I’ve been in school all day today preparing for next year. Soon it will be time to meet your new teacher, so keep checking here and on Google classroom for any updates.

As this is Inquiry Week, I don’t have slot to share until later this week. However, I can share with you that the inquiries I’ve heard about so far sound amazing. Someone is learning about the early days of computer programming and it’s pioneer, Ada Lovelace. Another pupils is learning how to plan and make a three-course Italian meal for their family. And finally, somebody is learning about the mysterious Mandela effect. I can’t wait to see your results.

Today is the start of Inquiry Week. The children have the chance to learn about something they are passionate about. It should be something they are interested in but don’t have much knowledge in. It should be big enough to fill their whole week and not something that can be Googled in a few minutes.

The choice of topic is completely open and no two inquiries should look the same. A few examples could be,

Example 1

Topic: I want to learn how to plan and prepare a 3-course meal

Actions: create a menu, plan recipes, create a shopping list, make a budget, etc.

Outcome: a PowerPoint presentation with text and photos.

Example 2

Topic: I want to learn about making and editing movies using iMovie

Actions: looking at online tutorials and videos, planning and creating a storyboard, finding locations and actor, using props and costumes creating a project in iMovie, etc.

Outcome: A finished movie with a storyline using multiple movie editing techniques such as transitions, cutaways, background music, special effects, etc.

Example 3

Topic: I want to learn about a famous scientist in history.

Actions: researching into the earlier life, working life, achievements, discoveries, personal life, death, etc.

Outcome: a recreation of one of their experiments with a completed lab report with results and graphs.

Following our excellent interview with Abi (still can’t believe this happened), I received a package to my house from her. Abi has kindly sent every child in P623 a three-chapter sneak peek copy of her new book, Jungle Drop, which doesn’t hit the shops until 1st October 2020. Amazing!

She has also signed every copy which makes a great keepsake and positive memory from our time in lockdown. I have thanked Abi on your behalf and she congratulated you on all your hard work in and out of the classroom.

This the last day of Field Trip Week and I saved the best till last. Today’s trip is out of this world. Literally! Today we blast off for Mars.

Today’s music is provided by David Bowie and it is an instrumental version of his 1973 classic “Life on Mars”.

Zac has again created another great presentation.

Just in case you missed it in his presentation, here is the drawing of his Mars bugging. I love it!

Lewis has designed his own Mars rover called Galatica 0.0.

He has also packed his suitcase for his trip to Mars.

Jamie has also created a buggy and put it in his logbook.

Ibrahim enjoyed the VR tour of the surface of Mars.

Hibah has been researching the age-old question “was there life on Mars?”

Lots of great facts about Mars here Daniel.

As always, a few update from our previous field trips. Some great facts here from Jamie.

A closer look at his pyramid with some hieroglyphics too.

Wint has been completing her logbook. This is from our trip to Egypt.

She drew and build a pyramid.

A beaver fro our trip to the Hall of American Mammals.

And finally, her logbook entry from Day 3 and a drawing of the Empire States Building. Great work Wint!

I hope you will agree, but there has been lots of great work this week and I for one have really enjoyed Field Trip Week. Digital badges will be sent to all participants.

Have a lovely weekend and I will see you on Monday.

Yesterday, I thought I would do a check-in with children since I was working in the Mearns Hub. I asked the question: Are you enjoying Field Trip Week so far?

I’m glad to report that they are and not only that but every people that answered the question said yes. A great result! (phew!)

I don’t know if you have noticed but this week I have been putting some music on our blog themed with the location of our field trip. Today it’s “Walk like an Egyptian” by The Bangle as we are in ancient Egypt today. Tuesday it was “Starry starry night” by Lianne la Havas (not Don Maclean), and Wednesday it  was the instumental version of  “Empire State of mind” by Jay-Z.

Lea has been making her own pyramids out of paper.

Zac has made another one of his informative PowerPoint presentations.

Lewis has been making a collection of pyramids of different sizes. It looks very like the Great Pyramids of Giza.

Delisha has learned about mummification.

Amaani liked finding out about who made the tombs.

Lucy enjoyed the tour of the pyramids.

Daniel found out the role dogs played in ancient Egypt.

I’m still receiving logbooks from our previous field trips.

All of these are from Delisha  

George research hummingbirds when we visited the San Diego Zoo. Great sketch! 

Ibrahim liked my hotdog bitmoji.

Lucy thought Yosemite valley was the best thing about our trip to the Natural History Museum.

Today on our second field trip of the week, we went to Amsterdam to visit the museum of the world-renown artist Vincent Van Gogh.

Our first task of the day was to find out who Vincent was? Well, we know him as a famous artist, known throughout the world but when he was alive he was unknown and poor. After his death, his painting completely changed the way the World looked at painting and some of his paintings are the most recognisable images in history.

Vincent has also inspired many other artists from writers, filmmakers and musicians.

After viewing some of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings, the children were inspired to create their own masterpieces.

The first artwork is this recreation of one of Van Gogh’s self-portraits by Jamie. It’s a great likeness!

Above is Dylan’s interpretation of the painting Sunflowers.

Lucy has created this wonderful version of sunflowers. Vincent’s work is all about vibrancy and Lucy has definitely captured this here.

Both George (above) and Zac (below) recreated one of my favourite Van Gogh paintings, Starry Night.

Alesha also draws inspiration from Starry Night.

Looks like this painting is one of your favourites too. Here’s Gregor with his version.

Daniel has completed his Virtual Field Trip Logbook for today.

Here is a closer look at his sunflower sketch.

Ibrahim has also finished his logbook entry for the Van Gogh Museum and I’m sure art historians will be pleased that he thinks that Vincent was “a decent artist.”

Here are a few presentations that I received yesterday after the blog was published.

Lucy completed her animal research with the sloth.

Lucy has also created a very colourful and creative food web for the sloth. I love the happy fruit 😃!

This is Kameron’s Kola PowerPoint.

Here is another tiger presentation from Dylan.

Daniel completed his Virtual Field Trip Logbook for yesterday’s trip to San Diego Zoo.

Ibrahim’s logbook.

This is Alesha’s logbook entry on elephants…

… a close look at her beautiful sketch. Fantastic!

Delisha looked at panda when we went to San Diego.

Finally, this is Jamie’s presentation on the honey badger. I’m sure that you agree that the children have been working very hard so far in Field Trip Week.

Today is the first day in our Field Trip Week where we get a chance to take our learning beyond the confines of our Google classroom. I have chosen San Diego Zoo our the first stop, giving the children the opportunity to research into one particular animal of their choice.

I also took advantage of Field Trip Week to launch our interactive classroom.  It contains almost everything that Google classroom does but looks more visually appealing and a bit bit more fun for pupils.

The children were asked to prepare a report ion their animal in any format they wished. This could be a written report, a PowerPoint presentation, a video, a blue screen video, a stop motion animation, a Chatter Pix video, etc. The list is endless! Zac decided to do his report in PowerPoint on Polar bears. I have converted this to a video to allow us to play it in our blog post.

Ibrahim has produced this presentation on tigers.

Aatish’s presentation on jaguars.

Alesha created this informative and fun presentation on elephants.

Alex had decided to visually recreate his animal of choice, the giraffe.

Lewis did his research on leopard sharks and…

… also completed a food chain.

Kara has decided to complete her report on cheetahs using video. Well done, a lot of hard work here!

Jamie has filled in his daily Field Trip Logbook for Day 1 and he enjoyed watching the live cams from San Diego Zoo.

On the final day of Emoji Week, we were writing emoji book summaries. To kick us off I created this summary for E B White’s “Charlotte’s web”.

Now that the gauntlet has well and truly been thrown down, have a look at the amazing book summaries the children created.

Jamie’s summary of “The Land of Roar”by Jenny McLachlan.

Wint summarised “Kensuke’s Kingdom” by Michael Morpurgo.

“The Beast of Buckingham Palace” by David Walliams is summarised by Lewis.

And finally, Roald Dahl’s “Fantastic Mr Fox”  by Alesha. A great way to finish Emoji Week I’m sure you’ll agree.

I’ve decided that we need to take our learning outside the classroom and that’s why I’m announcing that it’s Field Trip Week next week. We are planning on visiting a different location every week and take part in some fun activities along the way.

Super exciting news!

I sent off our interview questions to Abi yesterday afternoon and I heard back from her that evening. Despite having one toddler and one 8-week old baby, she found time to video her response to all of our questions. So, this morning I have been busy editing the children’s questions and Abi’s answers together, and I can finally share the results with you below.

Wasn’t that awesome? Again, I would like to say a huge thank you to Abi and the children who took the time to participate in this fantastic opportunity.

Following on from yesterday’s Design an Emoji task, Lewis has designed not one but two great emojis.  These emojis express perfectly the emotion when your team is winning or losing. I assume these emojis come in different colours other than St Mirren’s 😂. Excellent job!👍

The Say it with Emojis activity is testimony to the fact that you can express anything with emojis. The above one is Lea’s.

This is Lucy’s completed questionnaire.  Inspired by our interview with Abi, I created this short questionnaire for the children to complete first in writing then in emoji.

I think they have done a great job with this task. This is Alex’s.

Ibrahim’s Say it with Emojis.

And finally, Lewis’s questionnaire answers. Now for something more challenging tomorrow.

I received great news today, Abi Elphinstone, the author of our class novel Sky Song, replied to our email and she hopes to answers our interview questions in the next few weeks 🤞. She is currently on maternity leave, as she has just had her baby, and also has a toddler running around the house, so she is doing us a big favour. Thanks Abi!

In Numeracy and Mathematics today, we were reinforcing our skills with plotting coordinates on a Cartesian diagram and the results were hopefully in keeping with this week’s theme 😉.  This is Jamie coordinate emoji 😍.

This is Lea’s 😍.

And two from Wint 😍 😉

Every year, the Unicode Consortium, a group of tech companies and volunteers with backgrounds in coding, technology, and linguistics, approve about 50 to 100 emojis from thousands of ideas submitted from people all over the world.

In order for the panel to consider it, the emoji must be one that can be used often, as well as one that is different from existing emojis. Today, the children were asked to design their own emoji that might be considered for inclusion in their catalogue of emojis.

Above we can see Lea’s emoji and she has used a digital drawing app to create hers. Great job!

How did you do in yesterday’s Teacher Name Emoji quiz? Lucy and Jamie did very well, guessing all 10 names correctly which is amazing considering some of the names were a huge stretch 😂.

👩 ⚡ ❌T (sorry Mrs Curran)

We are discovering that we can use emojis in many different ways this week.  Just like learning any other language, once you have the rules you can decode anything. In Numeracy and Mathematics, we have been breaking the code and discovering that

👦👦👦👧👩‍🦽🏥🕛🌕

into Midnight Gang by David Walliams. Later this week, we will be accurately summarising whole novels just using emojis.

Today, I emailed Abi Elphinstone our interview question. The questions that the children came up with were amazing so 🤞 she replies back soon.