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Photography Endeavour by Mathew

 

I am doing an Endeavour on photography and the reason that I am doing this for my endeavour because I won a competition called the My Place Photography Competition 2017.  I won a Nikon COOLPIX with my photo that I took of the old Port Ellen distillery funnels and then the Scottish civic trust entered my photo into the European competition and I placed 17th. Then I won a competition at Bowmore Distillery called the Islay Legends Photography Competition and I got a Cannon camera.

I also completed an online course called Photography Made Easy and it taught me all about photography like what IOS to use in different situations and what F Stop to use for different photos and I also made an Instagram account that has all of my photos on it called @mattsphotos06.

 

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Sumdog Competition

A few weeks ago there was a Sumdog competiton for who could get the most points in Argyll and Bute. You had 1000 questions to answer and everyone in our class had to take part, it was a tough Competition we didn’t finish 1st but it is super rare to get first place. One of the most played games is Junkpile because you can stack junk cars speakers the highest score to beat is around the 2000s. Another popular game is Dinnerdefense its highest is around a 150.

Sumdog is a maths game that tries to help you improve your maths. Sumdog is a hard game to beat – the settings are up when your playing against a destroyer and world’s best people – they have the best scores they get 250 points, my highest  is 150 points. On jetski rescue you have to drag the mouse to get little boats and lots of other little vehicles, the highest score on this game is about 75. In the competition the person that had the most questions correct was nearly 900 out of 1000 the highest out of anyone was alomst all of then correct.The competition lasts around 1 weeks.

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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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Building jet engines

  

Neil Chattle, our Rolls-Royce mentor, visited the school on 26th April.  He gave a talk to the whole school about jet engines and brought some model jet engines for us to try building.  We had a great day and ended with a challenge for teams of children to work together to build the model engine in the fastest possible time!

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Egg Engineering

This term we where doing Egg Engineering. We made parachutes and cars. We tested the cars the day after we made them in teams with other classes. Our class made parachutes for our eggs. Nearly all of our eggs lived, only 3 cracked. The egg cars were a success!Four cars passed the finish line on the day. Some of the cars went through the tunnel and some did not because they were too big.

Phoenix and Robyn

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April Diary

Renewables Engineering Islay – April Diary

 

With Easter on the horizon the team decided that we’d do a bit of…..

Egg Engineering

All the children in the school have been finding out about the strength of eggs. P1/2/3 and the Pre-5 unit were amazed to watch a video clip showing that a huge tray of eggs could support the weight of two cars!  In their joint play session they investigated to see if eggs could hold up a person.  Primary children then engineered different ways to drop an egg without them breaking, learning about gravity and air resistance along the way.  There were lots of parachutes……but also trampolines and some very innovative but simple designs.  Primary 6/7 used Newton’s three laws when thinking about their engineering designs.  Throughout the build the children were encouraged to think like engineers and use the engineering process to imagine, plan, create and improve on their designs.  Since the whole school were involved in this, we used this as an opportunity to use maths skills within an engineering context.  Children measured length, weight and volume of eggs.  They worked out the area of parachutes and time taken for eggs to drop.  Primary 6/7 children also calculated the speed of descent. At the end of the week the children worked in cross-stage groups to design and build wind-powered cars.  We showed the children the incredible Theo Jansen strandbeests to inspire them.  Parents were then invited to join us for the final testing seeing which vehicle went furthest, fastest and could cope with a tricky obstacle course while keeping the egg secure. Connor, P3, said It’s been great fun this week because we were building stuff and building is my thing. Ellen thought it was great fun and I liked how we got all the parents in. Aiden said I enjoyed racing the cars and learning all about friction and things.

Maureen MacDonald spoke to the parents about the Rolls-Royce Science Prize and what a great experience it had been for the school.  She also said that we were planning a community event to celebrate all the work that had been done over the past few months.

Parents were also encouraged to do a little engineering themselves, building rafts to support an egg. It proved to be trickier than we thought! Comments from parents included Amazing experience for all the children with so much fun and learning, loved the teamwork, Well done Port Ellen Primary – what an interesting project, Fantastic – hope it encourages lots of budding engineers.

 

Knotts to Watts

Kate Brown and P4/5 have  also had great parental involvement in helping to build a prototype floating wind turbine for the Knotts to Watts competition.  It was very exciting for the children to see their own designs and models being scaled up and fantastic to have the support of a couple of dads. For two afternoons Dearbhla’s dad and Morgan’s dad worked with the group to develop the children’s design.  It is very innovative with two turbine heads.  Initial testing in the classroom got the blades turning and it did produce electricity.  The class are looking forward to testing it out in the sea next week.  The whole school is very proud that the group have been invited to test their design in a wave tank as part of the Young Scientists and Engineers event in Glasgow in June.

Gus Newman, one of the parents, commented  I enjoy coming in to school and working with the young ones and getting them involved in future technology. I really like seeing their creativity.

Nuts and Bolts

The Parent Council are very supportive of everything that we do in school.  They have helped us to set up our Nuts and Bolts shed in the playground.  This is based around the idea of a scrap store with nets, ropes, crates, creels etc. The children have had great fun building lots of new things using the fish boxes donated by Drew’s dad.  Kate Brown has taken responsibility for sourcing material for the shed…and we are hoping to build on this in the future. In the nursery outdoor play area Alison Logan has had dads in to develop a system of water chutes for children to explore.

 

STEM Homelinks

Maggie Harrison and Maureen MacDonald are thinking about how we move forward as a school after the Rolls-Royce project is over.  We have started to use a STEM self-evaluation tool to help us.  One of things we would like to improve is parental engagement with STEM.  Maggie, in her role as Primary Cluster Mentor, has been working with two colleagues from other primary schools and as a team they have agreed to develop a series of STEM bags that can be sent home with activities that children can do with their parents.

Budget

Since we have been on holiday for two weeks we have had no outgoing this month so we still have £3280.99 in the budget.  The children have expressed an interest in getting a wind turbine for the school and are in contact with George Dean to see how we could go about this.

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Parachutes in P1/2/3

P1/2/3 have been learning about parachutes (air resistance) and they used Explain Everything to record their experiments inserting video clips of their tests, how they made their tests fair and the results.  They were then able to use this information in the design of their own parachutes to protect an egg from smashing when dropped from the top of the stairs.

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Port Ellen Egg Science!

This week the whole of Port Ellen Primary school have been testing Newtons 3 laws of motion with eggs!

The rules work as you have to protect your egg from breaking using resources provided, you have to make 2 things to hold your egg but 1 has to have a parachute and 1 doesn’t and there is prizes for the lightest, the egg that is least damaged and the one that looked the nicest.

We dropped the eggs from a height (The top of our stairs.) Then it will go at a high speed then splat on the floor. This is Newtons first law, The law of Inertia a object (The egg) will stay in motion still unless it is acted upon, the act is the floor the thing thats going to stop the egg so the egg falls down then hits the ground.

Newtons second law F=MA which stands for force= mass acceleration, This one was the most important this was to slow down your craft before hitting the ground using… Parachutes! For the parachutes there is only a few things 1. the bigger the better, 2. don’t make it to big it gets stuck on the stairs and 3. make it out of something light not like card so we used bin bags!

Newtons 3rd law for every action there is a opposite reaction. The egg is falling then it hits the ground the action the reaction the egg goes splat.

The eggs experiment was a great way to test Newtons laws of motion. It wasn’t just a way of testing Newtons laws but every body loved creating there own special device to keep the egg safe it was like a baby and you can’t drop the baby unless you are 5 metres high and it has a parachute.

 

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Computer Engineering Endeavour

A computer engineer is someone who writes codes/debugs a computer. Debugging is the process of identifying and removing errors from computer hardware or software. The code in the computer is a language which the computer understands and will follow the commands given. The computer needs commands to have the ability to do anything. If the computer didnt have commands, you wouldn’t even be able to switch it on.

For my Endeavour I am making a webpage from scratch. To do this, I dont have everything setup for me like a webpage creator online. To do it first you open notepad, then save it as something like your name, but after you’ve written your name, type .html, then open the file. You will have to write code into the notepad to make it appear in the webpage. However, If you want to write code in it, just research it. My webpage isnt currently online, but I am still working on it.

An electronic engineer would be the person who make the computer itself but a computer engineer is the one who makes everything on the computer work. If you press the window button, search cmd, then right click it, and select open as administrator, you can change some of the computer settings. It is possible to break the computer through the command window however, so be careful on what you type in. Its better to research all the possibilities of it so you know what things you can do and what they do.

What I think I am learning from my endeavour will help me be a computer engineer in the future. I could also be a webpage creator or a games designer.

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Mechanical Engineering Endeavour

This year I chose to do mechanical engineering for my endeavour project. A mechanical engineer is someone who works on cars or lots of other stuff  like working with gears and more. I chose mechanical engineering because I love cars and I play a lot of Forza which is a car game. After this endeavor I hope to have achieved a lot so that can help me in the future to maybe a mechanic. I would also like to be a mechanic when I’m older as I think it would be a good job for me.

For my endeavor I’m gonna make a Haynes model engine and a sway about all the different kinds of engine. I have also made a quiz that you have to label the parts of the car engine of a Chevrolet Camaro Zl1.

Taylor

 

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Electrical Engineering Endeavour Project

My Endeavor project is about electronics. I have created a circuit with a soldering iron for a model for my endeavor to show off at the endeavor fair.  What a soldering iron does is the tip gets really hot and you get some soldering wire and you put it at the tip and then put under the circuit board where you put your resister or a light anything that’s supposed to be with that will work with the circuit board and solder in the parts.   So one day I thought about building a robot that can move i hope i can do this with spare.  I didn’t know how I was going to to it or I could just make some circuits and I’ve made two so far  and now I can make a lot of circuits if I don’t burn myself from the soldering iron.

 

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THE GREAT EGG RACE

This afternoon  our school will be building wind powered vehicles ready for a great egg race with parents tomorrow.  We will be put into teams (which will include all of the classes).  Once the teams are picked we have to design a vehicle that will transport our egg with out the egg breaking. We will be using a hair dryer to blow our vehicle so that it will move. There will be points for: Lightest design, prettiest design, vehicle that goes the furthest and whose egg gets least damaged.There will also be points getting taken off. Points will be taken off for: Wasting materials and damage to egg.  We are doing the egg race to help us with our engeneering skills and it is also part of Rolls Royce Science Prize. We are doing a lot of engineering activities because engeneering can help the world with climate change. The engeneering activities are a lot of fun because it  challenges us. I think that engeneering is very helpful to be doing in school because it uses math and science and it is also helpful because it tests us with our team working skills. I would like to do engineering challenges again.

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Scottish Math Challenge Success

The Scottish Math Challenge is something that P6/7 have the chance to do every year.   You get a set of three questions one in November, one in December and the final one in January. If you get up to 29 points that is a bronze 30 points that is a silver and if you get 33 points that is a gold. I got 32 points and that means that I got a silver which means that I get to go away to get an award and I was really pleased to get this and I want to keep on pushing myself further in STEM. Everyone else who took part in our class got a bronze.  It is really important to know how to do some equations because it could help in a well paid job like being an engineer.

By Matthew Campell

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Community Funding

This year the council is trialling an exciting new way of giving out funds to community groups, where people living in Argyll and Bute make the decision.

We want everyone to know about this and have the chance to vote.
To find out more and to vote for the projects you would like to be funded please go to the website: www.abpb.argyll-bute.gov.uk

If you have any questions, or need support to vote, please contact communitydevelopment@argyll-bute.gov.uk. 01369 708669

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Egg Drop ‘Egg’speriment

In class we have been learning about Newtons 3 laws of motion. The first one is the law of inertia. That law means that an object will stay in motion in till a force is acted upon it. The second law is Force=Mass x Acceleration. The third law is every action has an equal and opposite reaction.                                                                                           We have been looking at how strong an egg is. We did a an ‘egg’ speriment in class on how much an egg shell can hold. The egg shells cracked after 6kg and I was very surprised on how much it did hold. We also watched a short clip on how much at least 100 eggs can hold and it held 2 cars, and the were not boiled eggs. So eggs are stronger that you think.                                                                                                        In class we have also been wanting to do an egg drop. So in groups we designed two ideas, one with a parachute and one without one. Then we decided on who’s idea we were going to do. Then we started building. Me an Donald made the idea without the parachute. Our idea was that we were going to have a cup that the egg was going to be in then four balloons around it to keep it floating But there was a problem. When we checked to see if it would float and it kept on tipping to the side so we had to find a solution. Then we thought of an arrow and at the end of an arrow there is something to keep it keep flying straight so we decided that we were going to make them and put them on our balloons and it would look like an arrow and when we tested it out with the egg in it and when it dropped to the ground the egg had no crack and was safe.I was so glad that our idea worked.  Our second idea was with the parachute. Ellen and Abi made this one. The idea was that they made a pyramid to put the egg in and then the put pieces of straws around it so that when it dropped it wouldn’t put force on the pyramid with the egg in it it would put the force on the straws around it. Then they attached the parachute. When they tested it out with the egg in it there was no crack so both of our ideas worked and my group got 1st place.

Rowan

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Easter Assembley

On the twenty ninth of March Port Ellen Primary School Primary 4/5  performed a assembly for World War One. Katyn was paper 3, 6 and 9 and Harmoni was narrator five .The main character was Archie (who was Scott) the play was called Archies War.

We sang eight songs. Katyn’s favourite songs were “Over There” and “When this Lousey War is Over.” Harmonis favourite song was “In Flanders Fields”. At the end of the play when we sang “In Flanders fields” most people started to cry.

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Paper Bridge Engineering

As part of our Engineering project this year we wanted to show we could get better at engineering.  At the start of the project we had to build bridges, and ours were made from straws and did not work well or hold a lot of weight.  We did the bridge building test again to see if we had improved, but this time we were only allowed to use paper to build our bridges. The point of it was to try and engineer a bridge that could hold a calculator, at first it was quite hard to make a bridge that could hold one. Me and Rowan decided to apply what we had learned in maths about 3D shapes and  put cylinders under our bridge so that it could support the weight of a calculator, a lot of the bridges ended up being able to support a lot more than a calculator. Our bridge managed to hold 6kg in weight!  I was surprised that it could hold that much because it was just paper and tape, eventually we over tested it and wrecked the cylinders on the bridge. Everyones bridge could hold at least a calculator and some bridges could hold more, our bridge could hold the most in the class which I was surprised about. We applied our engineering knowledge to building the bridge and this showed how much we improved!

By Holly

 

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Mission Adoption Accomplished

After Katie suggested to the class that we adopt a polar bear, P1/2/3 have not raised the £50 required from selling popcorn and adopted a Svalbard polar bear.  We’ve named him Snowball.  We have learned that polar bears are becoming endangered due to global warming.  Less ice means that there is less of an area for them to hunt, they have to swim longer distances between ice and they are coming into conflict with humans when they approach towns in Alaska and can get shot.  We found out that they have polar bear jails where they can catch them and then release them back where it is safer and not near where people live.

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Trip to Murrayfield

One day after rugby club we where pulled in and I was chosen to be the mascot for the Scotland Rugby Team through the Islay Minis Rugby club, which is a club for people who want to play rugby till there in s2 and then they have to go to the one in high school.  On February 24th me, my dad and my grandad headed to Murrayfield to see the Scotland vs England rugby match as I was the mascot. When we got the stadium we had to meet up with the rest of the mascots to go and sit in a room and wait for some other people as they were late. When every one was in the room our parents went to there seats and we were taken into the tunnel where we waited for the game to start.  When the game was just about to start the players came out and lined up. I was partnered with Stuart Hogg who was my favourite player. When we ran out we had walk forward and kneel as Princess Anne walked behind us and shook the players hand. After that we went off and went to our seat and watched the game. Where we were sitting we had the subs right behind us. After half time we back to our seats and the game started up and it started up. When England were progressing through our defence, Jamie Bhatti, another one of my favourite players, he was injured and carried off and when he came up the steps to his seat he almost fell as he had torn something in his leg. After the game we went down and had to wait till the players got ready and got changed then they came out to sign our t-shirts and other stuff.  I was really thrilled that Scotland won!

By Taylor

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P6/7 Space Station

On Friday 24th P6/7 started to make Space Stations for living on Mars. They are all made out of paper they all have to be made from 3D shapes.  Some had oxygen tanks, rocket ships and living quarters. It took P6/7 a couple of days and all of the Mars Space Stations are finished.

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Switch Off Earth Hour

In our school we did switch off.   That’s when you switch off your lights, WIFI and electronics  for 1 hour so that we can help the environment.  Sadly the environment is getting destroyed by global warming and only we can stop polluting the sea, sky and our earth.  I don’t wont a bad environment that is polluted. I want a good and healthy environment.  In school switch off was organised by P123.

 

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Day Of Dance

Last Friday, all the schools on Islay and Jura met together in Bowmore hall to have an afternoon of Scottish country dancing. We do this so that people can meet up with and get know know the other kids in there year that their going into high school with. We danced the Gay Gordans, the Virginia Reel, the Canadian Barn dance and the Flying Scotsman. We all had loads of fun and enjoyed it very much.

By Sophie

 

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