Here’s the final update on the partnership work with Mrs. Dalgleish’s wonderful Primary 5 class, at Law Primary School in East Lothian. After bated breath, the wind got up enough strength allowing us to complete our exploration of aerial photography. The sun shone, we went outdoors & finally flew the kite aerial photography kit. See how we fared by browsing through the gallery below.
During an InSET session yesterday Law Primary School staff had a presentation detailing the full project. It was agreed that the class had achieved their learning intentions & much more besides.
I will be able to use Scran confidently to research a topic
I will have a better understanding of aerial photography
You may have read about our collaborative school activity at Killermont Primary School, in Bearsden? This 6 metre long frieze is the result of P6’s hard work & creative flair.
After thinking about the work of Willie Rodger, individual figures were printed by each pupil. These silhouettes represent Bearsden commuters, dashing to and from the railway station. Next, the class cut up pictures of local housing built following the arrival of the railway in 1863 – bringing businessmen & prosperity to New Kilpatrick. Finally, the local buildings & commuters were collaged together.
The class proved to be highly successful art detectives too – at home they researched the artist Willie Rodger using Scran. They shared their findings in class the following day. Astute observations were made & we discovered plenty of visual clues hidden in the imagery.
Following a group vote, with 6 votes each from of a class total of 32, the two most popular Willie Rodger artworks were The Chess Players & Honeymoon.
There was a frantic afternoon of printmaking with P6 yesterday, who worked really hard. Today we are going to consider the detail & visual clues within the work of Scottish artist, Willie Rodger. In particular this example, “Day Out, Ferrara”, from 1998. The class have a selection of questions to investigate and will use Scran to become art detectives, using their visual literacy skills to discover what’s going on in the picture.
Our printed figures & silhouettedpeople, the Bearsden commuters, have been drying on the rack overnight. Next, we will incorporate them into our collaged frieze alongside local landmarks & architecture. We are looking forward to seeing the outcome.
Scran is spending the next two days working with P6 in Killermont Primary School. Word on the street is, they’re a creative bunch – so we’ve devised a printing project. We’ll start by looking closely at the work of local Dunbartonshire, artist Willie Rodger.
As well as finding out about print-making, P6 will think about their local landscape too and the Victorian commuters who shaped the streets of Bearsden. The collections from East Dunbartonshire Leisure & Culture Trust on Scran will add that extra layer of context for our learning. We’re going to get our hands dirty & by the end, have made a really cool collage.
So far this week Law Primary School have thrown themselves into their research & investigation using Scran.
Yesterday, P5 used their digital detective skills to look at local heroes. The class then applied impressive, creative writing skills to produce some brilliant biopoems – all about local father & son, John & Freddy Marr. Here’s a sample of their hard work…
John or Daddy
Friendly, Brave, Jolly, Caring
Father of Alfred, Grandad of Chris
Who loved gannets, coastal nature and communicating with local people
Who felt happy, free and calm
Who feared damage of nature, hate and sharks
Who wanted to see dolphins jumping and red sunsets
Primary 7 have recently completed artwork and writing on the topic ‘Future Me’.
Budding Artists
At the start of term, we began by sketching to create halfof a self portrait. We have slowly improved on our observation skills throughout the making. We used mirrors to observe every detail from above our shoulders and have focused on key parts of our faces to make it as realistic as possible.
The other half of the face was much trickier! We had to imagine what we might look like in the future, in the year 2035. The illustrations also included some ideas of what we want to be like in the future. For example, I drew some sports equipment as I would like to be either a PE teacher or an Active Schools Coordinator and Conor drew some dinosaur bones as his dream career is in Palaeontology. The finished designs are really brilliant! Some of the class look quite different in their projections of themselves in 20 years! Each one gives a really good insight into their future hopes and dreams.
Dear Future Self During our writing lesson, we wrote an inspirational letter to our future selves so that in twenty years we can look back at them to see what goals we have achieved. First, we brainstormed ideas and advice we would like to add to our letter to make sure it was filled with information, advice and questions. It is a lot more complicated than a regular piece of writing as addressing yourself in the future is tricky! Everyone’s letter included; advice to themselves, their future career expectations and any goals or hopes and dreams they wanted to fulfil.
We have created a display of our observational drawings and letters so that any visitors to our classroom can see the finished product!We thought of some qualities and skills we wanted our future self to have and arranged these words around our hard work. On Monday, we had some International delegates visit the school and they had some positive feedback to give about our work.
All together, everyone enjoyed the task – especially drawing the portraits! We hope everyone keeps their letters safe so we can look back in 20 years and see how far we have come!
Scran will be working closely with the P5 class at Law Primary Schoolin North Berwickthroughout next week. Together we will be examining lots of local content and weaving what we find into our learning journeys.
As well as being digital, weather permitting, we’ll be taking to the skies with our camera & K.A.P. kit. So please, fingers crossed for fair weather over East Lothian.
Many of the resources we will use in class come from East Lothian Museums Service who are contributors to the collections on Scran. For example, this rather quaint souvenir is leather bound and originally contained 15 black & white photographs with tinted skies. It was published by Valentine of Dundee around 1895, so it gives us a clue as to how long people have been visiting the beautiful seaside at North Berwick.
What more will our Primary 5 digital detectives be able to discover about where they live? We’ll be looking at lots of aerial imagery, considering how the town has changed and expanded over time. We’ll think about traits & trades which may have remained the same and finally, when we reach the end of our collaborative investigations, we will share our findings – so tenterhooks until then.