Welcome to session 2024-2025.  Just a quick note to say that specialist music will be each Tuesday, specialist art will be on Wednesday and specialist P.E. will be each Friday.

Recently, we had a visit from Eleanor from the UHI Science team.

Learners rotated around different stations, having the opportunity to try creating batteries from lemons, a games console controller out of playdough and wires,  trying different fruit and veg to see if they conducted electricity and a turn on a VR headset.

These activities allowed opportunities for critical thinking and show cased learners’ knowledge and understanding of circuits and their components.

/ 

Recently, P6 took part in the Sports Leaders Event at Seafield.  There were lots of opportunities for effective communication and  collaboration and many examples of good sportsmanship while we developed football skills and played different ball games. And it didn’t rain!

Well done to our JRSO team who recently presented at the Town Hall.

John  Williams is an American composer, conductor and pianist. In a career that has spanned seven decades, he has composed some of the most popular, recognisable and critically acclaimed film scores in cinema history. His compositions are often considered the epitome of orchestral film music and he is considered among the greatest composers of all time. Williams is most well-known for his collaborations with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas but he has worked with many diverse directors. He has a very distinct sound that mixes romanticism, impressionism and atonal music with complex orchestration.

One piece of music that we have learned about this term was the main theme of the film Home Alone. In the clip below, you can see half the class at a time using their chairs as drums to tap the rhythms which were displayed using music notation. This advanced rhythm play along includes sixteenth, eighth, quarter notes and rests.

Here is a link to the advanced rhythm play along:

This term we have been learning about film music and famous composers, focusing on the work of John Williams and Hans Zimmer.

Hans Zimmer could be classed as a ‘trailblazer’ of the film music world. He uses all sorts of techniques to create music and he has helped to shape the sound of today’s film, tv and games music.

He wrote a piece called ‘Earth’, especially for BBC Ten Pieces, which draws upon the soundworld he used for Blue Planet II and Planet Earth II – two of his most popular scores. The class listened to the ‘filmic’ style music,  performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra Junior Chorus, and reflected on it by  creating art work based on their thoughts and feelings while listening.

Here are a few photos of some of the illustrations they created.

The P6 & P7 STEM club created this amazing Marble Run recently:

During our time outdoors recently, P6 used our meta skills of creativity and curiousity when we created art from natural objects found in the Wildlife Area.

Well done to our P6/P7 STEM club who are 2024 YESC Regional Club of the Year runners up and 2024 STEM challenge winners!

P6 enjoyed looking for signs of spring in the Wildlife Area recently. It also allowed the opportunity to develop our communication and collaborative skills as we worked in pairs.