.  With help from P67 they learned how to program Microbits to record temperatures and used this as a data handling high quality maths assessment.

First they designed their robots using engineering and iteration.

They then chose to program their microbits as part of their final robot design.  The builds were very imaginative.

With more experience of coding through Scratch and hour of code, P67 were able to take on more challenge.  They learned to use blocks rather than tracks to code the Spheros and were able to use them in maths to learn about angles in polygons by programming them to draw shapes using conditionals and loops, also programming games.  They then learned how to program Microbits.

Their final challenge was to look at Robotics holistically and design a robot to solve one of the world’s/Islay’s problems by using the sustainable development goals as a framework.  I adapted a Sway I found to structure their learning and used the great new tools on the new Microbit website which include programming based around the SDGs.

The children then used a design sheet to plan their robots.

For the elderly of Islay we had robots that were pedometers designed to help them keep fit and robots that made an alarm if the temperature got too cold to warn you it was icy out.  For children we had a robot that timed you washing your hands to prevent Coronavirus by playing Happy Birthday and one that timed you brushing your teeth.  For Farmers a child programmed a microbit to light up when dark, that could be fixed onto black Cows so they were easy to spot if on the road at night (cows are often free range on Islay!).  Another light sensitive device was to warn dolphins of underwater turbines at night.

The schools designs were then all shared with parents at an open afternoon in Science week, where children had to explain, demonstrate and discuss their new found digital skills.  It was clear lots of new digital skills were learned by everyone.

 

 

 

 

 

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