Category Archives: Topic

Responsible Citizens, Topic, Visitors

The life of Scottish Olympian Eric Liddell

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Today we had a man called Graeme Patterson come into talk to us about the life of Scottish Olympian Eric Liddell, the primary 6/7s came in too. Graeme was really funny!

Here is some of the things we learned about Eric (what we can remember anyway)

Eric’s parents were missionaries so he and his brother grew up in a Christian household. They actually lived in China when they were really young but moved back to Scotland when the boys had to go to school. Eric was really good at sports and his brother was really good at school. After a while their dad went back to China whilst the rest of the family stayed home. When the boys were old enough the mum went to China too so the boys went to boarding school.

It was the time of World War 1 when Eric’s brother was aged to leave school, his mother was frightened that he would have to go to war. She prayed for him and when he was playing football someone tackled him and broke his leg so he couldn’t go to war as he was in hospital.

Eric was training to be a teacher and his brother trained to be a doctor.

Eric started running in the 100 metre sprint (it was called the 110 yard back then) people started to recognise him as he was really fast. He also played rugby for Scotland but he wasn’t that fussed about that, he was quite happy with his studies, the bible and running. Long story short he went to run the 100 metre sprint at the Olympic Games in Paris in 1924. (This was the first Olympic Games held after the war and the committee banned Germany from the games as they blamed them for starting the war in the first place and killing lots of innocent people)

At the games – they came with a list of the days of the races but the final of the 100 metre sprint was on a Sunday so Eric refused to run as that was his day to God. Race day came and he did not run instead they found him in Church on the Sunday reading the bible to others. He said he would run the 200m and 400m instead – he had not been training for this but he still managed to get to the finals in both.  He won a bronze medal for the 200m. On the day of the 400m final he was handed a note that said ‘Those who honour me I will honour. Samuel 2:30) so he put this in his shorts and ran the race…which he won! Some thought it was a one man race when they were watching it.

After winning 3 medals – 1 bronze, 1 gold and 1 for taking part he decided to finish his studies, became a teacher and got married to a woman called Florence.

They decided to leave everything and go to China to tell people about god. They had 2 children with one on the way in 1942 – this was when Japan was invading china. So Eric sent his wife and children to Canada (this is where his wife came from) and Eric stayed in China alone. He kept working but 2 months later the Japanese invaded his village and he was taken prisoner and thrown into a work camp as he didn’t come from China. He wanted to help others in the camp so he set up a school for the children in the camp. Sadly he contracted a disease and died the age of 43 (21 February 1945)

There is a statue of Eric Liddell in St Andrews – its what he looked like when he crossed the finish line.

When Graeme spoke of how Eric was a Christian and how he read the bible to people. Graeme showed us the bible that he thought was the best…he flicked through and said some people think that its boring, there was nothing in it. Then he said some people think its just black and white and flicked through the book again…this time there were pictures in it!! THEN he said he thought that wasn’t true and that it was full of colour…as he flicked through the book we could see the pictures were full of colour!!!!! everyone was amazed!

He also pulled off our shoes to show an example of what Eric shoes would have been like – not like the fancy trainers Levi had on but more basic ones like the ones Lucy had on. He smelled the shoes and pulled funny faces which made us all laugh!

We loved having Graeme in and would fully recommend anyone and everyone to get him to visit their school! He really was good!

Animation, Confident Individuals, Expressive Arts, Group work, Literacy and English, Personalisation and Choice, Responsible Citizens, Space, Successful Learners, Technologies, Topic

Evan on the moon

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Me, Evan and Keisha made an animation about Evan going to the moon and me and Keisha were on the radio. When Evan puts the Tingwall primary school flag on the moon an alien takes him back to Earth.

 

 

 

Animation, Confident Individuals, Expressive Arts, Group work, Literacy and English, Personalisation and Choice, Responsible Citizens, Space, Successful Learners, Technologies, Topic

2 planets animation

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Me, David and Brandon made this animation called Two Planets. We used an app called ZU3D to make the animation. It was quite a lot of work because first we had to make the storyboard and script. Then we had to make the backgrounds and characters and props. Once we had done all that we got to start filming. It took ages to film because we had to take a photo, move the characters a tiny bit and take another photo. We had to take about 200 frames. It was a lot of work but I really enjoyed doing it.

Animation, Confident Individuals, Expressive Arts, Group work, Literacy and English, Personalisation and Choice, Responsible Citizens, Space, Successful Learners, Technologies, Topic

Stupid spacemen animation

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We had to use our topic (space) to create an animation which I did whith Anya and Ashleigh.

Before we could make our animation we had to do a lot of work first. We looked at animations and what went into making them. Then we got into groups and thought of an idea of what we could do for our animation. We were asked to make a short animation about space and told there had to be at least 3 facts in it. We had to think about the plot, setting, characters, props and the script before making anything. Once we had all of that we got to start making the background, characters and props which was fun. Miss Nicholson showed us the app ZU3D on the Ipad, this is how we filmed our animation. It took a lot of frames to make our animation as we had to make sure there were enough images for our speech. We were the first group to finish our animation.

 

Sciences, Space, Topic, Visitors

Mr Rose shows us the planetarium

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We were very lucky to have Mr Rose come back to visit us again. This time he took the planetarium with him, we enjoyed learning about the stars and constellations. Most of the Primary 4/5s went in the morning and some of us had to go after break with the 6/7s  as we are a big class and they don’t have as many in their class. It was great fun and a great way to end our space topic!

Art, Confident Individuals, Cooperative learning, Expressive Arts, Group work, Personalisation and Choice, Responsible Citizens, Space, Successful Learners, Topic

Building space rockets

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On Thursday the 16th we were asked to get into the same groups that we were in when we made our posters. Miss Nicholson and Miss Morrison told us that we were going to be making space rockets out of junk. It had to be taller than a ruler but smaller than 1 metre. They had gathered a lot of ‘junk’ for us to choose from. We took it in turns for each group member to go to the desk with the ‘junk’ and select one piece at a time that we thought would be good to use for a rocket. Once we gathered enough resources we then began building our rockets.

Today we got to paint our junk model space rockets that we built.

Once we were finished we had to think of a name for our rocket, where our rocket was going and why and who was in the rocket! We had great fun and worked really well in our groups and with other groups as we had to share the masking tape.

Animation, Art, Confident Individuals, Expressive Arts, Group work, Literacy and English, Personalisation and Choice, Space, Topic

Animation

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We have been really busy working on our animations today. Miss Nicholson showed us the app ZU3D, this is how we are going to film our animations.

First of all we had to think of what we wanted to happen in our animation. Miss Nicholson told us it had to be about space and that we had to have at least 3 interesting facts about space within the animation, but the rest was up to us to decide. First of all we thought about an idea of what would happen in our animation. We had to then decide if we were going to make the animation 2D or 3D. Once we decided this we had to think about the characters we would have within the animation. We thought about what they would look like, how we would make them and the resources we would then need. Some of us decided we would bring in little lego figures as we were going to make our animation 3D. We then thought about the background/setting and what we wanted this to look like so we drew little sketches and thought about all the resources we would need. We then moved on to props, if we were going to have any, what would they be, how would we make them and the resources we needed.

Then we were ready to create a storyboard. Miss Nicholson gave us a sheet with lots of boxes on it. We used this to plan out our animation and what had to happen, what characters/setting/props would be needed for each stage. This will help when filming as we will have a clear picture of what will happen and what we need.

Then we looked at writing scripts for the animation as we had to speak in order to get the 3 facts into it.  Finally we looked at any sound effects or music that we might need/want.

Once we had finished all this we got to begin making our characters. background and props.

Miss Nicholson took us in groups to show us the app on her Ipad and the different features of ZU3D. We learned about the onion skin, this is the last frame you captured over the current image you are seeing. Its like a ghost picture so that you know where your last frame was and can see how much your character has moved. This prevents your animation from jumping all over the place. We then looked at how to add in music or sound effects as well as adding in titles, speech bubbles/text and credits. Its quite a good app but it will take a long while to film our animations as you have to move everything very slowly.

This is very exciting!

Art, Confident Individuals, Cooperative learning, Expressive Arts, Group work, Literacy and English, Personalisation and Choice, Presentations, Social Studies, Space, Successful Learners, Topic

space posters

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Today we presented our space posters that we made in groups with p67.There was 10 groups. When we were making our posters then at the start the youngest person had to pick a envelope. In side the envelopes there was names of planets. There was:

the sun,

Venus,

Mercury,

Earth,

the Moon,

Mars,

Jupiter,

Saturn,

Uranus,

Neptune

I think we all had a lot of fun

 

 

Confident Individuals, Cooperative learning, Expressive Arts, Group work, Literacy and English, Personalisation and Choice, Presentations, Social Studies, Space, Successful Learners, Technologies, Topic

Cooperative learning with P6/7

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We have been working with P6/7 as part of our topic, Space. Their topic is space too.  On Wednesday the 3rd we started working with them. All the P6/7s came in to our classroom and we got put into groups. Then Miss Morrison explained what we were going to do. Each of the  groups had to make a poster about a planet. It had to be very colourful and have lots of information. One person from each group had to pick an envelope and inside it would tell  us which planet we were going to be researching. My group did the Sun. We each had a different role. There was 2 Head Researchers, 1 Head Illustrator and  1 Head Writer. We had to look in books for information first then after about 20 minutes we were allowed to look on computers. We didn’t get much done on the actual poster but it was good because we got together again on Monday and worked on our posters. Today before lunch P6/7 came through because we were going to show our posters to the class. We were allowed 5 minutes in our groups to decide who was going to present the poster.  My group The Sun went first. Our poster looked really good. After that, all the other groups went. All the posters looked really good! I really enjoyed working with P6/7.

Art, Expressive Arts, Literacy and English, Personalisation and Choice, Space, Successful Learners, Topic

Space rockets

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We have been very busy designing our own rockets and making a picture for them to go on so it looks like they are in space. Once we had finished our pictures and glued our rockets on we thought about things associated with space and created acrostic poems. We worked really hard and came up with some fantastic poems so we thought you should see some of them!