This week Mrs Hunter chose a group of us who were good at photography to take part in the blogging bootcamp challenge. For the challenge we had to take some interesting photos from a list of criteria. One of the things we had to do was research forced perspective which was really cool! We tried things out like classroom tilt, stand on each others hands and get picked up by the head. It was difficult because it took a while to get it right and it was a lot shouting different instructions. It was easy to find something yellow because we had a lot of daffodils in our school grounds. It was fun jumping off the wall and Abbie and Lucy to take the photo at the right time. The girls went into the toilet to find a mirror and took a selfie! The odd things were Abbie and Lucy’s both right foot. Some of the things we tried did not work so we had to think creatively about how to do it. We really enjoyed working on this task and learned things like keeping our elbows in, standing still with steady hands and getting the picture in the frame well. We feel we developed our photography skills and new ways to take photos using the camera. The photos that have been uploaded by ourselves by adding a gallery and captions for our photos.
Abbi in motion at our cross country event
focus on circle
Abbie picking me up by the head
heather in a cup
picking up our janitor by the head
focus on horizon
mirror SELFIE!
odd shoes on odd feet
yellow daffodils in our school grounds
an ant demo our playground wall who fills the screen!
On Thursday Lucy D, Lucy F , Jack and I went to Port Glasgow high school representing Gourock Primary for a challenge called Watt’s Watt. We were put up against other schools for 4 tasks. One that we could do whenever we wanted was to create a poster about James Watt and his improvement of the steam engine. Our second task was to make a steam boat which could go using the force of steam. Firstly we had to saw the wood to make it streamline so Lucy D and I went to the station where the saw was and we cut the wood. Then we went back and started to wrap a copper tube around a glue stick to make it a twirl shape. We had to use metal wire to secure the boat so that we could put a tea light under it. The tea light was for when we put the boat in the water we put a syringe full of water in the tubing and lit the tea light so that it would create steam. We also put another candle at the front to balance the boat.
Our team at the Watt’s Watt Challenge.
The next task was probably our hardest task. We had to make a train that could carry an apple on a monorail. The first thing we did was we went to the sawing station and we had to saw 2 centimetres off of these cuboids of wood so that they would be the same weight and size. Then we put on the turning cylinders on the bottom and on the top of them we out elastic bands so that they would grip on to the monorail. Then because we were only allowed to use one battery pack we had to put an extension cord so that it would wire the other cylinder to turn. It was very frustrating because the wires kept on falling out and when we had to test the train the wire fell out on the one metre mark.
Our third task was to make light from an apple. The reason why it works is because of the potential difference between two nails going into an apple. What we found was that half an apple will make more volts than one full apple so we decided to cut the two apples and put the nails in as the apple works as a conductor. We put the wires into the nails and it powered the led light. I feel really proud of what I managed to achieve and hopefully we get into the finals. I’m really interested in science and high school science will probably be really fun!
To complete our learning on the Victorians, we organised a Victorian themed Fairtrade Cafe for our school community. In preparation for our cafe, we each worked in co-operative groups to investigate a different area of the Victorian era. Groups researched areas such as Victorian education, famous Victorians and inventors, rich and poor lifestyles and jobs for example, chimney sweeps, servants and working down in the mines. We prepared to showcase our learning by delegating tasks. As a group, we decided who would create the powerpoint, design games for our visitors to play and who would dress as a Victorian for the day! Alongside this, we also had to plan for the running of our cafe. We split into groups to work on a homebaking stall, serving the tea and coffee, selling Fairtrade Christmas products and raise awareness of Fairtrade by talking to our visitors to the cafe. Our P7 Fairtrade group members headed up each group and kept things running smoothly. Have a look at some of our pictures below to see how we got on!
