Today we have been really enjoying a visit from Chris. He’s an astronomer and has been teaching us about stars, planets, moons and our solar system!
We’ve been using technology to learn more about each planet in our solar system, made scale models of our solar system using playdough, learnt more about the night sky and the star consellations we can see and P4-7 have been doing some work using robotic telescopes!
Here are some pictures of a great day full of learning!
Term 1 has been a very busy term for us here in Cullivoe. We have learnt a lot and achieved a lot too. Here is what we have to say about our learning and our term!
Numeracy
Primary 2 – we have been learning our 2x table and what greater than and less than means and looks like. It was easy!
Primary 3 – We have been learning our 3x table and have worked hard in numeracy. We liked learning about place value.
Primary 4 – we have been learning the 8x table!
Primary 5 -we have been learning the 8 and 9x table. We have been playing beat my score which is really fun!
Literacy
We have all been learning about newspaper reports and the features of these. We have enjoyed learning about this and writing our own articles! We know that a newspaper needs a name, headlines, it has to be interesting, it is written in paragraphs, they have adverts in them, they are written in the 3rd person. We could give you more but that’s enough for now.
P5-7 have also been learning about superlative and comparative adjectives and looking at dictionary skills as well as recapping punctuation and developing comprehension and reading with expression.
Health and Wellbeing
We have been learning about the body and the organs. Here are a few that we have looked at: lungs, small and large intestine, pancreas, heart, liver, kidneys, stomach, bladder, gall bladder, oesophagus, rectum and the brain.
We have done an experiment which looked at the digestive system. It was really fun but also disgusting!
We had a couple of visitors in to talk to us about our topic. The health improvement practitioner talked to us about how to keep our body healthy. We had a scientist come in to talk to us about her work and different diseases/how to keep ourselves healthy.
The younger ones have been looking at throwing and catching in PE whilst the older ones have been learning about netball.
Other things within the school
Primary 4 have really enjoyed learning the recorder and have picked it up well.
We had our termly concert on Tuesday which was really good. The recorder players, both primary 4 and 5, all nailed their tunes which was fantastic!
The JRSOs have had a visit from a police officer to show them how to use a speed gun.
The pupil council have organised a coffee morning to support the charity Macmillan cancer support.
P4-7 have been learning about the global goals in eco this term. We have been picking topics to look at; life below water.
We have been learning to have a conversation in French and the older children have been looking at food.
Our feel good song we learnt this term was ‘Always look on the bright side of life.’
We focussed on article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which is: You have the right to the best possible health.
We took part in a STEM challenge to make a bridge for the three billy goats. We were in groups and had to design and make a bridge that would hold the 3 billy goats and the troll! It was really fun and we worked really well as a team. The bridges were all successful and held a lot of weight!
Out with school
We took part in the Harvest service and performed our Harvest Samba.
We had a lot of prize winners at the Yell Show AND Cullivoe Primary School have been awarded a trophy for the most prize winning entries!!
A few of the children have made the achievement wall this term due to passing their deep end test, winning medalsat various things. So a big well done!
Only 2 more days of school everyone! We are excited for the holidays and for Halloween.
Today we looked at the human digestive system. We watched a short animation that helped us see how food travels through you body and what it does. We then had a sheet where we had to label the organs/parts of the digestive system.
Then we undertook an experiment to help us understand it.
In our pairs we started off with a plastic cup and fork. Miss Nicholson gave us food to mash. The fork demonstrated how teeth grinds up the food in the mouth. We were given banana, coco pops, cracker, crisps and sweetcorn. We mashed this all up then added water to represent the saliva. Saliva is a special chemical called enzymes which do the real work of breaking up the food and lubricates it so that it can be swallowed.
Once we made this watery past we swallowed the food down our esophagus (food tube) by emptying the cup into a sealed bag which was our stomach. Miss Nicholson came around with vinegar which was the stomach acid and we mashed our food some more to show the muscular contractions churning the food and mixing it with the digestive juices. Did you know that food can remain in the stomach for 3-4 hours.
After this process we emptied the contents of our stomach into a pair of tights, this represented our intestines. Digestion takes place in the small intestines. We showed this by squeezing the tights which took all the juices out. This was the nutrients we need for growth and energy leaving the intestines and flowing into the body. Food can be in the small intestines for 3 hours.
The food that we cannot digest along with bacteria turns into waste and passses into the large intestines, this was what was left at the bottom of the tights. The large intestines reabsorbs water in the blood and forms solid faeces. This can stay here for 18 hours upto 2 days! The waste is stored in the rectum until it is passed out of the body.
Did you know in your lifetime, your digestive system may have to process 50 tonnes of food! Now that’s a lot of food!!
After undertaking the hand washing experiment last week and discussing the importance of why we wash our hands we decided to undertake another experiment as germs can be found everywhere, but some places have more germs than others. So this this experiment was used to see where germs are hidden.
This is what we did:
After we put these away we wrote up what we did and our predictions as to what we thought would happen to the totties.
After the week had passed we pulled the bags out of the cupboard and look at the potato pieces. This is what we found:
Once we looked at the totties we discussed the germs that are called mould or bacteria. The number of germs has grown so much that we didn’t need a microscope to see them. The mould that we could see on the control is important because it shows us how many germs already existed there. The other pieces started with this many germs but once they had touched other things the tottie picked up more germs.
After our discussion we wrote up our results and discussed whether our predictions were right, close or not what actually happened. The older pupils were really good at supporting the younger pupils.
We then started making posters to remember to wash our hands so that we can put these up around the school.
On Tuesday we were learning the importance of hand washing and how to describe that germs may be present even if they are not seen.
Whatever we do, we come into contact with germs. It’s easy for a germ on your hand to end up in your mouth.Washing your hands is the best way to stop germs from spreading.
We think some of the best times to wash your hands are:
We undertook an experiment to show the importance of why we should wash our hands. Here is the steps for this experiment:
The glitter was acting the same way that the germs on our hands act. There are a lot of germs, they spread around easily, and it can be hard to get them off. The difference between the glitter and germs is that germs are so small you can’t see them without a microscope. You have to know when you may have come into contact with germs and then wash your hands.
If we accidently touched our mouth, nose, or eyes while doing this experiment, we may have found glitter getting left behind. Germs travel the same way and can easily enter our body if we touch our face with dirty hands and germs can make us sick. That’s why it’s important to wash our hands before we eat. It is also important to wash our hands after touching something that might have germs, such as when we use the bathroom or play outside. If we don’t, the germs can easily spread to more places and to other people and cause sickness.
This afternoon we are working cooperatively to find out more about our organs. We have split ourselves into different groups and chosen an organ to research:
We are researching what it does and why it is important. We are going to make a poster to show all our learning and research. Miss Jamieson and Miss Nicholson has found us videos on Twig to watch linked to each organ to help us, they were really interesting and fun to watch. Each group will then present their findings to the rest of the school so we all know about each organ.
Today Meilo’s sister in law, Venus, came in to talk to us about the work that she does and a little about where she lives. Venus is a scientist that works for a pharmaceutical company. She lives in New Jersey in America. Her daughter Vicky came in with her to draw pictures to help us understand the work that she does. It was very interesting and Vicky drew some really good diagrams of the body and the cells within it which helped us a lot.
Venus talked of how the body is made up of lots of different cells and these are like building blocks that make our body. The white blood cells fight bacteria but some bacteria can try to fight back. Our immune system is amazing though and it can specifically identify the bacteria so it know to kill the bacteria straight away. Bacteria can get into our bodies through any cuts as they go into our blood stream. So remember to clean and cover any cuts to help you stop bacteria getting in and harming your body.
Venus went on to talk about cancer and how cancer cells are much bigger. Did you know that these are actually our own body cells that are out of control, they keep dividing and growing and do not function properly.
There is many ways to try and get rid of cancer. One way is to remove it through cutting it out. They take a biopsy, taking both the normal cells and the cancer cells to look at them under a microscope to look at the differences and compare them. They also compare them to look at the similarities to bacteria. However cancer cells can change so that they don’t respond to the drugs that should have helped get rid of them. Scientists use antibodies to tell what type of cell it is. They then crush the cells to look at their blueprint which helps them pinpoint how they are made up and they can then try to determine how to fight them.
Scientists are now trying a new approach to help fight cancer. They are using our own immune system to teach it to kill the cancer its self. The immune system gets tired and can’t fight these so the cancer shuts down the ‘good cells’ and stop them working. Scientists look at cancer cells and the changed cancer cells and compare this to normal cells. Therefore they want to try to revive the immune cells so they work again. They can create shapes to attract the good cells and the cancer cells closer together.
It is really important to keep your immune system healthy! Here are some ways that we knew on how to do so:
Today Miss Nicholson and Miss Jamieson set us a challenge.
Each group had a pile of papers which had the bones that make up our body…we had to put these bones in the right place to make our skeleton.
Everyone worked really well and there was great discussion as to where we thought the bones would go. Once we thought we were finished we got the teachers to check it for us. We all did a great job with only a few mistakes with arm/leg bones. We then cut out the bones so that we could use split pins to put our skeletons together. Once he was complete we named it! (We tried to think of one linked to our group names)
Then Miss Nicholson and Miss Jamieson threw another challenge at us….This time we had to put the organs where we thought they went. This was a challenge, some groups only just started cutting out their organs but Sir Swagsolot Junior was the only one to have his organs placed in his chest/stomach. They got nearly every one in the correct place or very close if not. There are a few organs that we weren’t sure on so we are going to be learning about these in topic!
Photos to follow
On Monday primary 4-7 undertook various experiments about ‘changes’ as this is our topic this term. Here are some of our experiments:
We have placed a white flower into water, with food colouring added in, to see if this changes the colour of the petals. Flowers absorb water through the xylem, which is a tissue of thin tubes found inside the stem. Water is transported to the various parts of the plant including the flower. Because the water is coloured the petals should then take on the colour.
It has been 2 days and the flower in the green water has begun to turn green but there isn’t much change with the other flowers yet. Some of us thought the flower would change within: 5 minutes, 20 minutes, 1 hour or 1 day but we were all wrong with our hypothesis.
We split the stem of a rose into 3 and placed each of these in a different colour, red, blue and yellow, to see if this will give us a rainbow rose.
This hasn’t really changed yet but we know with the other flowers that it could take a while.
We placed eggs into different liquids to see if/how this changes the egg. We have one in water as a control, one is in coke, another in vinegar and the last in fresh orange juice. We discussed our hypothesis on what we thought would happen to each egg:
As soon as we put the egg in the vinegar it started to react by producing lots of bubbles, this is because the calcium carbonate in the shell is dissolved by the acetic acid producing carbon dioxide.
We checked the eggs after 1 day and there were slight changes:
We checked the eggs again today and it was very interesting:
Below are close ups of the control, orange juice and coke
As you can see the egg in the vinegar is much bigger than the control egg in the water. This is because the membrane around the egg is semi permeable. Whilst it was in the vinegar the liquid moved through the membrane into the egg resulting in the membrane swelling and increasing in size.
We tested how well the vinegar egg could bounce. It bounced from 10cm high so we went up to 20cm and it still bounced so we tried dropping it from 30cm…it didn’t bounce though.
We poured milk into a glass and added red bull. When we discussed what we thought would happen there were a few different thoughts:
You can just about see from the photo there is a layer at the top of the glass. After 5 minutes of pouring in the red bull the acid in the Red Bull causes the protein in the milk to separate. When the milk curdles, a chemical reaction takes place resulting in a precipitate.
We did one more experiment with milk. We placed enough milk on a plate to cover the bottom. Then we poured drops of food colouring into the milk but nothing happened. We then took a cocktail stick and placed one end in fairy liquid before placing this into the milk and food colouring. What happened next was really cool.
The colours began to spread away from the fairy liquid and began mixing together. This is because fat and protein molecules in the milk are altered by the soap. These fat and proteins are super sensitive to change in the milk so when the fairy liquid is added it creates a chemical reaction and causes them to roll around. Once the soap molecules have mixed evenly with the fat and protein molecules the motion stops so we added more fairy liquid to keep the action moving. The food colouring helps us to see this change.
Primary 1-4 experimented with coins last term, we used old coins that Miss Nicholson brought in and put them into different liquids to see which would clean the coins the best.
We had water, fairy liquid, fairy liquid with water, orange juice, lemon juice, coke, vinegar, vinegar and salt, baking powder and water, bicarbonate of soda and water. The vinegar made our classroom stink but it really cleaned the coins, a little too much as it stripped the colour from the coins. The water didn’t really do anything to the coin, the fairy liquid with and without water cleaned it a little but not too much, the coin in the orange juice was surprisingly clean! The lemon juice worked a little, the coke worked really well! We wondered what it does to your insides when you drink it if it could cleaned really dirty coins that well! The baking powder and bicarbonate of soda worked a little too. After a unanimous vote we decided that coke is the best thing to use when cleaning coke so we used this for cleaning the rest of the coins.
Primary 1-4
