What a fantastic two days we have had exploring the Ness of Burgi. We learned about lichens and rocks as we completed a challenging scramble along the shore. Our school value of determination was certainly evident as we traversed the rocks, even moving through a blow hole!
We collaborated together on some fantastic sculptures which were inspired by the day!
Well done Primary 7!
Last week P7 were collaborating on the creation of floating wind turbine models. A lot of problem solving went into the design. Our young engineers came up with brilliant ways to hold the turbines in place with some groups adding anchors and others building stabilisers.
At the start of the lesson learners decided to focus on two metaskills – collaboration and creativity.
As part of our climate topic, we have been investigating different average wind speeds around our school grounds. Where would be the best location to place a wind turbine?
This term we are learning about climate change, we were lucky to have a visit from the Climate Roadshow.
We have also been experimenting with solar panels, testing different areas of our school grounds to see where they would be most efficient. The recent sunshine has been advantageous!
We have been enriching the soil in our polycrub with our seaweed fertiliser. It was quite smelly but we hope it will help our school to grow lovely produce again this year.
We have been learning about how plants have benefitted us throughout history and still do today.
One way that plants have traditionally been used for is for dye. We experimented by making pictures with lots of natural pigments from around the school.
Today we headed to Kirkabister to take part in rock scrambling activities. We saw different species of plants adapted to living near the shore, like Sea Pinks and we also spotted the ‘Curly Wurly Rock’ which was made by movement of the Earth’s plates. We spied Bog Cotton and Sphagnum Moss. We had great fun and our confidence grew all day. So many metaskills were on display. We had to focus and use initiative as we plotted our paths along the rocky terrain.
After our introduction to different types of computer hardware, earlier in the term, we have started to learn about coding.
Today we worked hard to code our Microbits into pedometers to track our step counts. There was a lot of discussion around which improvements we could make as, after outside testing, we realised there were a few flaws in our code. We had fun measuring perimeters and distances around our school, using our step count. Bunny hops were the most effective!
This week we are further investigating leaves. We made some slides so we could look at leaf material under the microscope. We pushed our curiosity, experimenting with petals amd different plant materials.
We have also been learning about food chains and food webs. We made some food chains and webs in the playground, thinking carefully about producers, primary and secondary consumers. We focused on collaboration, we had to work closely together to make a functional food chain.
As we continue to explore plants, we have been learning how leaves are the solar panels of the plant. We investigated the process of photosynthesis by placing different types of leaves under water in the bright sunshine. We watched closely to see if oxygen bubbles would start to form. They did.
