Friday 18 May 2012

Cabinet Minister Michael Russell at Sciennes





Very well done to Ms French's class and to Amir and Mixie for their outstanding presentation to Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning Mr Michael Russell when he visited their classroom on Wednesday 16th May. All the adults, including Scottish Government officials, journalists, photographers, education visitors and the BBC were extremely impressed by the pupils and how well they are using iPads to help their learning.

Monday 7 May 2012

Tam O Shanter animation by P6A

Last term our class had a lot of fun learning about animation.  We started off by learning some animation techniques, for example, how to make a door look like it is opening and shutting, or a bird look like it is flapping it's wings.  Then the class was divided into groups and were each given a scene from the poem Tam O' Shanter to work on.  The teams had to decide on a setting for their animation, create a background then decide which characters they needed and how they would animate the characters.  After that they had to decide what would happen in their section of the animation before filming it using a camera.  Finally, they took turns working on my computer, through lunch hours and breaks, to add title slides and sound.

We had a few issues with the software as it kept crashing and moving the sound about.  The lovely help people at I can animate explained to me that it was a glitch in certain computers to do with their usable memory and have tirelessly worked to create an update to the software that stops this happening.  I now have the update and it now works perfectly.

You may notice that the animation runs a little fast, this seems to be to do with the conversion to an mp4 clip.  Also the sound cut off at the end.  Apart from that we hope you enjoy part one of Tam O Shanter.  Part two will follow soon.

Saturday 5 May 2012

Primary 6A have a great time at Portrait Gallery

Yesterday we were lucky enough to have a fantastic trip to the portrait gallery.  As a final round off for the Jacobite project that we finished at the beginning of this term, we took part in a Jacobite drama workshop.  The workshop, let by Marjorie, was extremely enjoyable and myself, Ruth and Flora were entertained by  P6A's drama skills.  There would be a huge selection of talented actors and actresses from our class, if any casting directors were to pass by!

The workshop involved the children in lots of exercises such as, still pictures and role plays around what would make a good or bad King and reporting live from the royal wedding of James, the Old Pretender to the beautiful Polish princess, Maria Karolina Sobieska.

It was lovely to do have the stimulus of the wonderful paintings, which were brought alive by Marjorie's stories.  The building itself is really conducive to imagining royalty; with it's gorgeous arches and high, decorated ceilings.

Get a taste of the lovely time we had by clicking on the link below to see an Animoto slideshow of our trip.

http://animoto.com/play/pAA4iABIoSWMnqBq0i9l2g