A beautiful, cold but sunny day for P4 – 7 running club members today.  Children worked hard in pairs at speed work, with differing recovery times.

Great effort by all.

Sometimes we have grown ups join us for our daily mile, some days we run as a class pack and other times we walk/jog/run in pairs or by ourselves. One thing is sure – we are all developing our fitness levels and settle down well to our work back in class.

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P7H went in to the school grounds to create transient art pieces.  Before going outdoors they studied the work Andy Goldsworthy, a British artist who collaborates with nature to makes his creations.  Like Andy Goldsworthy, they worked with whatever came to hand: twigs, leaves, stones, moss etc.

Today we worked with the team from Scotland’s Urban Past in our quest to be ‘Urban Detectives’. We decided to take Applegrove and schooldays as our history focus because the school has changed a lot in the last year or so.
Nikki, Fiona and Danny taught us how to carry out an interview in order to gather oral history. We created questions that would gather lots of information and open up a conversation. We were shown how to use the video cameras and filmed interviewers and interviewees. We watched our films and evaluated how effective they were.
In the afternoon we showed the team our school day memorabilia; lots of photos, reports, certificates and jotters. We learnt how to catalogue and archive our school day artefacts. We had a very interesting day.
So many of the skills we tried out today are needed in the world of work; research, museum work, film making, interviewing, literacy, working outdoors, team work…

Nikki briefs the class on interview techniques.

Danny shows us how to use the camera.

Filming.

Isla, Dylan and Grace being interviewed.

Finlay and Diarmuid use zoom and panning skills with Fiona’s advice.

Here are the twelve team mates from Applegrove who ran on Thursday morning at Gordonstoun. Due to overnight rain it was very muddy but no one seemed to mind! All of you gave your best effort and placed highly. Thank you for your great running and resilience shown. Thank you to supporters who came to cheer you on. Unfortunately results were not available at the end but early news in says Applegrove P7 team won the team trophy.

On Tuesday afternoons, we are going up to Forres Academy for our PE lessons, this is part of the transition programme. We are taught by the S5 and S6 pupils who are completing their Leadership Qualification.

We go with P6W and P7H and begin our lesson altogether in the Games Hall where Mr Fraser gives us our warm up. The last two weeks we have been focusing on control, listening and timing and carry out activities with a tennis ball. This week we did some skills that the Wimbeldon Ball Boys and Girls are taught!

After that we remain in the Games hall and Jordan and Daniel are teaching us the skills of short tennis. P6W and P7H go to the other halls to do different activities. After 3 weeks we will rotate so we all experience the different activities.

P1M have been learning about play in the past.  We are interested in learning about what our parents and grandparents played outside and in the playground when they were our age.  We are also trying to find out about what Grant Park was like in the past and compare it to what is there now.

As part of our learning we worked with Scotland’s Urban Past and were visited by Fiona, Danny, Nikki and SUP the ted!  We went to Grant Park and had the opportunity to use cameras and learn how to take photographs correctly.  We also learned about direction, using a compass and we looked at maps of Forres.  We made a human compass showing North, South, East and West.  We spotted our school on the map and some of us even spotted our own houses!  We studied old photos of Grant Park and learned that it has not always looked the way it does now.

We are learning how to play some of the games our parents and grandparents used to play and are having a lot of fun in the process!

The February newsletter is now available to view. Click here to download. Thank you for your support in reducing paper and continuing to keep up our Eco School status

Today Nettie, the mascot for the 2017 Badminton World Championships which was dedigned by P7 pupil Aidan Matthews, came to visit. She brought with her Katie and Duncan who gave everyone in the school some Badminton coaching.

P6/7M and P4/5C enjoyed a trip to the library together on Thursday morning. P6/7 pupils paired with a P4/5 pupil. Each person in the pair chose a book, first sharing why they were interested in this book, then each person took a turn to read a few pages from their choice of book to their partner.