Monthly Archives: September 2015

Art, bootcamp, IDL, Literacy

Future Me!

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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 half of 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.

Looking carefully
Looking carefully
Observation
Observation

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.

Our display
Our display

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!

Orla and Conor, P7

To be opened: 2015
To be opened: 2015
Building our 'Toolbox of Skills', Health and Wellbeing, Outdoor Learning

Cycling Success!

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Primary 7 achieved Bikeability level 2 during the summer term of Primary 6. This level gets you onto the roads, and able to deal with traffic such as cycling to school and other short journeys. Until we were ready for the real thing, we learned the rules of the road in the playground, using the painted road markings.

Once we were all competent, we ventured out with Inverclyde’s Road Safety Officers to a quiet road near our school.

 

Last week, we participated in a Inverclyde Cycling Competition at Lady Alice Primary. There were two pupils representing each of the Inverclyde Schools. We had great fun cycling through the mock road course.

photo 2

Before heading out into the rain to start the cycling, we completed a question sheet about road safety and cycling.

The course included traffic lights, a roundabout, junctions, slalom and a parked car. Our favourite was the roundabout because it was a new experience for us. Even though it was pouring , we still managed to complete it. It really improved our bike ability skills. The most challenging part was the junction as we had to cross a mock road that cars would have been on and move from one road position to another.

After both girls and boys had finished the test, everyone was excited to hear the results. Eventually, the results were announced. Andrew came second! We were so pleased!

photo 1

The cycling competition was a great experience and we would gladly do it again. Thanks to Inverclyde Phoenix Car Club for organising the competition!

photo 3

Andrew and Eve

 

bootcamp, GPS Groups

Leading our Learning

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Recently, the Student Media Team held their first meeting to discuss what we will be getting up to this term.

Learning to lead the meeting was an important skill as you never know what you might encounter when working with a large group of people. It helped us learn to respond properly to other people giving their views and opinions and at times, talking over one another!

We both volunteered to chair the meeting and we had the job of planning ahead and ensuring the agenda was ready and then typing up the minutes afterwards. We knew it would be important to encourage and include everyone’s ideas.

Skills we developed:

  • Planning the meeting
  • Encouraging ideas
  • Making decisions
  • Using our initiative
  • Effective communication
  • Problem solving

These skills will be really useful because many people have to participate in meetings at some point in their lives and many of us will on a regular basis in our future careers.

Everyone included in the meeting was using their talking and listening skills to participate effectively and contribute their ideas and suggestions.  We worked cooperatively to create good questions we might want to ask the classes when we go round to gather information for the school newspaper ‘The Gourock Gossip’.

Mrs Falconer was really impressed at how the whole group conducted themselves and we think this picture shows just how focused we were on the task!

Student Media Team Meeting

We are developing our skills for learning, life and work and hope this gives you a good picture of our learning in P7!

Thanks for reading!

Matthew and Molly,

Student Media Team.

Blogging, bootcamp

Why do we Blog?

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P7 love to blog as we can express our interests. Our blog lets a varied audience from all around the world interact with what we are doing in our class. It lets individual pupils share their experiences and achievements.

As we continue to blog we will develop key skills for example literacy, ICT and typing. We also become more aware of cyber safety.

Internet safety is very important. We know that we should never share our passwords or personal information.  Our blog is really safe although it is available for the world to view.

Blogging has lots of benefits such as social skills, classroom community and global connections. It means we are constantly improving on our literacy skills for the future. It also enhances our online confidence.

Not only is blogging beneficial, our whole class love writing and commenting on posts. Our class enjoy answering our ‘Question of the Week,’ and giving their own opinions on class debates.

Furthermore, P7 have established a new Student Media Team who are responsible for the upkeep of our blog, taking classroom ‘snapshots’ of learning, writing class newspapers and updating other social media outlets.

Student Media Team

We hope that this explains why our class blog and encourages others to start blogging too.

Orla and Eve

P7