Author: Miss Conner

Primary 6 Cross Country

Yesterday our Primary 6 pupils from both classes attended an Active Schools event with other cluster Primary schools. After walking the 1.2km course the girls were first to run. Jaymin ran a very competitive race and came in second overall. The boys were last to race and Coben and Jake ran well to earn second and third place. Our boys won overall boys team. All winners will have the opportunity to attend another event at the beginning of next session.

We are very proud of all of the Primary 6 pupils who took part yesterday. Every runner took part with enthusiasm and demonstrated excellent sportsmanship towards their fellow competitors.

Red Nose Day 2022

As part of our fundraising efforts for Comic Relief, Primary 6B will be selling noses in school starting on Friday 11th March. Noses are £1.50 each.

We will also have a dress down pyjama day in school on Friday 18th March for Red Nose Day itself. We ask that children who come to school wearing their pyjamas bring a small donation towards our fundraising.

Primary 6B World Book Day Celebrations

Last week Primary 6B participated in many learning activities to celebrate World Book Day 2022.

Firstly, we visited our new School Library and thoroughly enjoyed our visit, exploring the new areas and enjoying a quiet read. In class we considered ourselves as readers, in particular our current strengths and personal preferences in texts. We designed book covers for our own stories and watched a live event with some famous authors including Michael Morpurgo. In small teams we created characters for World Book Day on Friday.

 

Primary 6A and P6B Artist Visit

On Monday 21st February both Primary 6 classes worked with artist Svetlana Kondakova to design a memorial artwork project for the new Almondell Cemetery.

To allow visitors time for reminiscing and quiet observation the theme for the artwork was water and nature. The children considered how peaceful watching a river could be and used local plants and flowers to decorate the top of the sculpture so it represented an autumnal river with plant life floating on top. Each child designed their own templates before cutting out and making their own design. These were then collated to make a larger sculpture including all 52 individual pieces. The paper template for the sculpture is now proudly displayed in school. We cannot wait to see the finished sculpture in the community.

 

Primary 6A and Primary 6B World War 1 Learning

Last Thursday Primary 6 pupils had their first digital lesson with Alan. Alan  has worked closely with our school in the past to support learning about the Great Wars. Our first session focused on the main causes of the First World War. He told us all about the events that took place prior to the war and how Britain came to be involved. We then learned all about his great uncles whistle that was used in the trenches to tell soldiers to go over the top. The whistle has been passed down through generations, going to the Second World War with Alan’s father and then to more recent conflict with Alan himself. Our session this week will link to our class novel ‘War Horse’. We are going to learn all about the role of animals in the First World War.

Scots Week in P6B

Over the last week or so we have been expanding our knowledge of Scots language in class. We have been reading and investigating Scots language and created our own class Scots dictionary/ word bank to use in class. We then used this new vocabulary to write our own Scots poetry. Our poems were structured in clear verses, with Scots vocabulary and some rhyming couplets. After learning about the origins of tartan we then decorated our poems with a tartan border. They are now proudly displayed in our classroom.

We also created some Scary Scottish Characters describing them fully in Scots. This week we participated in an online session with Scottish author Victoria Williamson. Finally, we made use of our Scots word bank to create a Scots alliteration alphabet here are a few examples of our characters and alliterations.

P6B Book Week Update

Ross Mackenzie Report- Authors Live                                                                         Our class have been reading the Nowhere Emporium by Ross Mackenzie. It is the first book is his trilogy. We watched an Authors Live session with him in class. He told us about how he produced the idea to write about a magical shop that can go anywhere at any time. He said he saw a shop in Renfrew High Street and asked questions to himself such as what if it could travel in time? The shop had a blood red Curtain, and tiny thing’s you want to pick up everywhere. He told us that his idols where Roald Dahl and Stephen King, and that the book that got him into writing was the Witches. Then he told us that if he was to be stuck on a deserted island and could only bring three books, he would bring the Harry Potter series, Northern Lights and the Witches, since that was the book that got him into writing. He said that reading and writing are his passion and finds it fun and freeing.

Why not create just one book? The reason why he didn’t just create one book is because you would want to know what happens next and because if the author has done it right you start to care about the characters.

What makes you want to write three books? He said that he loves to write not because it’s his job but because it’s his pride he feels like he’s in another world were anything is possible. He also says he doesn’t always plan what’s next, it’s like driving in the fog, you can only see what’s in front of you that you know the the direction you are in, he also told us that the story kind of creates itself. He also told us that he doesn’t know where his ideas come from, they just appear. He felt a bit sad and happy at the same time when he finished the series because they felt like family. He introduced the final installment in the Nowhere Emporium Trilogy called the ‘Otherwhere Emporium’. He read us Chapter 6- The White Feather. It was gripping! We cannot wait to read it. We loved that he used Scottish names for his new characters.

Awards: As well as being a brilliant author, he has won a Blue Peter book award and a Scottish Book Award. He told us reading can make us feel better and to read as much as possible. He said that he loved all the things that happen after he finishes a book, like with working in schools.

Questions: How would you design the movie set? He said he would make the shop a junk shop full of small trinkets and wonderful toys you would want to pick up and keep for yourself. He really wishes magic was real and likes to imagine magic existing within our world and us not knowing.

By Coben and Taim

Amazon Future Engineers Webinar-Primary 6

On Thursday October 7th both Primary 6 classes attended a digital webinar with Amazon. The live 1 hour session was highly engaging, fast moving and well presented by a group of Amazon staff demonstrating the whole process from clicking and placing your order to your packages arriving at your home. The webinar was a mixture of live streamed interviews and demonstrations of each step your package takes, videos explaining the technology and also interactive multiple choice questions. There was an opportunity to have staff respond to you questions in a live Q&A session at the end.

We were fascinated by the amount of digital technology used by Amazon to carry out work in their factories and distribution centres. We learned all about algorithms, databases, computer science and cloud computing as well as how they are used to make Amazon as efficient a company as possible. Keeping the process as quick and efficient as possible. We were so shocked to see that all products are stored on ‘Pods’ which are completely controlled and moved around by robots. The robots scan QR codes on the factory floor to constantly update their position and to plan the fastest route to a human picker. Staff who must access the floor in an emergency must wear a custom made AI safety vest that cost Amazon around £9.8m to design. We were also shocked that the products were all stored randomly as the Amazon research showed this was actually more efficient than organising and storing products in alphabetical order or grouping them in any way. We also loved seeing some of the other machines in action and finding out about ‘machine learning’ so that technology can adapt and learn to keep the company as efficient as possible. We were shown how quality control was carried out at various stages.

The ingenuity and forward thinking of the company was so exciting, as well as their dedication to reducing their carbon footprint by cutting packaging by creating more ‘frustration free packaging’ and purchasing over 100,000 electric vans. It was a great opportunity to interact with such a modern and exciting company with over 1.3million employees, we agreed as classes we are all familiar with those smiley boxes!

Scott said “I thought it was really interesting to see some of the machines and I was shocked at what they did. Looking at them I wouldn’t have guessed what they could do.”

Jack said, “I thought it would be a normal deliver service but it’s so much more than that!”.

Erin thought, “It was really interesting because I thought it would just be a video of how they did it but there were all these robotics. We actually heard from real workers!”.

Jake said, “I like there was a real Q&A quiz and the interactive questions so would could join in.”

 

Scottish Maths Week in P6B

This week in Primary 6B we have been participating in a range of maths and numeracy challenges for Scottish Maths Week. We also came 363rd in the National Sumdog Challenge this week, out of 7761 participating classes!

We have been working in pairs and teams to apply our skills in numeracy and maths to some real life problem solving contexts.  One of our Challenges was to solve the ‘Fidget Spinner Mystery’. We had to solve multiple clues to work out who sabotaged the classes fidget spinners- can you believe it was a TEACHER?! Here are some photos of us working out some of the clues with the support of our resources and devices in class.

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“The Fidget Spinner Challenge was really fun!” said Millie.

“The Sumdog contest was really good and exciting. We kept track of our place all week.” said Daniel.

“We were so surprised we came in 363rd place!” said Josh.

Lacie said, “It was good to get on Sumdog more this week.”

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