John Johnston

Paper Plate Skulls

We took an idea from Darrell Wakelam to make some Day of the Dead skulls from paper plates.

We then took it a bit further taking photos of ourselves in front of the green screen. In Keynote we added backgrounds, our pictures and photos of our masks.

We used instant alpha to remove backgrounds to create interesting pictures.

A bit of fun but learning about layers and opacity. We also got the images from unsplash so they are copyright free. We also read about the the Day of the dead festival.

We told Darrell we had used his idea and this is what he said:

Brilliant John! Love the photo idea too, I bet the kids had a real laugh putting those together. 🤩

— Darrell Wakelam (@DarrellWakelam) October 31, 2021

Climate Change

We have been learning a bit about Climate Change in the lead up to COP 26.

The Biggies were invited to take part in a digital book that is being passed to schools and others to add their thought on climate change. It is digital book and we will share the finished product. Our pages seen me to go down well.

Today it was @johnjohnston & @Banton_Pr, brilliant videos & reporting! Tomorrow is Day 10 & we're passing the baton to @MountFloridaPri for them to add their climate pledge for #OurDearGreenPlace & #COP26. @NicolaSturgeon & @BorisJohnson you’ll get your copy soon @BookCreatorApp pic.twitter.com/I2lOOznMa7

— Digital Learning for ALL (@DL_for_All) October 21, 2021

We will share some of the work we made over the next week. The featured image above came from the ideas of some of the children much better than their teachers. Here is how the Biggies introduced themselves:

And here are some posters they made about how we can help do our bit about climate change in school or at home. We included them in a couple of videos we added to the digital book. Click to see bigger versions:

The class worked with a great deal of indpendence to put together all the media for the digital book. Their skills

#MathsWeekScotland Fun

A short week in the biggies, but we managed to have a bit of maths fun with an outdoor tables challenge and some tarsia puzzles. We also worked on collaborative problem solving with diagrams.

If you would like to try some simple multiplication and division tarsia, you could try these ones, print them out and mix them up:

Highlights of a short week in the Biggies

The biggies has a sporty week:

On Monday we practised our junior leaders routines. We will lead activities with p1-3 very soon.

On Wednesday we had a visit from Active Schools Julie and a Rugby Scotland Coach. We had a great time play some rugby based activities.

We also did some group work on Climate Change:

We finished the week by meeting up with the Primary 1-3 and sharing the Autumn zines we made last week.

Autumn Zines

After our visit to Dow’s Wood this morning, the Biggies made some wee zines to share with p1-2-3.

Football Crazy – Healthy Heros

We had a session with coaches for Clyde FC . The classier amazing and worked really hard. Bonus points for attitude and listening!

Rotary Competition for COP26 Conference

The objective is to raise awareness of Climate Change by inviting school children to design a poster on A4, which would convey their message to the world on what needs to be done to make the world a better and safer place for their generation.

P6-7 all had a go and we sent of a couple to the Rotary club last week. This fit in well with our learning about Climate Change this term.

Junior Sports Leaders

On Monday Afternoon Julie from Active Schools, @NLASC_Julie, started week one of our Junior Leaders program. The Children in p6&7 are learning how to lead the younger children in keeping active and having fun.

Here is a wee video of the children practising warm up games:

We can’t wait till next week.

small poems

We have been reading some poems by Valerie Worth. She specialised in poem focused on an animal or inanimate object of some type. They are short, simple and descriptive. They do not rhyme and the line breaks can be odd.

After reading the poems and thinking about the different features and techniques the class wrote some of their own. We tried to make the poems put a picture in your mind, use simple language and short lines.

robin

Author: Joshua Luka

the westie

Author: Caelan

star

Author: User deactivated

piano

Author: Kaitlyn McCulloch

lion

Author: User deactivated

oak-tree

Author: Hazel

village

Author: Alfred

islay

Author: Grace

robin

Author: Lara

gun

Author: Rhuaridh

fish

Author: Charlie John

robin

Author: Lara

a dog

Author: Elise

elephant

Author: Kristy

Dog

Author: Rhuraidh Gordon James

ziggy

Author: Skye

Biggies Logo 2021

We are continuing our tradition (since 2020) of designing a logo for our class. This should identify the class and represent our activities. Like last year all the pupils designed a Logo. This year we asked Mrs Mcleod to judge. A hard job. The winner was Caelan, his design, the featured image above, shows we learn inside and out with fire and technology. We also think and assess our work.