This term we have started learning about John Muir. John Muir is one of the most famous explorers and conservationists. John Muir was born in Dunbar, near Edinburgh in 1838. He became known for his fascination with nature and how to conserve it. He introduced the concept of National Parks. These days, there is a charity named after John Muir called the John Muir Trust and various walks and paths in his name.
So far, to gain the John Muir Award we have:
conducted litter picks
created a portrait of John Muir
conducted a Tree Health Survey
created natural art using various pieces of nature from our school grounds
conducted a bird count
clear an area to help us conserve our grounds
worked with the Neilston Development Trust to plan various vegetables
We will be continuing to work towards gaining the John Muir Award and are looking forward to completing our journey!
This week our writing focussed on structure and layout. We chose to write about a wild animal that we are interested in. We then chose to lay our writing out in poster form. We structured our writing under 4 subheadings:
Habitat
Diet
Physical Appearance
Interesting Facts
As part of our Big Talk homework, we researched our wild animals at home using our subheadings to help us. We then discussed our animals at home with our friends and family. In class, we discussed specialist vocabulary that we might want to use in our posters.
Here are some examples of our finished posters:
Beth’s poster on the OrangutanConnor’s poster on the KoalaRenaska’s poster on the Hazel DormouseAbbie’s poster on the MeerkatBeth’s poster on the Blue Tongued Skink
On Thursday 1st of November we took part in Outdoor Classroom Day.
First we went on a nature walk to take pictures for our Digital Photography Competition. We took pictures of things like flowers, leaves, trees, clouds and rainbows. We then entered our photographs into the competition. You can see some of our entries below.
Callum’s entry
Cameron’s entry
Grace’s entry
Jessica’s entry
Laurie’s entry
olivia’s entry
Riley’s entry
Tyler’s entry
Next we collected materials from the school grounds that were natural. We then went into the outdoor classroom and created our own pieces of natural art. You can see some examples of our art below.
All the Primary 5 children performed their song beautifully. We have added a special affect for internet safety but you can see their actions are spot on!
In P 5b we took a class vote to see what we wanted to call our groups in the class. in our groups we came up with themes. Then we voted to find the top 4 choices, then voted again to find the winner.
The class chose animals – we then created our own design of our animals for display. We focussed on creating a colourful background and a creative design for our animals using strong colours.
Here are our designs :-
We voted for our favourite designs – here are our winners.
Leopard by Cameron – “I liked the colouring on my leopard the best”
Lion by Jessica – “I was happy that the class voted for my design”.
Cheetah by Daisy – ” I am pleased with the background to my design”.
Meerkat by Beth S – ” I like the way I mixed the colours in my background.”
The children were given the month of March to create a picture for the school calendar. As March is associated with the wind they made individual kites using the design from their social justice pictures. We thought we would give you a preview and hope that this might encourage you to buy the calendar this year.
P4 used the leaves they had gathered to create a fall of leaves on their paper. They thought about placing them according to colour, shape, and texture.
Primary 4 took advantage of the dry weather to go into the playground to look for signs of Autumn. They were going to create a setting in their writing and needed to use all of their senses to write their plan. While they were there they worked together to gather leaves of different colour, shape, size and texture to use in their art work later on in the day.
When P4 were doing bounce back they looked at social justice. They learned that social justice was about being fair and caring for all people in the world. They discussed the different groups who try to make sure that things are fair for all people. Save the Children was mentioned as well as many other charities.
In writing the children wrote thank you letters to Mrs. Strang for the work that she does for Save the Children and making things fair for children across many countries.
P4 looked at some art work that represented social justice and had an interesting discussion about how they managed this. They then used the visual elements of line, shape, colour and pattern to create their own piece of art work showing the image of a handshake.
