P6a have been very busy this week! We had our firsr visit to Mearns Primary to begin our creativity challenge. The design brief has been set. It involves many different components. We have to design and make an outfit and accessories which has a given science focus, select music and write a script for our fashion show and produce a movie of the process! We will continue this throughout the month. Keep an eye out for photos from the the show!
Bikeability
With two bikeability sessions under our belts P6a is ready to venture out on to the road. We will be doing this the week after next, as the class are not in school on Tuesday (it is an in service day for staff). We are learning how to travel safely on our bikes and how to indicate our intentions to other road users.
Keep studying your bikeability books as there will be an assessment of your road rules soon!
Space
This week we have been learning about the number of moons each planet has and why this number is not always the same from one year to the next. We also designed our own satellites and made rockets. Alasdair told us about NASA’s recent success in landing a reuseable rocket. This is a huge achievement and will impact on space travel greatly! We tested the rockets and used our knowledge of distance, speed and time to calculate their speed. It was a lot of fun!
Static Electricity
Today we were learning about static electricity. This force attracts and repels. We used static electricity to move cans and bubbles!
 
Diversity Day
This morning we visited the Diversity Day stalls. It was informative and fun. We learned about many different religions and cultures that can be found in our community. There were quizes, sample stalls, activities, artifacts and more. We practiced picking up tiny items with chops sticks, learned how to write our names in chinese, created scratch art linked to easter, enjoyed Irn Bru, sampled apples in dipping sauce, tried turbans and bindi, looked at school books from Denmark and much more. We really enjoyed our morning!
Beat the Street
This afternoon we worked very hard to increase Kirkhill’s lead in the final week of Beat the Street. Walking is an effective to exercise your body and relax your mind, and it is free! It is dry and mild outside so, if you are able, take your tag out this week and hit as many boxes as you can. Good luck!
Brexit Debate
In class, to complete our Election Fever topic, we had a Brexit debate as it was very topical. We set up our tables and chairs like they do in parliament. There were three sides, remain , leave and undecided. We had lots of fun discussing if we should leave or we should stay. Niamh started the debate by reading her speech and said this all started with the country voting whether we should stay or leave. She told us the results in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and some of the pros and cons. Then Cameron protested against staying in the E.U. and give us reasons why to leave. He talked about regaining control of our borders and the poverty levels in our country being a priority. After that we came to issues such as the Irish border, trade, migration and more. Here are some pictures from our debate:
Forces
This week we have been learning about forces and gravity. We began by learning about static electricity. We have experimented with balloons and know static electricity is related to electrons and lightning is linked to it too. We will be learning more about this next week.
We learned about magnetic poles and experimented with different sizes and shapes of magnet. We know a larger magnet doesn’t mean it is stronger. Next week we will make a game using magnets.
 
Finally we learned about gravity. We know gravity is a force which draws objects to the centre of earth and that two objects of the same size and shape will fall at the same rate because of gravity. It doesn’t matter what weight they are! We designed parachutes using our knowledge of air resistance and gravity to see if we could safely transport mini eggs from the balcony to the atrium. Everyone tested their original design and then made improvements. We discussed our changes with different teams to help us think about why we thought our changes would make the parachute better.
We then tested our designs twice. Some were more successful than others. Some toppled and the eggs cracked. Some had one or two eggs fall out. One parachute safely landed upright with all eggs safely intact and one box fell apart, though their parachute design was very good. All the eggs fell from quite a height!
Election Fever
This week was Ballot Week in P6a. The candidates had written their manifestoes, presented them and produced their own election marketing material such as rosettes and posters, before a final question and answer session with the electorate. The admin team made a ballot box, polling station and voting slips for the big day.Â
Heather was successful in winning the election and was named Class President Heather. She won following a campaign which focused on allowing the class to sit with friends until Easter, ensuring a fairer allocation of the p6 muga time for all the class, maintaining the class pencil drawer and a pledge to set up a class forum for discussing any issues which arise over a week.
Well done to Heather, her campaign manager Abby, all involved in the campaigns and the election preparation!
Sumdog
Congratulations P6a! You finished this week in 8th place overall, out of 111 East Renfrewshire classes that competed and qualified to enter . Your average score was 850! Wonderful work!
Abby’s final position was actually joint 7th place with three pupils from other schools, with 985/1000. Great work, Abby! Tom was joint 14th in the authority and Cameron was joint 42nd with 981 and 954, respectively. As you can see the competition was stiff! There were 2739 pupils competing so this is quite an achievement!
Next time we compete it will be a national contest with 1450 classes currently entered. As always there are 1000 questions, aimed at your level, and accuracy is key. If we all answer our 1000 questions we can climb even further up the table as the score is a class average for correct calculations, no matter how many you answerred. Last year Mrs Horne and Mrs Jamieson’s class won access to all areas of sumdog, not only maths, which was an exciting tool for their class to use while learning in P7.
Mark the 3rd – 9th of May in your diaries!
