Month: November 2020

P6 were revising the purpose of apostrophes in contractions today. Forming a contraction always involves using an apostrophe, followed by one or two letters that work as an abbreviation for the words being combined.

Furthermore, forming contractions results in unseen levels of competitiveness.

 

Hi everyone! Today we will be telling you about our Wonder inspired monsters that we created to learn about the inheritance of genes. We hope you enjoy this blog! 

What Inspired our Interest in Inheritance 

We are reading a book called Wonder. In the book there is a boy called August who has a defective gene passed down from his parents which means he has Treacher Collins Syndrome. We were interested in how August inherited the gene from his parents even though his parents don’t have Treacher Collins Syndrome, so Miss McLaughlin organised a science lesson on it.

The Task 

Our task was to create a monster by flipping a counter to decide what genes the monster inherits from its parents . The counter decided on the skin colour, the horns, the teeth, the claws and a lot of different things. The picture below shows some of our genetically modified monsters. See if you can match up the drawings with the phenotypes (the observable trait). 

What we Learned

We learned how to use punnett squares to describe how the genes are passed down and the chances of you getting the syndrome or carrying the gene. We learned that everyone carries a pair of genes (not the trousers) and some genes are recessive and some are dominant.

We hope you liked our blog bye!

Introduction

Hello it’s Bella, Hannah and Lydia again. Last month we started a topic on food chains and endangered Scottish wildlife. We have researched, drawn, taken notes and built models for this topic . We have learned that a food chain only works if all the animals are there to support it, and why some endangered species are endangered. We hope you enjoy this blog as it is our last one!😊

In class we have also been using the chrome books to research endangered species. We were tasked with choosing an endangered animal form Scotland. Miss McLaughlin gave us a sheet with questions and information to find out about our species. After that we had to use our research to write a report. When it was time to redraft our report we were given the choice to redraft on paper or on google docs using the chrome books. I am happy that we had that choice :). We all loved researching our chosen species.

Animal conservation 

We have designed and built 3D models of conservation islands . Our research helped us with this because we had to know our animals’ habitat and food chain so we could design an island that would protect our chosen endangered species. When we were building our model islands we looked at topography (which is the arrangement of the natural and artificial physical features of an area) for inspiration.

Persuasive Letters

We all wrote persuasive letters to Nicola Sturgeon about building our conservation islands. We had to include why the species are endangered, what we can do to stop them going extinct and what our conservation islands should include!

Food Chains 

We have also been learning about food chains and webs. Food chains show the transfer of energy between animals. Here is an example: All food chains start with the sun. The sun transfers energy to the grass (through photosynthesis). A rabbit eats the grass and takes the energy. A snake then eats the rabbit and takes the energy from the rabbit and the grass. An eagle eats the snake and consumes energy from the grass, the rabbit and the snake.

Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis is the process where plants use sunlight to absorb nutrients from water and carbon dioxide and create energy.