John Johnston

Personal Project Morning

On Monday morning the Biggies had some time to follow their own ideas. the previous week they had submitted plans explain what they would do, what they needed and what they learnt.

The idea included making board games, cardboard models, story writing, zine creating, and a micro:bit boat. You can see some of the end results below.

I was excited about the micro:bit boat. The pupils had the idea on seeing a motor attached to a micro:bit in the class. The figured out how to make the micro:bit control the moters and another micro:bit to control that. A lot of problem solving and practical skills involved!

Biodiversity Live Lesson

Last week we joined in this video conference. It was in 3 sections all based on wether.
First we heard from Jess Lilley, Edinburgh Zoo about life in the water. We saw the penguins at the zoo and found out about a fish none of us knew about, the flapper skate.

We then heard the story of the Mermaid of the Clyde, told by Allison Galbraith. The last workshop was by Joe Wilkin-Oxley from Keep Scotland Beautiful. He explainsd about water, how much we use and how to save it.

This was all very interesting. During the week most of the primary sevens were off to Kilsyth Academy, but the rest of the Biggies got busy writing stories about mythical water creatures and working on scale in maths using the Flapper Skate to practise scaling down & up.

Good Ruler – Bad Ruler

While thinking about the Jubilee the Biggies were asked to come up with some ideas for what a good or bad ruler would do.

The children used their ICT skills to name good & bad ruler ‘memes’.

Some Good Queens & Kings

Some Bad Kings & Queens

Pendulum Art in the Gallery

Last week some of the class worked in the playground to make some pendulum Art:

It was great fun and the results looked amazing when wet.

The pictures dried out and went a wee bit dull. We decided to brighten them up using snapseed on our iPads. We then put our pictures on the wall and looked at them. Can you work out how we did it?

Lego Explore

We have been lucky enough to borrow some lego kits from NLC Stem. and started to get to grips with the Spike Robot yesterday. As well as the obvious coding and creativity skills this allows the Biggies to practise their excellent team work.

Bee Hotel Building

On Tuesday this week Bill and John from Kilsyth Rotary came to help us with our Bee Hotel.

The class were involved with lifting, drilling pallets, & cutting and stuffing the construction with bee friendly material and did a great job.

As bonus wee bit of rain let some of the class test the school waterproofs.

3D Dogs

While the biggies who are going to Kilsyth Academy were away last week the children in the class made some 3D dog faces from egg boxes.

We took the idea from Darrell Wakelam’s wonderful website.

Targets Set

We have reviewed our term 3 targets and set some more for the last term of the year.

Dow’s Wood Photo Walk

We took a walk down through the woods this morning. We went to take some photos for the Kilsyth Rotary photo competition and get some inspiration for Art and Writing.

The photo comp is title Colours of Nature, although it was still a bit early in spring to get a lot of colour in the wood we managed to take a lot of photos.

We also found some burnt gorse and grass and a fair bit of broken glass. This will give us something to think about.

We ended up playing a game or two in School Wood and Josh spotted a roe deer!

We will post some of the photos for the competition once the class have made their selection.

Primary Six Poets go Down to the Woods

On Thursday the primary sixes for both p6-7 & p4-5-6 went down to the woods.

We were going to do a little Earth Day prep, but also to play games and read and write poems.

It was quite cold to be sitting long so we warmed up with running around game. All the children really all concentrated on writing and drawing in their tiny notebooks.