Category Archives: IDL

WWII- Evacuation

December 6, 2015 User deactivated 1 Comment

During this term, primary 7 have been learning about WWII. One of our favourite themes of our topic has been evacuation. We loved getting to dress up as evacuees for the day, deciding what we would bring to our new home in the countryside, making up our own stories and creating our own evacuee display!

To bring our classroom walls to life, 3 pupils designed and painted ‘Emily’ and ‘Matthew’, our two evacuees that are now displayed on one of our WWII walls. Mrs Mclean, our classroom assistant also worked alongside some of our classmates to create a background for Emily and Matthew showing their journey from the dangers of the city bombing to the safety of the countryside.

We are nearly finished reading our much loved class novel, “Goodnight Mister Tom”. It’s really helped us understand what life would be like for some evacuees living in the country and that some children weren’t treated as nice as others. We plan to watch the movie after reading the rest of the book.

“I can’t wait for the end of the book and to watch the movie, the book is quite sad but it is still really good”- Peter

As part of understanding what it felt like to be an evacuee we got to come dressed up in what we thought one might look like.

It was fun taking part in a group role play. We performed tableaux to our other classmates. A few of us already knew what tableaux were from taking part in drama clubs and helped explain to the rest of the class. To begin our role plays we started with a freeze frame scene. Next we added movement and dialogue.

“It was very fun getting to work in groups, my favourite bit was adding movement and dialogue to our tableaux”- Conor

evacuee tableaux B and W 4 — “I wonder if I will ever see my family again?” “What will it be like in my new home?”

evacuee tableaux B and W 1 — Freeze Frame!

We loved learning about evacuation and can’t wait to find out more about WWII.

-Grace and Eve

Art, bootcamp, IDL, Literacy

Future Me!

September 26, 2015 User deactivated 10 Comments

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.

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!

Orla and Conor, P7

Building our 'Toolbox of Skills', Health and Wellbeing, IDL

Animation Aspirations

June 12, 2015 User deactivated Leave a comment

Recently we’ve had a World of Work week, where lots people came in and talked about their jobs. This made a lot of us think about the career we would like to have in the future. I’ve decided that I’d like to be an animator.

An animator is someone who creates hundreds of different drawings and puts them together. They then play them one after the other really quickly to create the illusion that they’re moving. This takes a lot of time and hard work and can be very repetitive.

I want to be an animator because I love drawing and creating stories. I got inspired to animate through animations that people have uploaded on YouTube.

To be an animator you need to be good at art, have creativity and a good animation, meet deadlines, have a lot of patience and accuracy and attention to detail. Communication and presentation skills are also essential.

Previously, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to be an author or artist. I decided that I want to be an animator so I could put my stories into hundreds of different drawings. I’m already animating on an app on my tablet. At the moment, the quality of my animation isn’t very good, but it’s improving and if I keep practicing, my animations might even become as good as Walt Disney’s!

It might get challenging at times if I’d need to get an animation done very quickly or if there’s a lot of movement in the animation, but it’s better to have a challenge every once in a while rather than an easy boring job!

World of Work has taught us that we have to have a job that we love so that it’s as if we aren’t working at all. I love animating and I hope that I get this career in the future!

Building our 'Toolbox of Skills', Health and Wellbeing, IDL

World of Work- My Future Career as a Film Director

June 11, 2015 User deactivated Leave a comment

Recently we have been learning about the world of work and we were thinking about what we would like to be in later life. My future ambition is to become a film director. A film director makes lots of the creative decisions for a movie and also edits scenes.

To become a film director a lot of experience is needed. The experience can come from working around movie sets such as being an actor/actress or cameraman or by creating your own short films and animations too. Creativity, time keeping, management and communication skills are also very useful for film directing.

I would like to become a movie director because I am imaginative and creative. This would be good for movie directing because I would need to come up with imaginative ideas for the storyline and make creative decisions for the movie. Another reason I would like to do this job in the future is because I like writing and reading stories and this would be like putting them into action. I also like making short films and skits at home with my friends too.

The challenge I might face if I become a movie director is trying to stay in budget when I have good ideas. I’ll also need to be able to solve and adapt to problems that occur on set like if someone is working around the area I was filming in and is making too much noise I could change set or film the scene another day. I would like to gain some of my own experience in acting so that I would be able to advise and guide the famous stars I may be fortunate to be working with! I really admire, Emma Watson from the Harry Potter film series and my dream come true would be to work with her on set.

I am very passionate about movie directing and that’s what you need to be for any job. Even though I will face challenges and things won’t always go as planned, I would love to be a film director and will work hard to achieve it.

CUT!

Eve P6

IDL, Science

Science Week – Making a Lava Lamp

February 27, 2015 User deactivated 1 Comment

This week is Science Week, so we decided to make a lava lamp!

We used pure vegetable oil , red food colouring, water and Alka-Seltzer tablets. First, we put in a little bit of water into a big 2 litre bottle then filled the rest of it up with vegetable oil, almost to the top. The water and vegetable oil don’t mix so the vegetable oil sat on top of the water, making two layers.

The next step was to put ten drops of red food colouring into the bottle and wait until they all sank to the bottom and rested in the water.

Now the fun part! We dropped in half an Alka-Seltzer tablet, put the lid on and watched a miracle happen…

It looked like a volcano had erupted – it was so awesome!!!

Lava lamp

Lava Lamp Fun

After we took the lid off, it made a fizz noise. It sounded like when you take the cap off of a bottle off coke.

The reason it made an eruption was because it has a chemical reactions to make the red food colouring burst to the top. The gas in the Alka-Seltzer tablets react to the water and the gas that is produced wants to escape. The little gas bubbles push up through the water and oil, taking some of the food colouring with it and that’s why it sounds like coke when we took the cap off.

We turned the classroom lights off and tried it again, this time with SIX Alka-Seltzer tablets and the mixture went crazy! We put a torch underneath the bottle and it lit up like a real lava lamp.

Then Mrs Falconer left it over night to settle and we when we came back into school the vegetable oil was separated from the water again.

We learned that this is called Molecular Polarity! 🙂

Blogging, IDL

Victorian Schooling – Top of the Class? Or Class Dunce?

December 4, 2014 Mrs Falconer 5 Comments

We visited Scotland Street Museum to culminate all of our learning about the Victorian Era.

We were in awe of the building’s grand design which was created by the famous architect, Charles Rennie Makintosh.

We spent some time discovering many of the museum’s wide range of activities and exhibits.

Matthew purchased a Victorian game from the gift shop and was an expert in catching the ball in the cup in no time!

We visited classrooms throughout the 20th Century. Michael decided to play teacher in the 1950/60’s classroom. Pretty scary eh?

One of the most enjoyable exhibits was the art gallery. It was filled with paintings by Scottish born artist, Alexander Millar. We loved that we were able to look at some of his original work. Before we knew it, each of us had decided upon a favourite and we chattered away, giving reasons for our choices.

We enjoyed lunch before we were given the chance to participate in a Victorian classroom situation, with actress Lesley Robertson playing the teacher “Miss Baxter.”

No sooner were we changed into our ‘new’ school uniforms, we had been transported back in time to the 4th December 1882…

and we were TERRIFIED!

Lessons
Victorian schools concentrated on the 3Rs, Reading wRiting and aRithmetic. Most schools also included the 4th R, religion.

First up was prayer…

Followed by arithmetic…

In a Victorian classroom, everything had to be done in a regimented way. The teacher would write things on the blackboard which was then copied into books and learned. A lot of teaching was repetition, learning the names and dates of kings and queens, or reciting the “times” table.

Victorian Child Punishment
Our nerves got the better of us and we made Miss Baxter quite cross when we gave incorrect answers to our times tables! Teachers were often strict and by modern standards very scary. Children soon learnt to do what the teacher asked, otherwise they would get a rap across the knuckles with a ruler, or a clip around the ears, struck by the belt or whipped with the dreaded cane! The Victorian teacher would use a cane to punish naughty children. The cane was given on the hand or the bottom, or sometimes given across the back of the legs. We were given such a fright when Miss Baxter whacked the belt off of one of the desks!

All sorts of things might be punished: being rude, answering back, speaking out of turn, poor work, blotting your page, in fact anything that displeased the teacher! Children who had been caned usually kept quiet about it because if their parents found out they would probably be punished again. Even left handed children were punished and made to use their right hand.

The Victorian Teacher
Teaching was often the job of unmarried ladies (that’s why you called the teacher Miss or Ma’am), and when you married you stopped teaching. Fewer men taught because the pay was poor.

Equipment
For every teacher the most vital piece of equipment was the blackboard. This could be used so that their pupils could take down information or practice imitating the teacher’s handwriting.

Children started to learn to write using a slate – a sort of small blackboard. They wrote on it with a sharpened piece of slate called a slate pencil.

Pupils brought a piece of sponge or a rag from home to clean the slate, or some just used their sleeve!

As they got older children would write on paper using a dip pen and blue-black ink from out of an inkwell.

A book with ruled lines was used for handwriting practice, the copybook. The first line was printed, or copied carefully from the blackboard, then the entire page was filled with identical lines.

If a mistake was made it stood out glaringly, and it is from this that we say you “blot your copybook” when you make a serious mistake.

Another regular activity was drill, which was the Victorian equivalent of what we now call PE. This might involve running, jumping, stretching and lifting weights, and was often accompanied by music.

Miss Baxter came out of character and allowed us to breathe a sigh of relief. She kindly explained all about Victorian schooling and gave us the opportunity to ask questions.

Josh was a willing volunteer to try on our dunce hat!

The Dunce’s Hat
A tall pointed hat with a letter D was left conspicuously on a stool in the corner of the classroom. Pupils who were slow at learning were made to stand in the corner wearing the hat while the teacher, and probably other pupils as well, mocked them. Although this seems cruel to modern minds, in Victorian times it was thought that all pupils were capable of learning equally and that a slow pupil was being deliberately lazy or reluctant to learn. The dunce would remain in the corner, sometimes standing on the stool, until the end of the lessons.

What a day! It was great fun but we went back to school absolutely exhausted!!!

(We are so relieved our teacher isn’t anything like Miss Baxter that we have decided to bring her a bar of her favourite chocolate – every day!)

Blogging, IDL

“We Scots have TRUE identity!”

November 29, 2014 Mrs Falconer 2 Comments

Yesterday, Primary 6 delivered their Scottish themed assembly to a large school audience and our parents. We were so excited as we had been rehearsing for the past week and had lots of eager performers!

We started with a little comedy skit from some very funny pupils who included information about traditional Scottish food, drink and culture. We then told the story of St Andrew, giving the history behind today’s celebrations of our Scottish identity.

The highlight of the assembly had to be the music and dance! A rendition of ‘Donald where’s your troosers’ put smiles on lots of faces as our very own Andy Stewart and Elvis took to the stage!

We had pupils dancing and swinging their kilts to the music!

A favourite with the younger pupils in the audience was ‘Three Craws’

This year we’ve been lucky enough to give our pupils the opportunity to learn to play the penny whistle. Mr McPherson, our music teacher, very kindly taught our group of Musicians a Scottish tune called ‘A Highland Fairy Lullaby’ (in Gaelic this translates to ‘An Cóineachan’)

It is such a beautiful piece of music, played so well by 4 talented pupils.

We were supporting the charity Children 1st who organise a national fundraising event called Kilts for Kids.

Everyone can take part in Kilts for Kids with activities happening around key Scottish dates such as St Andrew’s Day (30 November), Burns Night (25 January) and Tartan Day (6 April).

It’s a way to fundraise and celebrate all things Scottish! Throughout the week we had members of our class selling Children 1st tartan heart badges and then on the day of our assembly, the whole school came dressed in their finest tartan and donated £1.

All round, a great day! We wish you all a very Happy St Andrew’s Day!!!!

Blogging, IDL

Victorian Times!

November 19, 2014 Mrs Falconer 1 Comment

Primary 6 have been busy learning about the Victorian Era. This week’s learning focused around comparing the lifestyles of the rich and poor.

Our class novel, Street Child by Berlie Doherty, highlights the plight of a disadvantaged young boy, Jim Jarvis, who ends up in the workhouse after living in the slums and losing his mother to illness. We learn of his suffering and the deprivation he faces on a daily basis. We compared this to the lifestyle of Miss Toward, whose preserved tenement house still stands in Glasgow today.

After our visit to Miss Toward’s home, we were very aware that the comfortable lifestyle she led was in stark comparison to that of Jim Jarvis.

A grand piano for entertainment.

A large fireplace to keep warm.

High Tea treats.

A comfortable bed.

A dresser for beautifying.

Washing basin.

Miss Toward was fortunate enough that she did not to have to leave the tenement and visit the outhouse to go to the bathroom. Her indoor toilet and bath were a real treat!

We loved learning about the daily chores and how they would have been completed during Victorian times. We were given the chance to try out the mangle, which would have been used to wring out the clothes once they had been washed. After this, the clothing would have been hung over the pulley and raised high in the ceiling to dry fully.