Category: Mearns Masters

The children have all been added to a rota for litter picking for the next two weeks where they visit designated areas in the school to focus on. They have shown excellent attitudes towards this and have already made a huge difference to our school grounds. 3.11 are aware of the impact that litter has on our planet and have proven themselves to be responsible citizens in tackling this issue.

This week, half of us went to the kitchen to make apple and sultana crumble. We learning the technique ‘rubbing in’ where we had to rub butter into flour until it resembled breadcrumbs. Again, we showed fantastic team work, our weighing skills are amazing and our cleaning… wow! We used Scottish butter and Scottish oats in this recipe.

Back in the classroom, the other half of us were having a more in depth look at Scottish produce. We created fact files on strawberries, raspberries, oats, potatoes and dairy, learning when some of these are in season and what is involved in their growth/production.

Next week we will swap 🙂

On Tuesday we started our new Mearns Masters pathway, Gastronomers. For this, we are focusing on the places our food comes from. Each week, half our class will go to the kitchen to make something which includes one type of Scottish produce whilst the rest of us stay in class to complete a research activity. The following week, we swap

This week in the kitchen we made blueberry and oat muffins, the oats were produced here in Scotland 🙂 We were amazing at getting ready to cook by washing our hands and ensuring we had all the kitchen equipment needed. We then followed the recipe well, using scales to measure quantities. Mrs Stephenson and our parent helper Mrs McLuckie, were amazed at our fantastic cleaning skills at the end. We have never seen dishes with such a sparkle!

In the classroom, the other half of us were learning about different types of Scottish produce and had to design a school dinner including one of these. Mrs Gray was thrilled with our super ideas!

Today Mr McKenna spent the morning in our class working on our coding skills. We were tasked with using digital technology to create something which could help the upcoming primary 1’s learn more about Mearns Primary. Some of us created informative cartoons on Scratch Jr while the rest used Spheros to map out directions (eg how to get to the gym hall, toilet, school office etc). This involved lots of trial and error to get the code right but we demonstrated determination to successfully reach our end product. Below is an example of a pair who created directions for the gym hall using their Sphero Indi.

We definitely want to use these again, they were lots of fun!

During our Coding pathway in Mearns Masters, we have been using Scratch Jr. Our first project has been to create a cartoon to teach Primary 1 children the meaning of our school values. On Scratch Jr, we can change backgrounds, create characters, make objects move, add voice overs, add text and so much more! Mrs Stephenson has been so impressed with how confident we are at working independently.

Today, we visited P1.2 and shared our creations. They loved the animations! When we arrived back in our class, we discussed what went well and what we could improve on.

Whilst completing our Designers pathway, we explored how paper is made and recycled. From this, we decided to try and make our own paper. We soaked old, shredded newspapers for a few days and this formed a pulp. We then poured the pulp and rolled it out flat, letting it dry. We were delighted that this successfully formed paper ! We loved the messiness of this process 🫣

During our Designers lesson today, we watched how paper is recycled and made into new paper. We compared this to our learning from last week where we explored how paper is made from trees. We are looking forward to making our own paper next week; please send in any old newspapers you have at home.

After lunch, we went along to the Makerspace room. Here, we built on our skills from last week where we used a roller and safe saw and were introduced to screw drivers and screws. Our design brief was to create a 2D robot, connected together with screws. Mrs Stephenson loved seeing how proud we were of all of our creations!