Hi P7A readers, I wanted to update you on what we have been doing in our Learning Journeys since our last entry.

I was incredibly impressed with all of the STAT Wars presentations, with everyone successfully becoming experts on their issue and groups confidently imparting their knowledge with the class!

Afterwards, P7a started exploring how communicating and collaborating are life skills and the pupils  were encouraged to reflect on how they use them everyday. The class recognised that they had utilised these two META Skills during the STAT WARS project work when we respectfully listened to each other, compromised and took turns. We have also learned about the importance of communicating our emotions which we did through expressing our thanks to Miss Tenby for her wonderful teaching! We also applied our communication skills by writing an article about ourselves being local heroes in the future and we included a section about how we gave back to the community.

Our current Learning Journey is about the evolution of batteries. Mr McCormick from the science department at Eastwood High School came across and showed some of us how to create a fruit/vegetable battery! We then recorded the meter readings of lemons, limes, oranges, apples and potatoes and discussed why the results may differ. After exploring the components in batteries and how devices are powered we created a timeline showing how they have developed over the years! We also learned about how modern items have inbuilt features to make them more energy efficient and then we investigated how people can be wasteful with batteries. After exploring the impact batteries can have on the environment we created a diagram of the life cycle of batteries and discovered they can be recycled for many purposes including reusing the materials for grass fertiliser! Inspired from all of our research, Mr Atkinson challenged us to redesign devices that use batteries and to creatively replace them with alternative power sources.  We also had a heated debate with groups arguing for and against if we can live in a world without batteries. Finally, we have created information posters about how to dispose of batteries correctly.

Mr Atkinson