Author: Miss McCue

This week, we had our fifth session with The Royal Conservatoire.  During this session, we split into our 3 groups again and had fun while learning lots.

The music group warmed up their vocal chords with some fun activities.  Check out these faces!!  They then wrote lyrics about rivers to add to their song and even began introducing a rap.  This group learned how to stand properly as a singer too.

The movement group were exploring what it means to be a human.  What we have inside us and our feelings.  Zoha said that we don’t just need a heart to beat, but also to have emotions too. << WOW <<

 The group read out what they thought were the similarities between our bodies and rivers and mountains. 

The production group had a great afternoon working with stage lights.  Lou taught them about the different lights used in a production and how these can be used to add to a performance.
We learned about different films which can be put in front of a lease to change the colour or create a different effect.
We also got the chance to use light desks.  A manual one and an electronic one … so cool!  When we used the manual light desk, we had to create sunsets and other backgrounds.  We did this by changing the colours and mixing them together.  The difference between a manual light desk and an electric light desk is that with the manual light desk, you have to write the numbers for each colour on a piece of paper whereas, with the electrical light desk, it has a memory card stored in it which means the work can be saved.  The electrical light desk also has more colours.

Today was Down Syndrome Awareness Day and some of us joined in in raising awareness by wearing odd socks.  People all over the world do this and hashtag lots of socks. #lotsofsocks

 

This week’s homework, due Friday please.

This was a challenge from during maths time today which nobody managed to complete.  Have a go at home.  The aim is to reach 100 and use all these numbers in the correct order.

On Friday, we could not do our usual PE lesson as it was pouring of rain outside and the gym hall was being used so we put on our creative caps and came up with an alternative lesson.

We decided to have an ultimate rock, paper, scissors tournament.  We were split into two teams and versed our classmates.

It was so much fun and the funnier part was watching everybody do their forfeits.  Our forfeits were based on some circuits that we have done before and included squatting, planking, sit ups, burpees and star jumps.

Hamza was taking it very seriously but then lost and had to plank as his punishment.  Unlucky Hamza!!

Things got pretty intense as our competitiveness shone through and the forfeits really tested our fitness.  Laiyba was on a roll and took out 4 people in a row until Mashael came on and put her out!!

Next, Abeeha was knocking lots of people out and taking joy in watching them do their punishment until she was knocked off and had to face her punishment.

Lots more intense challenges and difficult forfeits followed …
Eishah did well to beat a few people in a row and make her way into the final.

The final 2 were Eishah and Zack.  You could cut the tension with a knife …

In the end,it was Mr Hunter who took the victory leaving Eishah absolutely devastated!!

Zack’s team celebrated with him and rubbed it in the other team’s faces!!  Jazil was very excited.

The losing team were not so happy …

This week, we had our fourth session with The Royal Conservatoire.

We split into our groups straight away and got lots of work done.

The music group introduced an instrument into their performance this week.  The instrument is called the glockenspiel.  The glockenspiel is a percussion instrument and it’s keys are on metal plates.

We learned about the keys on the glockenspiel and had a chance to play some tunes.  After this, we wrote lyrics to our own song based on Scottish Landscape and added keys to go along with the lyrics.

The movement group created some amazing shapes and used each other’s bodies to create still images which told a story.

The production group had a cool afternoon using audacity which is a sound recording software.  They created soundwaves and discovered different effects they can make with the mic.

At the end of the session, we showed the other groups what we had been learning.  This is a good time for us to see what our friends have been doing and also give feedback on their work.

Another fantastic session, well done everyone!!

 

This morning, we braved the beginning of Storm Gareth to learn outdoors.  We used our MUGA and set up an obstacle course.  

There were a few different obstacles to get through to complete the course and when we got to the end, Mr McDonald asked us a question related to number.  The question could be addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and we also had questions about fractions, decimals and percentages.

It was freezing and so windy!!  The apparatus blew over loads of times.  This was a fun, but freezing, way to learn mental maths.

During our full day session with the Scottish Ballet, we had lots of fun creating a dance around the theme of diversity.

Our day began with the dancers from The Scottish Ballet performing for us.  They are incredibly talented and can move their bodies in beautiful ways.

We then began to explore different shapes and levels and create our own movements in pairs and trios.  It was good to see what other people were moving like so that we could help each other.

After this, we started to work in pairs and use our partner to move and try different moves.  We tried to give each other a co-carry which was so funny!! It’s much harder than it looks.

We then put all our moves together and created our performance.  We looked at different types of families.  Some families have a mum and dad, some are single parent and some have adopted siblings.

We had such a great day with The Scottish Ballet.  The dancers from The Scottish Ballet were so friendly and showed us fun and cool ways to move our body.  We now know that feelings can be expressed throug dance.  No words need to be said.

We should celebrate everyone’s differences and not stand for any discrimination.  Everybody should be treated equally in our world.  No matter their gender, religion, skin colour or sexuality.

During our third session with The Royal Conservatoire, we split into our 3 groups again. The first group is music (voice), the second group is movement and the third group is production.

This week, the movement group thought about a person in their life who inspires and supports them.  They wrote this on a piece of paper and also wrote why they’ve chosen thi person.  This group then created a performance using each other and different movements to create an idea of Scottish landscape.

Everybody in the movement group worked so well together and performed their piece for the rest of the class.  

The group got fantastic feedback from their performance.   Zain said it looked like the girls were travelling home.

After this, the music group performed their song that they made up.  The lyrics of the song is about mountains, which we have many of in our Scottish landscape.  The music group learned about music scales and we could all hear each of the group singing those beautiful notes.

Lastly, the production group showed us what they had been learning.  They told us all about the sound desk and explained to us how to set up a sound desk.  They also let us hear different effects through the mic that can be created through the sound desk.  It was so funny.

Another great learning experience, well done everybody! 

 

Every Friday, our school runs a Skills Swap.  This is part of our Cashless Society which Miss Cohen and some Primary 7 pupils have set up as part of their Social Enterprise work.

Miss Cohen’s mum and auntie came in to teach us about Upcycling.  Upcycling is when you take old objects and fix them up to make them useable again.

We learned about sanding wood and then painting it to make it look better.

Some of us got the chance to paint stencils and create a beautiful board.

What a great session.  Anybody can be involved in our skills swap.  Come along on a Friday at 1 o’clock to our assembly hall.  It’s free and lots of fun.

Primary 7 worked really hard to plan stations to teach us about different aspects of maths.

We were split into groups and a few Primary 7 pupils led the station and taught us.

We looked at data handling and different types of graphs we can use.

We also revised Venn diagrams and used concrete materials to separate balls into colour and type.

At another station, we learned how to use apps on the iPad to enter data and creat graphs with this data.  This was really interesting as it is different from drawing a graph on paper.

What an amazing lesson prepared by P7.  Well done guys!!