Today the children continued to work on the Rwandan story of Meme.

They worked in three different groups. With Rory, the children explored the rhythm of Rwanadan music and used sound equipment to compose different theme tunes for their animation. They then tried summing up the story in the form of a rap.

Miriam’s group used Photoshop to turn hand drawn characters into digital drawings, and with a camera, took photographs of the characters using a green screen.

Finally, Ronan continued to develop the characters’ personalities for the animation. He worked with the children on reading and writing the script, whilst using French dictionaries to find the necessary vocabulary.

Today’s Sclingoshorts French session began with the game ‘Fetch me a Pumpkin’. This game, along with the others the children have learned, will be included in the website that the children are helping to create!

After the game, the children were given the choice of three groups that they could be part of. After a little compromise, all the children appeared happy with their choice!

Ronan led the first group. This group is working on creating the script and acting. First of all the children had to use French dictionaries to collect all of the vocabulary they would need for their part of the story. They then practised voicing and recording what they thought the characters would sound like!

The second group worked with Miriam. This group will be working on creating the art and visual effects needed for the animation. The children spent time sketching the characters and their surroundings for the part of the story they are to animate. They will then use the programme ‘Stop motion’ to draw, colour and add textures to their drawings.

The final group worked with Rory. This group compiled a list of sound effects that they felt were needed to tell the story and used the website ‘Freesound’ to record and download their sounds.

This was a very busy session. The children all engaged with their tasks well and learned lots whilst having fun!

Today the weather was kind to us and Primary 6G finally made it to the Queen Victoria School. They joined their peers from Newton and St Marys to learn volleyball. The session was led by Jill MacLachlan, our cluster PE specialist. The children were complimented on how quickly they picked up the skills and were able to join their peers in mini games. Everybody had great fun!

At today’s second session of SCLINGOSHOTS we were joined by Naomi, who is a story teller.

She captured the children’s imagination with a story about Rwanda. The country of Rwanda will be the main focus for the children’s work. They will try to make their animations as culturally accurate as possible, as well as getting the opportunity to explore other French speaking countries too.

This term P6G are taking part in a 10 week project called SCLINGOSHOTS. The children will work on animation, film making, and recording with a French focus to bring everything together. They will work with Rory, a sound expert, Miriam, an animator and Ronan who is an actor and French speaker. Hopefully the end result will be a variety of animations, in French, which will be included in a website for children which teaches about the culture as well as the language of France.

Today’s session began with a couple of warm up games – Rubber Chicken and ‘Allez’.

The children then split into 4 groups to explore:

Sound – Rory taught the children how to use microphones
Animation – the children worked with Miriam who introduced the basics of animation using Crazy Talk
French – Ronan worked with the children on their pronunciation and language skills
Research – the children explored an existing website ‘passeport pour la francophonie’ to find out what they liked and what they felt could be improved upon.

We didn’t manage to get all the rotations fitted in this week but we will finish them off next Monday.

It was great fun! Hopefully we will be able to post weekly updates and photos to let you know how we are getting along!

Today Primary 6G took part in a curling taster session led by Active Stirling at The Peak. The children began with a short warm up session before hitting the ice. Some of the children had been fortunate enough to take part in the sessions last year when they were in Primary 5, but for the rest it was a totally new experience!

As the session progressed the children’s confidence grew as you can see from the photos below. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed their afternoon and we would like to thank Derek, Norman and Elspeth for giving up their time to share their love of the sport with the children.

On Friday 3rd November Primary 6 visited the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, Edinburgh as a follow up to last week’s school visit. In groups, the children were taken on a very interesting guided tour of the Parliament building, saw where our MSPs go about their daily business and were allowed to visit the Debating Chamber!

Afterwards the children visited The National Museum of Scotland where they participated in a Jacobite workshop and visited the Bonnie Prince Charlie & the Jacobites exhibition. This exhibition had more than 300 spectacular objects including paintings, costumes, jewellery, documents and weapons from the Jacobite period. This gave the children a taster of what is to come next term! It was a fantastic day out. Thank you so much to our parents who gave up their time to accompany us!

Following on from our ‘Body Systems’ topic last term, P6G have been demonstrating their knowledge of different body parts and how they can be worked into a fitness programme. In groups, the children have designed their own fitness circuits and are taking it in turns to lead P.E. lessons. Some photos of today’s session follow!

Today Primary 6 were visited by Mrs Millar, an Education Officer for the Scottish Parliament.

We found out lots of useful information about the Scottish Parliament and how it works. We took part in voting, using Click-a-pads, participated in a mini-election that was won by the Schools Party, and debated the motion: Smoking should be banned. We learned lots and now we are ready for our visit to the Parliament next week!