Category: IDL

Interdisciplinary learning

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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!

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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!

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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!

 

 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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!

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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!

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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!

 

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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.

 

 

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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.

 

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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)

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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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Robotics in P3/4/5

We have been doing robotics in school recently.  The children have been learning to think like a computer and develop their digital language and skills.  They have learnt how to code a robot using block code using microbits, spheros and dash.

They then had to design and build their own junk model model robot with a microbot to solve a problem in our classroom.  One was a ‘ghost tracker’ which identified if there was a ghost in the room by changing symbols on the microbit when the model was shaked.

Follow the link below to hear how it works.

https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.323fab30-2ed1-4fef-b73a-13dddf5658f9&share_token=KnZxKAKSQlqvSOBvsk1kFA&mode=share

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P1/2/3 Renewables Trip

  

On 23rd May P1/2/3 went on a trip to see the different renewables being used in Islay.  First we went to Dunlossit Estate where David Gillies showed us the biomass boiler and we saw that the store where all the wood chips were stored was like a giant slushy machine.  Then we went to Ballygrant to see the hydro power station…it fitted inside a shed!  Finally George Dean took us to the wind turbine and we got to go inside it.  All were very intrigued by the upside down computer.  Thanks to David and George for a great day.

  

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Solar Ovens

 

There was great excitement in P1/2/3…and a bit of envy from P4/5….as the solar ovens were used to cook marshmallows and melt chocolate digestives.  Even although it was not particularly warn, we were amazed how quickly the ovens melted the chocolate and marshmallow.  William is keen to cook pizza next!

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African huts….using solar power

P1/2/3 have read the story of Handa’s Surprise and been learning about life in Africa.  They have found out that it is very different in rural Africa from the city.  They build these huts from straw, clay and wooden sticks….then added solar panels and LED lights.  They were a great addition to the sand tray with all the African animals. The children learned how useful solar panels can be in helping children in rural Africa to do their homework.  Evie’s mum showed the children a kerosene lamp that would be used – costly to run, dangerous and giving off nasty fumes.  We researched case studies and made these Explain Everything to show what we had learned.

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All about life in Tanzania

P1/2/3 really enjoyed Evie’s mum coming to visit the class to tell them all about life in rural Tanzania where she lived.  She explained all about the Masai, showing them some lovely fabrics.  She also told them how resourceful Tanzanian people are reusing and recycling things – making bags out of bottle tops and sandals out of car tyres.  Thanks you Mrs Wood!

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