Monthly Archives: March 2020

Home, Primary 6

Distance Learning – Week 1 complete

It’s the end of Week 1 of the strange and interesting week we are calling Distance Learning.  Thank you to all the children and families that have engaged with the online activities.  I’m so please to see that the children of P623 are still continuing their education even if it looks completely different from a few weeks ago.

Today I asked in a poll “What made you happy this week?” Looking at the replies I can see that the children have really enjoyed spending this time with their families, making things and playing with their family.  To illustrate this, I’ve created a Wordle (shown above) that increases the size of the word given the word’s frequency in the poll results. I think it’s reassuring to know that they are enjoying this experience given the unsettling times we are currently living through.

 

 

Home, Primary 6

Distance Learning – Day 5

After finding a lizard out on a walk in Whitelees Windfarm this week, I made this (and yes it is my voice. I’ve been asked this a few times now).

I challenged the children to make similar videos using the written polar animal fact files that they already created in class.  I’m very happy to say that they didn’t disappoint.

Firstly, this is Jamie’s video featuring the mysterious Narwhal.

Next, we have Lucy’s Musk Ox video.

As a bit of fun on Friday, I post the photo below of me dressed up as Flint of the Fur tribe, one of the main characters in our class novel Sky Song.

Again, I challenged the children to dress up as a character from a book and here they are.  Grace decided to involve her family and they dressed up as Calvin and Hobbes.

Ibrahim dressed as Greg Heffley from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series.

Zac has been dressing up as Shrek.

We also have a few late entries for our create a villain activity this week. This is Kill Joy Noah’s villain.

Lucy’s half eagle, half human creation called Blur.

The terrifying Shadow Snatcher from Lewis’ imagination.

And finally, Jamie’s untitled mammoth snake monster.

The children have also been keeping me informed of all the other things they have been doing at home. Jemma has been building tunnels for her hamster Snowy, baking and going on bike rides.

 

 

 

Home, Primary 6

Distance learning – Day 4

Despite all the changes in our lives in the last week, it is good to see that most children in P623 are “Feeling good”.

Could I ask families to continue sharing their photos with me so that I can share them here to help the children keep in touch with each other.  Thank you!

Home, Primary 6

Distance learning – Day 3

Again, thank you to all the children that have shared photos with me of the activities they are completing at home.  Today i asked you to create your own villains and bring them to life in a piece of artwork.

Zaina has created a character called Wickedmoon and her artwork looks amazing.

Ibrahim has done an annotated pencil drawing of his villain.

Finally, Lea has created a character called Fang.

 

 

Home, Primary 6

Distance Learning – Day 2

I will try to use the class blog now to keep us all in touch and help share our learning whilst we are all at home.

Thank you to all the pupils who have shared photos with me so far and keep them coming.

Aatish has shared his solution for the Countdown problem

as well as Jamie who shared this one.

Lucy also shared a photo of her STEM activity and showed her ingenuity substituting the cork with some orange peel following Lewis’ great tip.

 

 

Numeracy, Primary 6, Science, Special event, Technologies

STEM Fortnight: Day 8

Today, we designed and constructed a Mars lander module that would safely deliver a payload to the surface of the planet.

We were given a design brief and a budget of £100,00,000! Our briefing stated that dropping a manned module on the Red Planet is the equivalent of dropping an egg from a height of 4 metres.

After a first test and any modifications, we finally dropped our eggs.

Well done to the winning team that successfully dropped their lander without any damage to their egg.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Numeracy, Primary 6, Science, Special event, Technologies

STEM Fortnight: Day 7

Following on from our Animal Adaptation lessons, we explored the benefits of having a layer of blubber to surviving Arctic Ocean temperatures of between -2 and 0 oC.

The Blubber Glove experiment involves first timing how long you can keep your hand in cold (2.4 oC) water.

Most people can only tolerate this for less than a minute.

Secondly, we covered our hand in lard to replicate a layer of blubber.

Again, we put our hands in the water and time it again.

Finally, we used our results to create a spreadsheet and create a chart to show our results.

This afternoon, Mr Hull visited us to demonstrate the app Bloxels which is used to create our own games.

 

Numeracy, Primary 6, Science, Special event, Technologies

STEM Fortnight: Day 6

Today we had two visitor assemblies, the first from Matthew who is building a cob oven for Mearns Primary school. This is an oven made of clay that has been used for thousands of years.

Our second visitors were  the authors of a the book The Highland Falcon Thief, M.G. Leonard and Sam Sedgman. The book is about a boy detective called Harrison (Hal) and in each book he solves a mystery on a real-world famous train.

Finally, we concluded our insulation experiment and identified the best and worst insulator and gave reasons why they were so.