Primary 7 are learning about leaders from World War II. We used our I.C.T. time to research the leaders from all the different countries at that time.
Biodiversity
Today we learned about biodiversity. We discussed the terminology for this topic – ecosystem, environment, habitat, producers, primary and secondary consumers, prey, predators, herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. We then looked at food chains and webs. The arrow points up the food chain showing the transfer of energy from one plant or animal to the animal eating it.
We then investigated our environment and the many ecosystems and habitats that could be found in the school. We looked for evidence of food chains and ecosystems at the banking, the scottish garden, sensory garden and around the new science garden. There are bug hotels, worm farms and ant habitats built around our school. We also found numerous insects, snails, slugs, bees, bees and little bites in leaves to show they had been eaten. We passed around the class camera recording the evidence we found.
Tomorrow’s Inventors
Today we presented our inventions and innovations to the dragons. Miss Edmonston, Mr Connor and Mrs Maxwell came to judge our inventions and pitches. Some were a bargain, too good refuse, offering over 20% of their company for only £1000, for an item they would be charging £150 for! That would make the dragons a huge profit if successful. Others priced themselves out the market looking for a slightly unrealistic ten trillion pounds investment! Over the course of the topic we researched gaps in the market and everyday problems people would like us to solve. We used a logbook to record and date all our ideas. We then checked if anything similar already existed. If it did we didn’t give up straight away, we thought about innovations to improve the existing product. We considered our target market and where our product would sell, we researched how much similar items cost and thought about our materials. Ecofriendly items were a big plus! We then created posters to advertise our product, leaflets to explain them and used our graphic skills to produce a labelled diagram to use during our dragon pitch. In the end SpecTators won, Stretchable Soccer came second and Refuse Reducer came in third. The dragons were impressed with every pitch! We all enjoyed the topic, especially the celebration afterwards.
Creativity Challenge
Throughout May we took part in a creativity challenge at Mearns Primary. We worked with pupils from other schools to design an outfit with a science theme. We then used some of our technology skills (but mostly glue guns) to make the outfit. We also had movie editors and directors, a script writer and a narrator and a model. We put on a catwalk show for parents last Friday at Mearns Primary. Have a look at their twitter account for more photos!
Eventful Short Week – Sky Academy
We have had a very exciting and busy day at Sky Academy creating trailers for horror movies. We were organised into four groups. We each had a studio to plan a storyboard and film scenes for our trailers. We used our communication skills effectively to work together while developing our technology skills too. We then had a special shoeing of our trailers on the big screen. These will come home today on our own usb sky bands. They are amazing. If you don’t like being scared do not watch them on your own with the lights out…you’ve been warned!
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