Engineering

Recently we have been working with Inverclyde Libraries and the McLean Museum to learn about James Watt and 3D printers.  James Watt originally created a copy press and then years later someone created a 3D printer.  People from the McLean Museum came in to talk to us about James Watt and 3D printers.  We got to print out some Minecraft tools and they were 3D!  Very soon we will be designing our own 3D objects to print out.  The people from the McLean Museum will be back very soon to print out the objects that we have designed.

African Masks

This week we made an African Mask out of recycled products with Miss Doolan.  I made my mask out of a milk carton and I torn up newspaper and then I glued them on to the milk carton.  Once it was dry I used pastels to add colour.  I used the patterns that we created before we made our masks.  Miss Doolan had a PowerPoint up on the whiteboard which had the success criteria so I knew who I could be successful.  Miss Doolan gave us instructions and we had to follow them carefully but still able to add our own creativity to it.  Different groups choose different materials for their masks.  We learned how to use different skills for when we are in high school.  I found gluing the pieces of torn newspaper onto the milk carton challenging because it wouldn’t stick and it took to long.  The next time that I glue newspaper onto anything I think I will tare it a little bit bigger.  I have achieved my recycled product African Mask and I think if I have any spare time I will make another African Mask.  Next time I think that I need to work on my time because I took a little longer than I thought I would have taken.

African Display

This week we have been learning  about African artwork. We got into our co-operative groups and  my group is Malawi. We had  all researched different aspects about our countries in our groups. Today we got all the research out and every group had a fraction of the wall to create a display. We all wrote things, cut them out and then  mounted them onto coloured paper to display. Then we stuck them  on the wall ourselves.  We knew we were successful because we were able to share our knowledge we had learned with others.  We learned by discussing within our group about all of our information then deciding what we would put where. Then we decided what jobs we were going to do (Mrs Hunter called this delegating tasks!) so we would get multiple tasks done at the same time. The skills we were using was communicating with others and managing our time as we had a set time frame to do it in so we had to concentrate. I am learning to use these skills so that if I have a job when I am older that requires skills like communicating with others and managing my time I will know what to do. I found trying to get all the group to listen to one person challenging. I overcame the challenge by co operating with my group and trying to grab their attention.  I achieved  being able to present and share my information with others . I think I could build on these skills and I could try and get even more work done for next time.