Scale Model Dens

Last year, the class went out to the playground and measures lots of the den building materials:

Outdoor learning Day November 2022

This year we took these measurements, scaled them down by a factor of 10 and then made scale models of dens.

Children working on scale models

Children working on scale models

the class also made scale models of themselves at the same scale as the dens.

The children then made wee videos of their learning using iMovie or clips.

There are a couple of videos still to be finished and we will add these to the playlist when done.

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.

The Banton Biggies Podcast Episode 5

The latest episode has been published on the Podcast blog:

BBP Episode 5

I am really please by the way the pupils worked on this episode. They took responsibility for writing, recording, editing and publishing the episode.

Everyone in the class had their say, they worked independently and cooperatively to record and encourage each other.

Balloon Car Maths

After creating and exploring the science behind our balloon cars yesterday we used them for maths today.

We practised measuring distance in metres & centimetres and time in seconds. Then we calculated the speed of our cars by dividing the distance traveled by the time taken.

thanks to The Royal Institution for the idea Balloon car racers

#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:

Vedic Square Experiments

Over the last couple of days we have been learning about Vedic squares.

We started by making a times table square and then working out the digital root of each answer to get a vedic square. When the experimented with the patterns made on the squares.

Next we repeated the square using numbers on our iPads. We used conditional highlighting to make each number a different colour. We took screenshots into pages and keynote to duplicate and make symmetrical patterns.

A couple of the class decided to animating the patterns, and then we all tried. There are a few more to be finished off next week.

Maths Escape!

The Biggies had a very exciting morning with Mr Dorman from the @PedagogyTeamNLC.

Quick reactions included:

We enjoyed the challenge. It made us use different sets of skills. It really made us think. We used our maths skill.

We will reflect on our learning and post some more.

Scale Model Dens

The Biggies are great den builder at playtime. In this wee project we made scale models of dens by making scale models of the pallets, tarps and pipes in the playground. We measured all of these in the playground, scaled the size down and made mini pallets, pipes and tarps. We used these to make model dens. I’ve added some quotes from the biggies e-Portfolios below.

Last week we went outside in groups of 3 to go to measure the width and length of all the palettes, tarpaulins and crates outside.
Our teacher put all the measurements in a app called numbers then made it move all the numbers up by 100 to change metres to centimetres then divided them all by 10 to scale them so we can make our tiny dens.
After doing all the calculations we measured it out into small pieces of cardboard then put shapes on the cardboard to make them look like pallets. Then we stuck the cardboard together, then measured the tarps to make a roof. quickly we made a flag out of spare parts to finish up our den and that’s how we built our den.

Heather p6

I have learned how to scale things into scaled models. I measured meters and centimetres outside whilst I was measuring pallets, crates, pipes and tarpaulins.

Charlie p4

We put a bit to much glue. we made a little up stairs. it kept falling.
How we solved those problems
The glue made it a bit slippery even though it is supposed to stick but we worked with it and we started making supports.
We connected pieces to their one corner we were using. it went pretty well at first then we had to make a stair case. That did not go well. we started making supports. We made it a bit longer. We made a slide

Josh p4

Once we had planned out our scaled down model we started to make the palettes out of cardboard. We took a set square to try and make the right angles of the palettes. Then once we had made all of our pallets and made shore they all had a right angle, we need to assemble the den, we could have used a lot of glue, but we tried to use as little as possible, so we cut slots into the cardboard and slotted them together to make shore they would stand.

When we where making this scaled down model the skills we used were Creative thinking, problem solving, planing and organisations, communicating, leadership, Literacy, working with others, ICT, numeracy and practical skills.

Jess P7

Skills I used I used my Communication skills to talk to my group and my numeracy skills to measure. And we used our problem solving skills when we didn’t put a enough glue no the middle of the den. We solved this by putting more glue on.

Ben p5

My group face some problem like the up stairs kept falling down so we kept holding it down and count to twenty, to let the glue set. Also we were drawing right angles we used a set square to help us.

Alice p5

Personally I think we did brilliant because at first we where measuring pallets in meters to having this amazing den.

Jonah p6

We made models of dens. We went out side and measured the tarpaulins , pallets and crates. I learned to measure In metres and centimetres.
Then we came inside and typed the measurements up on numbers. We moved the measurements up to 100 to turn into centimetres and Divided them by ten. That would scale the sizes down.

Kirsty p5

Function Machines

The Biggies have been learning about Function Machines during maths. They made their own machines using scratch.

Here are links to the first ones finished, click through and see if you can guess or work out what the functions are:

We will add more machines next week.

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