Category: science

The Banton Beasties

Today we opened to the public the Banton Beasties a web site where the content is created by the Biggies. The site consites of posts describing different animals that we have seen in Banton. The children research different creatures, find photos they are allow to use and design the page using WordPress (Glow Blogs).

This allows us to improve and practise our reading and writing information texts. We also think about attribution and giving credit. We also learn about animals, their lifecycles & classification. We are learning ict skills that are used in the real world.

This week we worked on some of the insects we have seen in the playground and Dow’s wood recently. We also shared some of the information about mini beasts with Primary 1-2-3.

screenshot of the insect index page of the Banton Beasties Webpage.

The Beasties site is a work in progress, we can fix mistakes, add information ans more in the future.

Meeting NASA

On Monday this week we had a meeting with Dr Graham Kerr who works at NASA in the USA.

On Monday this week we had a meeting with Dr Graham Kerr who works at NASA in the USA. Dr Kerr originally comes from quite close to Banton, about half an hour drive away!

Dr Kerr tooks us through an explanation of his work on Sun, solar activity, solar probes and lots more. He told us some incredible facts.

He also answered our questions on a whole host of space related facts.

After the meeting I asked the Biggies to do some research and create some art on anything that had caught their interest. They have worked really hard both in school and at home!

Research

Art

And a Bonus Gif

Minecraft in Space

As today is the last day beforethe holidays, we spent some time making the solar system in Minecraft. Some of the builds were really inventive. The Sun, planets, astronauts and more. Juliet even had hollow planets with information boards inside.

Steady Hands Stage 2

This week we have been converting our Steady Hand games to incorporate our micro:bits. The micro:bits record the number of touches and tell the player the games is over after 5 touches.

We will used these at our Christmas Fayre when we let people play for a small fee. A sweet for the ones that get through with no mistakes.

A montage of 6 'steady hand' games made by pupils. These consist of a cardboard box wire and a micro:bit. They are decorated.
Screenshot of makedoce editor with code for steady hand game
The code we started with, improvements to be added by pupils.

Steady Hands Stage 1

We have started a new STEM project. Building some Steady Hand games for our Christmas Fayre.

Children working on making a steady hand game with wire & cardboard boxes

Yesterday me and my class were making steady hand games in the makerspace for the Christmas fayre. The games that buzz at you when you touch a shaped wire with a hoop.

Nathaniel

We were making a steady hand game it is a game you need to get all the way across if it beeps you are out. We were in the maker space and mr j wanted us to make a cool game. We made it because all the classes need to make thing for the Christmas fair so people would pay 10p to play and if they win the game you will get a sweet.

Alex

I also used my skills to make a box which is stable enough which was done using the make-do so that I can connect the metal wire to the box and have it not fall over.
I have also included a light and buzzer but doing that made the buzzer take all the power and the light wouldn’t turn on and the buzzer barely went.

Harry

I was with Alexia we had some mistakes like when we were duck taping the crocodile clips but the thing kept falling off it was frustrating but we got to the end eventually we just have to connect the wire.

Faith

In the MakerSpace me and my partner learned how to solve problems, one of the main problems we had was when one of the wires was not working, although it was tedious my partner and I got all the wires tested and turns out the one to actually play the game with was broken, when we found that out we had to swap the wire and wire the game up and it was worth it because it worked really well afterwards.

Olivia
6 steady hand games

The pupils worked really well with their partners, using their experience with circuits and working with cardboard. I a looking forward to seeing them when they are finished.

We have a couple more stages to go and will be making other games for the attendees of our Christmas Fayre.

Highlights of the week, seismographs & science

We have had a busy week this week. Highlights for me included our work on Earthquakes. The children did some research to find out the basic facts and yesterday made some model seismographs to explore how these instruments works.

Learning about Earthquakes

We used our research skills to find how about earthquakes.

montage of photos of children researching

States of Matter

Mr Wevling started a new science topic, looking at the different states of matter.

photos of children investigating states of matter

Christmas Engineering Challenge

The Children rose to the NLC Learning Hub  Christmas Engineering Challenge.
Christmas Engineering Challenge Can you design and build a Christmas themed structure with a moving part, an electronic component and an element of coding?

We posted an in progress report Christmas Engineering Challenge Part 1 last week.

We lost some time on Friday as no children were in school due to snow.

This week we finished off and have started to make movies of our reindeer. All of the groups managed all of the chilli challenges! Watch the movies to see how. (A couple more currently in production)

Children & Cardboard Reindeer

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.

Video Player

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.

Video Player

thanks to The Royal Institution for the idea Balloon car racers

The First Lego League

The Primary Sevens along with Caelan from p6 have been working really hard this term on the First Lego League Challenge :

FIRST LEGO League Challenge teams are introduced to a scientific and real-world challenge for teams to focus and research on. The robotics part of the competition involves designing and programming LEGO Mindstorms robots to complete tasks. The students work out a solution to a problem related to the theme (changes every year) and then meet for regional, national and international tournaments to compete, share their knowledge, compare ideas, and display their robots.

wikipedia

Their team is called the Cog Cats.

The challenge has involved an incredible amount of hard work. Along with the robot challenges went an innovation project where the children had to design a solution to the problem of keeping people active.

The group were also judged on their core values of:

  • DISCOVERY – Team explored new skills and ideas.
  • INNOVATION – Team used creativity and persistence to solve problems
  • IMPACT – Team applied what they learned to improve their world.
  • INCLUSION – Team demonstrated respect and embraced their differences
  • TEAMWORK – Team clearly showed they had worked as a team throughout their journey.
  • FUN – Teams clearly had fun and celebrated what they have achieved

The group have worked on this all term working very independently and show an amazing amount of resilience. Both in the robot challenges and the innovation project the children have had to repeatedly iterate on their work, improving and testing each time.

They have exemplified the school values of Respect, Responsibility Resilience & Compassion

On Thursday 17th June we went along to the virtual South of Scotland heats. The group had to run their robot through the challenges, present on their innovation project and answer questions on their core values.

Although we did not win our heat, we were delighted to be the winners in the Core Values section. I think this victory show what we already know about this primary seven they are pretty decent kids!

Steady Hands

After working on some basic circuits we had a challenge today. To make a steady hands game.

Video Player

The class worked really well on this, working in partners, using nearly all of the skill we could thing of. In particular, practical, communication, creativity and problem solving. We ended up with 100% success and 1 very proud teacher.

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