All posts by Ms Scanlan

Scottish Parliament visit

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Angela McGarrigle , an education officer from the Scottish parliament came to visit P6/7 and P5/6 today. She explained a lot of things about the Scottish Parliament and how it works. We had a class election. Each group had to decide on their party leader and then write their manifesto. The party leaders then spoke to the class to try to persuade them to vote for their party.

The parties were –

animal welfare

computers

music

save the earth

schools

sporty

Well done to all the speakers, great ideas from all the parties. It was a very close election, but in the end the Save the Earth party won, with Animal Welfare a very close second. Well done everyone!

Our last P7 John Muir Day with Pete Richardson

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We had the most amazing last day out with Pete Richardson and his colleague Matty today. We set off to Garth’s Ness and as we approached the end of the road, Pete spotted the fins and we all got to see a pod of orcas, it was really exciting. We watched from the cliff edge and then decided to go across to Scatness, to have a day of scrambling and climbing on the rocks there, and maybe seeing the whales again. Sure enough, as soon as we arrived at Scatness we saw them again and then later on too as they came back past us. Ms Scanlan had taken our new binoculars, so we all had a chance to see them clearly. P7 have been so lucky this year, on the first trip w e swam with porpoises, on the second trip we watched an otter swimming and catching fish and now killer whales! John Muir would have been very impressed with that!

Here’s what P7 said about our three John Muir days:

Logan – I really enjoyed when we were jumping off ledges in Cunningsburgh and swimming in the sea.

Ben – I really enjoyed jumping off a small cliff in Cunningsburgh, because of the thrill of jumping down.

Kyle- I really enjoyed Cunningsburgh swimming. It was great to be in a lot of space and to use that space for swimming.

Victoria – I really enjoyed watching all the wildlife, especially the killer whales and the baby seals. I have also been adventurous with all the challenges. But most of all, I have loved all of it!!

Shaina – I really enjoyed todays John Muir trip. We were rock climbing at Scatness. My favourite part was when I climbed up a really tall rock, I didn’t think that I could do it, but I did!

Layla – I have really enjoyed the John Muir trips because I saw killer whales, an otter and three baby seals. I also really enjoyed jumping off the really high rocks.

Lauren – My favourite part of the John Muir days are that you get to enjoy and appreciate the outdoors. My favourite bit was when I jumped off a rock into the sea.

Ella – I really enjoyed this John Muir trip, mainly because there were killer whales and baby seals. All of the John Muir trips have been really good.

John Magnus – I really enjoyed the John Muir days. I liked the coasteering at Cunningsburgh and seeing the baby seals and killer whales at Scatness.

Story writing and reading groups in the garden area

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Primary 6/7 took advantage of the lovely weather to do a 10 minute writing task outside, starting with ‘It was a beautiful sunny day. I was looking out to sea when all of a sudden…’  There were some very imaginative pieces of writing, we had fun reading what everyone had written.

We enjoyed sitting in our reading groups and reading our books together too.

Tree Identification

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Following on from the Terrific Scientific project, Primary 6/7 made the most of the good weather, to go and make identification sketches of the trees. The trees that we planted a few years ago are growing well. There were lots of birds feeding in the area and bumblebees flying around. We also caught a big ground beetle.

Terrific

Terrific Scientific Trees Investigation

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Today we took part in our fourth Terrific Scientific investigation. This time we are investigating trees. We have to survey the 🌳 in the school grounds and record how tall they are and the circumference of their trunks. We will then use a carbon calculator to work out how much carbon each tree is storing. We will then calculate the total amount of carbon stored by all the trees in the school and learn about why trees storing carbon is important and where the carbon comes from.

This time we are sending our results to Leeds University and they will analyse the results from all the schools in the U.K.

If you want to see our results so far, you can look online at the Terrific Scientific website. There are lots of other activities on there too that children can do at home. We have also tried the ‘bouncing eggs’, which was a lot of fun.

Learning to measure trees

Disgusting Digestion

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We had a great session with the Glasgow Science outreach service. They came to teach us about the whole process of digestion from start to finish!

We started with a cream cracker challenge, which showed the importance of saliva. Frankie and Lily Jane just couldn’t get those two crackers eaten in 2 minutes.

We saw how the food we eat gets mushed up in our mouth, stomach and intestines and watched Ms Scanlan catch the end product!!!