NEWS

On the 19th of March Primary 7 went to Islay high as part of our electricity topic. We took part in lots of different experiments throughout the day. At the start of the day when we arrived we were split into three groups with schools from all over Islay and Jura. There were three different laboratories we were working in, each room had a different focus; one was circuits, one was how electricity travels and the last one was sensors. In the first room there were lots of different ways to wire a circuit and we were looking at many ways to do so we tested series and parallel circuits and even ones that are in computers. In room two we were focusing on how electricity travels. Some of the experiments were making a clock work using a orange and my favorite of the day was lighting fire with our fingers to do this we got a metal dome and charged it up by rubbing a comb on wool while this was happening someone would have their left hand on the dome then we would let gas out of a pipe and the person that was charged would touch the pipe and a fire would start. The last room was exploring different sensors and what they would be used for.  It was great fun.

by Robbie

In class we have been learning how batteries work. Here is a description of how a battery works.

Electrons have a negative charge so they are attracted to the positive end of the battery but there is a electrolyte in their way. The electrons want to go to the Cathode because they are attracted to the positive charge. The only way to get the electrons to the Cathode is when you connect the circuit with a wire and when the electrons pass through the wire they light up the lamp. When the battery runs out of chemicals that create a difference in the electrical charge that means the battery is dead and cannot be used.

by Abbie

On the 19th of Februrary p6/7 went a walk round the village to take pictures of old and inspiring buildings.  I took several pictures of building, landscapes with old houses with natural features to them.  We all got to enter one picture into the competition, my picture was of an old shed with lots of different lines and angles.  The reason I took that picture was because it looks old and interesting to whoever looks at it.  I took the picture at a side view so that it gives the viewer more of a real life look at it through a picture.  I was really pleased to hear I was a runner up in the My Place Photography competition run by the Scottish Civic Trust.

On Friday 21st March we did some fund raising for Sports Relief. We all dressed up in red and the teachers did a bake off to raise some money for Sports Relief. When we tasted some of the cakes they all tasted different and delicious  our two favourite cakes were the rainbow cake and the dragon cake. We had some leftover cakes so we went a walk around the village selling them to raise some more money. For the cake competition in first place was Mrs Clark with her dragon cake and in second place was Mrs Logan with the rainbow cake. We all had a really fun day and we raised £311  for Sports Relief.

By Emily and Eleanor

My Endeavour this year is horse riding instructors and for this I took a pupil horse riding. We went to a horse riding school and I was teaching Emily how to tack up a horse. She was riding a horse called Fiona. Emily said ” I was quite scared at first when I got on the horse but after a while I got used to it and was not scared.” I really enjoyed taking Emily horse riding and now I know what it feels like to take somebody horse riding and take responsibility. I now hope Emily knows more about horse riding and not as scared anymore.

By Jodie Jamieson

On Wednesday 19th March Port Charlotte P6/7 came to Port Ellen Primary school to do some science with p6/7.  We did lots of fun things like building football robots, lego wedo, lemon batteries, lemonade batteries, potato clocks, soldering, scratch, and making video games and making circuits. To make a lemon battery get a lemon chop it in half get a zinc nail and a copper coin and get two crocodile clips put the zinc nail in the lemon and get the copper coin and put it in the lemon then get an L.E.D light get one crocodile clip then attach it to the zinc nail and the other end on the L.E.D light then get the copper coin and get the crocodile clip and attach it to the copper coin and the other one on the L.E.D light and it should work if it doesn’t work that doesn’t matter sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I enjoyed most when Port Charlotte came over was meeting new people and making new friends <3

By Ciara

alicia’s and camerons fractions podcast

A fun way to teach people fractions.

We are taking part in a quiz for P6 in Scotland that is called the Euro Quiz. The Euro Quiz is a quiz that tests you on your knowledge of Europe and the EU.  It was set up by the Scottish Parliament to encourage children to learn about the EU and Europe.  I now know about the EU, when Europe day is, the EU flag,  the EU anthem and the EU motto.

by Anwen Baker and Oliver Muirhead

On the 24th of January, Port Ellen Primary had their annual Robert Burns ceilidh and poem competition. Rowan Morris in p3, won her competition. Here she is saying ‘Dino’s Cafe’.

Rowan poem

The Junior Saltire award is a competition for schools around Scotland to come up with the best idea for a hydro kinetic generator (water power device). This year Port Ellen is entering the competition, if  they get through to the final they get to go to Edinburough University to test it.  Last year Port Ellen made it the finals. This year the power has to be gathered from the strength of the tide, P6/7 have decided to design their devices on tidal  turbines. They have made KNEX models  and power point about their design in our groups and hope to get in this year. A quote from Torin “I think it is really fun and hope to get to the final!” Hopefully at least one design will get through to the finals!

We did an Essay on what sustainability living mean’s to us.   Sustainable living is using resources properly and only use them if you need them.  Everyone had to write about what it meant to them. Other people had different feelings about what sustainability means to them, some people went against the fact of being sustainable and some people agreed. Now they are going to get it entered in the international competition and they have over 900 entries. When we did our Essay we about walking to places instead of taking the car.We also included how we grown fresh vegetables and crops on crofts instead of buying them at the shops.

By Eleanor and Jodie

P2/3 went on a trip to the high school to ask Miss Fuery about what geography and history there is in Scotland.  They asked lots of questions about the geography on Islay and Scotland. They found out about what sand was made of.   Matthew Campbell said that sand is made of diamonds, crystals, shells and tiny stones! People used to come to Islay to climb up a big rock, write their name in a piece of paper and put it in a plastic box. If you got stuck in the middle of that rock you wouldn’t manage to get help because there is no mobile phone signal.

By Emily and Annie

P6/7 entered a photography competition called Scottish Civic Trust My Place Photo Competition. They had to take a photo of architecture. P6/7 walked down the streets of Port Ellen trying to find architecture to photograph. Reflections of puddles and just taking photos normal, old buildings to the modern builds, p6/7 took hundreds of photos of architecture. When P6/7 got back to the school they looked at all the photos and decided which ones to enter in the competition. My favourite  photo was one of the old police station.

We have been doing something called Endeavour and I have chosen my Endeavour to be on puppets. Endeavour is like a personal topic but it isn’t as short as a class topic, we do it all year long until the Summer holidays or the end of the year at school.  What I have done so far  for my Endeavour is I have been making puppets and I have named them Richard and Zoey. Richard is a sock puppet and Zoey is a sock Zebra. I have started on my third puppets head and I am thinking on making him a king to guard a sandwich of magic powers. I am thinking of calling him King Sandwich. Now I know lots about puppet making and puppetry.

On Tuesday afternoon it started to snow, so it was an inside break.  We all looked outside the window to see the snow.  After a while it started to snow really heavily outside.  When it stopped snowing we looked outside and it was all white outside.  But sadly it all melted away. We all wanted to play in the snow.  We were all sad that the snow melted away.  By Emma and Ciara

On 24th of January we had our annual Robert Burns ceilidh and poem competition.  Abbie Morris in p6, won her poem competition.  Here she is saying her poem, ‘Ae Fond Kiss’.

abbie poem

By Maisie and Abbie

On the 12th of February Allan from Oban came to do rugby with us. He taught us some of the basics for playing rugby.  The first game we played, after we were put into teams, was testing our attacking and our defending.  To do it we had five people at each end of the hall some attackers and some defenders, when the whistle was blown we had to charge into the center and the attackers would try to get a try and the defenders would try to stop them. When this warm up was done we played matches. There were four teams and Two teams were on and two teams were off. The aim of the game was to try to score as many try’s in three minutes. If you were tagged you had to pass the ball to a player behind you and they would try to score a try. There were five games played it was great fun.

By Robbie And Cameron

On Thursday 23rd January P6/7 started Scottish Country Dancing, Mrs Cameron and Mrs Shaw came in to teach them. They learned the Barmkin, Strip the willow, Virginia Reel and  Saint Bernards Waltz, they also learned coordination and listening skills.  They do it every Tuesday in the afternoon.  At the end of the of the practices there will be a day of dance for all of the schools in Islay and some in Jura.  Alicia and William think it is a great experience and lot of fun.

By Alicia and William

On Thursday 23rd January we started choir again.  We have new members, who will be joining us in our new choir songs.  Now there are 29 pupils in the choir, including:

Danni Barker, Elizabeth Macmillan, Eleanor Macmillan, Maisie Logan, Jodie Jamieson, Nicholas Weatherhogg, Emily Mackie, Asher Borthwick, Abbie Morris, Annie Farrell, Beth Mckim, Ciara Jhonston, Anwen Baker, Oliver Murhead, Bronagh Newman, Katie Middleton, Natalie Logan, Eva Munroe, Murray Cambell, Ellie Mackie, Sophie Clark, Catlyn Clark, Kaya Middleton, Jasmine Middleton, Rowan Morris, Rebbecca Morris, Abi Logan and Sarah Maclealon.

The choir have been working very hard and  have put lots of effort into learning the first verse of our new unison this year, called “Ailien In Rieech”  We have also been teaching the new choir members our warm ups, which helps us with our tuning and pronunciation of our words.

By Elizabeth Macmillan and Danni Barker

Over the last few weeks the pupils from Port Ellen Primary School have been working hard on learning different Burns poems and dances for our Burns Ceilidh. They announced the winners of the poetry at the Burn Ceilidh. P7’s winner Asher Borthwick said “I was really glad that I came first in my poem.” At the ceilidh there was a lot of traditional Scottish instruments playing such as the fiddle, the accordion and the tin whistle. Ella Edgar’s dancers entertained everyone. Halfway through the Burns Ceilidh they served tea and shortbread. It was a great afternoon and everyone really enjoyed themselves!

By Emily and Abbie

This term we are learning all about light and sight and how it happens.  We started off by  writing down questions that we wanted to do and finding them out as we go along.  On 22/1/14 we all made pin-hole cameras by rolling 2 bits of black card and attaching cling film to one and tin foil to the other. Putting them both together so that when you look through the hole, that you made with a compass on the tin foil, you could see images but they are upside down.

The following afternoon we did experiments on sight and light, some of the ones I did were pigments and filter, looking at lenses, making magnifying glasses and answering questions about a kaleidoscope.  We also had an experiment that you had 5 ice cubes on 5 different colours- yellow, red, black, white and blue, you have to lay them on a window sill and see which coloured ice cube melts the quickest.  On 23/1/14 we took notes when we watched lots of videos, the ones we watched were, all about light, colour, colour mixing and and what is a rainbow.  That afternoon we got a visit from the optitions, he showed us a PowerPoint and we took notes, it was very interesting.

All of the experiments were very interesting and we got alot of facts.

By Maisie and Jodie

For my Endeavor I am doing weather and natural disasters. I am doing a project on this because i have always wondered how storm and hurricanes etc are formed. here are three interesting facts i found out.

1)Britain is one of the most common places for disasters because of the warm air from southern Europe, the cold air from the west and the wet cold air from the Atlantic ocean, all of these collide over Britain causing devastating storms, we don’t necessarily get the worst storms but we get the most storms.

2)Ozone is a gas that is formed high up in the sky its porpoise is to protect the Earth from the suns ultra violet rays, if there were no Ozone humans would get eye damage and skin cancer these are the two worst that health problems it can cause.

3)A tropical cyclone is a disaster that is created by warm water, a tropical cyclone is made of very strong winds that go in a spiral anti-clockwise when a cyclone reaches 74mph it can be called a hurricane or a typhoon depending on where you are in the world, they are caused from water above 26.5 degrees Celsius.

I hope these three facts helped you.

by Robbie Middleton

Every Tuesday until the swimming gala p5-7 are going to the swimming pool to practice with Helen.  Helen is our swimming teacher and she is helping us get better at our swimming strokes.   We are doing lots of different things like back crawl, front crawl, gliding and stuck in the mud.   While one class is in the pool the other class is upstairs doing work.    When we are in the pool we do jumping and diving.  When we have finished we get five minutes play time. We travel to the pool and back on the bus.  Annie thinks that swimming is great and it is a good thing that you learn to swim.  Ciara thinks that swimming helps you get fit and it is a fun thing to do.

By Annie Farrell and Ciara Johnston

This term P4/5 decided to set up a a social enterprise business. We had been inspired to have our own business after reading Lee Goes For Gold and following our world of work topic.
Before we set up our business we had to research different social enterprise businesses like Greenworks,The Big Issue,Hill Holt Wood and Divine Chocolate.This helped us to understand about social enterprises.
Social enterprise businesses help the environment or the community by investing some of their profits towards helping make things better.
We worked together to create our business plan.
We decided to set up a business making soaps and bath bombs. Murray thought of the name for our business. We called it Scent-Citizens because we have scent in our soaps and bath bombs and we are great citizens by using some of the profits we make to help our community. We decided that we would use some of the money we make to help develop our new community path by buying plants to put along it.
Everyone has been really busy making soaps and bathbombs in class. We sold some of them at the christmas fair and some to the Islay Hotel to put in the bedrooms.
After the Christmas fair we put together a finance team. It is Eva ,Bronagh,Murray,Kaitlyn and Ross. They have to count up all of the money we make and update our accounts book. At the Christmas fair we got £95.80p. We also made £169 by selling our products to the Islay Hotel.
Just before the holidays we got a visit from Mr Bert McGlone who works for the Social Enterprise Academy in Edinburgh. He thought our business was great and is going to come back to see us soon to see if we are good enough to receive a social enterprise academy award!
By Bronagh and Eva

P 6/7 are doing a new topic on crofting.  They are going to be taking over the croft and planting new things.   They haven’t started yet but they will be starting soon.  They are doing crofting because the crofting needs done and that is what the teacher chose.

By Annie farrell