STEM – St Ninian's Primary School

Still time to enter!

For the last few weeks I have been posting about inspirational female role models from the world of STEM. It’s now your turn!

This is an optional task, but if you do wish to get involved there is a free science pencil for everyone who enters! (it has a rubber on the end too!)

Using a sheet no bigger than A3 research an inspirational female from the world of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and create a poster. I would really encourage you to look at your own family and friends and you could write about them, as it does not have to be a historical figure or someone who is well known in this field. I would love to see research as to; what do they do? where do they work? how did they get into this career? Make your poster bright and eye catching as it will form part of a display in our school.

I will be looking for anyone interested in participating to bring me their posters before the Christmas holiday.

Good luck.

Influential “Space” Scientists

Libby Jackson photograph

Libby Jackson – Space Flight Director

Libby Jackson is currently the Human Spaceflight and Microgravity Programme Manager for the UK Space Agency, so she is responsible for the UK’s Human Spaceflight and Microgravity programmes on the International Space Station (ISS).

This is how she responded to being asked…

What advice would you give to someone who wants to work in space?

Remember there is not a job in the world you can’t do in the world of human space flight – it needs everything, from lawyers and medics to economists and teachers. Believe in yourself, and don’t take any notice of anyone who doesn’t believe in you. Work hard and be nice to people. And enjoy your study and work! That’s really important – I love working in space operations!

Influential Scientists

Sheila Rowan

Sheila Rowan graduated from Glasgow University. She has spent much of her career researching gravitational wave detection and she has played an important part in some of the most significant scientific discoveries in this field this century. In 2016 she was appointed Chief Scientific Advisor for Scotland in 2016 and she also currently holds the position of Director of the Institute for Gravitational Research, at the University of Glasgow. We can all be inspired by her dedication to her work and her love for physics.

Influential Scientists

Lesley Yellowlees

Born – London 1953

Field – Inorganic chemistry and Electrochemistry

Professor Yellowees was born in London but has lived for many years in Edinburgh and graduated from Edinburgh University. She has dedicated much of her career to researching and investigating renewable energy and solar cells. In 2012 she became the first female president for the Royal Society of Chemistry (until 2014). She promotes equality for all in the field of Science and has been involved in shaping the Scottish curriculum.

She is a great role model for all in the field of STEM.

Influential Scientists

If asked, how many influential scientists from the past and present can you name? How would you do? How many that you could name are female?

Throughout this session these regular blog posts will help us learn a little more about the well known and not so well known women who have been pioneering in the field of STEM.

Marie Curie is probably one of the more well known female scientists, here are some facts about her.

Occupation: Scientist

Born: November 7, 1867 in Warsaw, Poland

Died: July 4, 1934 in Passy, Haute-Savoie, France

Best known for: Her work in radioactivity

Nobel Prizes : In 1903, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Marie and Pierre Curie as well as Henri Becquerel for their work in radiation. Marie became the first woman to be awarded the prize. In 1911 Marie won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering the two elements, polonium and radium. She was the first person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes. Marie became very famous. Scientists came from around the world to study radioactivity with Marie. Soon doctors found that radiology could help with curing cancer.

Death : Marie died on July 4, 1934. She died from overexposure to radiation, both from her experiments and from her work with X-ray machines. Today there are lots of safety measures to keep scientists from getting overexposed to the rays.

If you know of a female scientist that we could highlight in these posts write a reply here and we will include your suggestions in future posts.

P1M Weekly News

We all came back from our October break refreshed and eager to learn more! It was a fantastic start back and all children have continued to show their love for learning this week.

This week we met Mr Slater who is going to be working with us for 5 weeks. We have really enjoyed showing Mr Slater our classroom and learning and we look forward to working with him over the next few weeks.

We are continuing our addition work in numeracy and a mysterious machine had appeared in our class this week – an addition machine! This machine helps us with our addition work. We enjoyed using it so much in our numeracy lessons that there was a big queue to play with it at golden time! Kayla, Esmee and Rutendo were using the machine at golden time and knew that 100 add 1 would make one hundred and one… great job girls! We are really enjoying learning big numbers and we love the big numbers song on youtube – have you listened to this at home? Kerr was even able to write the number 100 on the board this week too! WOW!

We learned the ‘e’ and ‘o’ sounds this week. These sounds (along with all other vowel sounds) live in a special vowel house. Ask your child to tell you about the vowel house story? It is quite a long story but can you remember 3 parts of the story? Next week our sounds are going to be ‘f’ and ‘b’ – can you think of any words that begin with the sounds ‘f’ or ‘b’. All new sounds will be added to the sounds jotter on Monday for homework.

We started a new initiative this week called ‘Play: Plan, Do, Review’. We love playing in P1 and it is not ‘Just Play’. One of our favourite ways to learn is through play. We have been focusing on literacy through play for 6 sessions. We have 6 stations to explore during these stations:

Puppet theatre – children use their talking and listening skills through play. They are also required to share and take turns. When some make up and showcase their own story using the puppets others are required to listen to the story.
Story corner – children choose a soft toy and a story book. They are then asked to read their story to a soft boy. Miss Meechan enjoys joining in with the play at this station and reading a story to us too. We also enjoy finding words and sounds that we know in the books.
The office – this station encourages children to use their phonics knowledge and write out notes for each other, taking phonecalls and in general writing for enjoyment. Whilst at this station this week, Jarred drew his own representation of the vowel house – Miss Meechan was very impressed with this!
iPads – we are constantly developing our technology skills and we have been playing literacy games on the ipads. Our favourite one is the ABC app. Have you played this at home?
Story telling – a favourite so far has been the blue table. At the blue table there are lots of character toys for us to play with. Some characters which we can recognise – fireman sam, iggle piggle – and others which we make up characters for. This week, Adam created a story “iggle piggle was driving the giraffe through the jungle and a bad guy chased him but fell off the giraffe”. Adam also drew a picture of this in his play diary.
Letter formation – at the yellow table this week there has been a range of materials to use to practise our letter formation – paint bags, chunky pens, sand tray, cubes, play-doh. We love using the paint bags to write our names and letter shapes.

Below are some picture of our ‘Play: Plan, Do, Review’ highlights:

This week was STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) week. We took part in a range of different activities to begin to develop our knowledge of STEM. We all participated in 3 activities. Firstly, we were looked water and absorption. In pairs we were exploring what would happen when we put a sponge into water. We used lots of different scientific language during this group: “soaking, floating, sinking, changing” – it was very wet but very fun play! Secondly, we watched the three little pigs story. We were then given pipecleaners, lollipop sticks, lego bricks and animal figures and we acted out this story – what house was the strongest? What house was the weakest? And finally, we completed a session which looked at forces. We were racing toy cars down a ramp and we predicted how far the car would travel by looking at the number line. We found out that if the ramp for the car was higher or steeper the car would got faster and further. We have loved STEM week this year!

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Meechan

STEM week

As the title suggest the theme of the week was STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. The children took part in some classroom and outdoor STEM challenges to help them learn more about the STEM subjects.

Challenge 1: As a SMARTSTART activity one morning the activities were linked to Technology and Engineering – using the ipad apps, using straws to build things and using sticklebricks. Some children worked individually or in pairs.

Challenge 2: The children were delighted to come into the classroom to see LOTS of marshmallows and cocktail sticks on their tables. In teams of 2 or 3 they had to build something using the materials they had been given. This challenge was all about teamwork and creativity. It was great to see what they came up with!! They also used maths and had to predict how many sticks or marshmallows they would need, counting the actual amounts, links to 2D and 3d shape and patterns. Amazing what you can do with some sticks and marshmallows!!!

Abigail made a diamond and a square shape, Nathan made Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters, Dexter made some fantastic towers, Klaudia made a house, Sahara made a triangle, Ephraim made a star and lots more….

Challenge 3: The children worked in 3 teams to take their learning outdoors and go on an Autumn walk to see what materials they could find which we could use in our play. This was a great opportunity to talk about seasons, look at day/night, light/dark, colours, nature, etc. Everyone loved being outside in the wind and filled 3 bags full of leaves, berries and twigs, we even found a hairy caterpillar and some slimy slugs!!

Challenge 4: Using the materials from the walk each child had to make something, again this needed creativity and problem solving. James made a sensory bottle and filled it with leaves and water – we will keep an eye on the bottle to see if anything happens to the colour of the water, Bernice made an autumn collage using leaves and twigs, Mark made a tree picture using twigs and leaves, Paul L did some leaf rubbings. We have started a new ‘Play’ display in our classroom to show off some of our learning through play and have added some of our Autumn pictures to this.