General – Page 2 – Banton Biggies

Arcade Fun

Yesterday the class joined in with the Create-a-long session broadcast in Teams by Digital NL and Education Scotland as part of #CSScotland23.

We had a bit of bother with the sound, so had get caught up this morning.

The session showed how to make a simple maze game with Microsoft MakeCode Arcade. The class changed the games a little to have a Christmas theme, we hope to use them at our Christmas Farye.

I was impressed by how easily the class managed to work around any problems. Their experience with micro:bit coding and scratch helped.

After we finished the game we started loading them onto our kitronic arcade devices. This took a bit of patience as our AirDrop has become flaky recently.

A montage of screenshots some makecode arcade games. — Screenshot of the games online

The children have lots of ideas on how to extend the games and are exploring the tutorials to find other ones that we can use. Here are links to some of the games. I’ve not got links of them all yet.

Last Friday we went a trip to Banton Mill. The was organised by Mr Carter, Mr Morecroft & Mr Barrie. Mr Barrie is the owner of the mill which is now the headquarters of Calders and the home of around 30 businesses. Mr Carter & Mr Morecroft are local history experts.

We learnt about how the mill operated, the water wheel and how it connected to the machinery. We also found out a lot about mill workers and the way the building had changed.

We had a tour underneath the mill to se where the water wheel used to turn, and the remains of the old spinning rooms.

Back in school we investigated how water wheels turn and made model pulley systems from lego.

We also used the trip and work in the class to practise our note taking, the children produced some great mind-maps, here are a couple:

Montage of mind maps produced by pupils about Banton Mill and its workings

HALLOWEEN MAGIC

We had our Halloween party on Friday last week. We took photos of all the Biggies against a green screen.

Today we took the photos and used the remove.bg site to take away the green background to make transparent versions. We then found suitable background and created these images in Keynote. This allowed us to think about and practise using images in a way that respects copyright while having fun and learning a bit about graphics.

Micro Pets

For the past couple of weeks, we have been working on a micro:bit project in class. This is the first time some of the class have used micro:bits while others are more experienced.
We took the idea of a virtual pet from the makecode site and then extended it in different ways.

We started with the idea of making the pet happy by stroking it’s logo and making it sad by shaking it.

After that the class could extend it in lots of different ways. For the beginners this involved feeding and giving the pet a drink. The more experienced pupils surprised me with the complexity of what they were doing. We had health scores, feeding to keep healthy and avoiding starvation; being sick, with the chance of illness and death and being annoyed when petted too much!

Some of the class were intrigued enough to keep working in their free time and were great at sharing techniques. I was delighted to see a good understanding of variables and repeats shown by some.

Here are a couple of examples, click the play button, ▶️, to see them in action. Be sure to turn on the sound for giggles & squeaks.

My class made micro bit tamagotchi’s if we shook it it had to make a sad face and sound also on logo pressed it had to look happy and make a happy sound. We had to add other things in .

This is what mine does ,

My pet sleeps on button a and b using a led block and repeats it 8 times.
On button a pressed it eats using a led and repeat block If you press button b it dies and I also used a led block a repeat block and a on button b pressed block .
Juliet

Sleep

Be happy if stroked (press logo)

Be sad if shaken

Die (wait long enough and don’t feed it)

Be sick if fed to much(can be cured using b)

Be scared (by making a noise/blowing/filling the red bar 180+)

Be fed (using a)

Get a health check (A+B)

Nathaniel

September Poems

We have been reading a book called Love that Dog In the book Jack tell of his literacy lessons with Miss Stretchberry. Miss Stretchberry read the class poems and Jack tries to write some. At the start he does not like it. The Book also tells the story of Jack’s dog.

We have learnt about several different types of poem and tried to write our own.

The First type of poem we learnt about was imagist poems. Imagist poems try to make an image with words. We learnt about Lunes. Lunes have very few words, 11 in total, three in the first line, five in the second and three in the third. We wrote kennings, these are like riddles. We tried our hand at sound poems and shape poems.

We also read the Poem The Table by the Turkish poet Edip Cansever and wrote our own version.

Pupils’ Views

I’ve taken some quotes from the classes e-Portfolios where they reflected on the writing.

I liked writing my poems because you can write random words and the don’t have to make sense and you can write some and they can be as long and as short as you want .

When I was writing this poem I was thinking about a ewe lamb sale that I went to about a week ago. I thought I could think about what I brought back with me from the sale and I thought that could write a table poem about and what we got back from it

I enjoyed writing poems because it let me experience and explore different ways of writing and I enjoys how many things there are in this universe to write about but still it’s so hard to pick just one for a poem, I enjoyed how punctuation doesn’t alway need to be in a poem, how poems don’t need to make sense and how poems can be enjoyed by anyone anywhere at anytime!

I was thinking to make a dog poem and the kind of I’m going to was a Kenning I enjoyed making the poem because you learn something all the time.

I liked writing the something poem because it’s a concrete poem, it was really fun to write with all the different ways you can say the word, normal, with a capital letter, backwards, full stops in between, commas, all capitals with just one word. I also enjoyed some lunes that I was writing because it doesn’t take long.

I enjoyed writing poems because you get freedom to write with rhythm and beat and writing stories you can’t do that and poems don’t need to make sense.

I enjoyed writing poems because they don’t need to make sense and you can play about with the words that you are writing. It’s also fun because there are so many different ways to write poetry and you can learn new ways.

I like writing poetry because of the freedom. It doesn’t have to mean anything it could just be The Apple all over again. I like the amount of stuff that you can do it doesn’t has to be a number of words before the next line.

I liked the onomatopoeia in my poem.

I enjoyed writing poems because you could do anything you’d want with it and do things that isn’t real you also do a lot of punctuation and you get your brain moving then if you really like it you could show your teacher and they will like it to. It is really fun to write poems and my class is lucky we get a teacher that likes poems so we do things about poems almost everyday. That is why I enjoy poems.

Targets Set

We have set our first learning target of the session. They are up on the wall for all to see and on our e-portfolios for us to update when we have achieved them.

The Biggies are Back in Class

We have got to the end of our first week. The children are settling well and we are starting to think about our routines.

We have started reading Mr Johnston’s favourite book, Love That Dog. That means we read a lot of poems too. The first one we studied was The Red Wheelbarrow. The class all wrote poems based on this poem. They are great.

We a have also been working on a new class logo to represent out class, more of that later. And starting work on our Rights Respecting School class charter.

Today we had a visit from Steven from Future X, to show us what Future X entails and how to get involved. We had a great time:

The p7s have also been helping out with their buddies in p1, to make play dough and to get used to going for lunch.

Words to Learn by 2023-24

Last session The Biggies choose some word to describe what they would like to learn. These proved useful in reviewing what we had done at the end of the year. So we did it again this session.

Makerspace Robot Roundup

We have been working hard in our Makerspace on our Robots challenge.

The Challenge is to create a model Robot with elements of, Movement, Electricity & Coding.

The class has done an amazing job with lots of fun and failure. I’ve been especially impressed how the groups worked together and adapted their ideas as the went along.

Bobara

Duck

Robot Mike

ECCO Finished product

A.D.A.M

I gathered quite a lot of quotes from the class and have added some below in their unedited glory.

General Comments

His back there is a skewer that you twist so that tightens the rope to make the flaps go up and loosen it to go down
It is a micro bit that plays a song by another micro bit sending it messages to start and stop
We had to change the song a few thousand times but we got there in the end.
We argued about the wheels and some designs but we didn’t argue much. The wheels worked out well and the coding component is working well too.
Yes when we were cutting our blocks of wood to hold up a big platform. The blocks where slanted so we had to make new ones and measure it correctly so it was in a straight line.
We didn’t think of how the weight of the head was going to affect the motor. This was because the head was too large. Also we painted some of it and changed a lot of the outer design and make the packages more realistic by putting things in them.
It’s moving part is the spinning brush on the front, a motor is hooked up to a battery pack and a switch using wires, when the switch is clicked the motor turns a piece of glue tack spins and the brush is attached to it.
My robot is a large Aztec sort of style robot called A.D.A.M. A.D.A.M stands for Ancient Dispenser of Aztec Mummies. As the name suggests it dispenses drawings of mummies.
It is called Adam it is like a box and it has wheels dispense mummies

Enjoyed

I enjoyed working with others and learning how different things work.
I really enjoyed be able to express my creativity
Being partners with the people I was and painting and talking to them.
I enjoyed creative work and doing fun things with saws and hot glue guns
I enjoyed making a lot of the things we made and I think I work well in most of the groups I was put in.
I enjoyed working with the micro bits and coding elements.
I enjoyed using different equipment like hot glue guns.

Didn’t enjoy

I didn’t enjoy the we had a problem with the electronics
I didn’t enjoy all the arguing but then again it was mostly needed because of voting.
I didn’t enjoy the problem with the wheels and trying to fix that because it took a while to find a solution.
I enjoyed everything about the makerspace, and didn’t dislike anything.

Learned

I learned that it’s sometimes people need to learn to try help each other more then we should.
I learned how to put the movie into keynote and I learned how to do wiring.
I learned how to work with others better and how to make different things, I feel like I’m better at arts and crafts as well.
I learned that wires were very complicated and annoying and that you may not be friends with your partners but you can get along in some ways.
I learned how to use glue guns, what materials are better and not just look better and how to find good solutions to problems but still keep close to the original design.
I learned how to use micro bits to control motors.
I learned how to use a saw correctly and I learned how to use a hot glue gun.
How to have fun and work at the same time while being in my zone.
How to make a iMovie video with voice over music and effects and to work in a team to create a machine with electronic components.
I learned that you can make anything out of quite a lot of materials and I learned that using iMovie is quite easy.

Planning & Organisation Badge — Planning & Organisation

Creative Thinking Badge — Creative Thinking

Working with Others Badge — Working With Others

Practical Skills Badge — Practical Skills

Outdoor Learning Day June 2023

We started the day by going to the woods to gather a bit of firewood and different things to test as tinder.

The woods have changed quite a lot since our last visit, the grass & bracken is a lot higher. Down by the Gladstone we saw a woodpecker and later on a frog.

Back in school we tried different items as tinder with our flies and steels. not much success. The only thing that really caught was some bog cotton we had picked on our previous visit.

Next we mixed up some dough to cook over the fire later on in the day.