Monday 24 September 2012

P7 Active Citizen Conference 2012

The P7 Conference is a special event to welcome you into Primary Seven and help you to think about the things that you want to achieve this year.


Health and Wellbeing - Get Active, Stay Active with Mrs Walker in the Hall

Sustainable Living - Take the Changeworks quiz using Quizdom Voting Handsets to see what changes you can make to your lifestyle.

Health and Wellbeing - Anna Canning is running a practical workshop to show how herbs can help you keep healthy.

Be All You Can Be - an amazing enterprising project for YOU to become a published author with Mary Turner Thomson.

Junior Award Scheme Scotland - what will you do this year to earn your Silver award? Mr Wallace, Active Sports Co-ordinator and Ms Gallagher take you through the steps.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/P7H5KKF


Thursday 20 September 2012

Landscape workshop - Primary 7A

Esther from Pitclay gallery came to our class yesterday to give us a workshop on Landscapes.

We began by thinking about how artists make decisions about shapes, position and tone to create landscapes. We used cut paper and blue tacked different pieces of coloured paper onto our foundation to create a collage landscape. Blue tack allowed us to change our mind about our decisions.

Esther told us how darker tones at the front of the picture can create depth.

We then took a picture of the collage and put it into the app, Brushes and then through layering created the basic shapes of our landscape. Then after looking at landscapes by the artist, David Hockney we began to add variety using lines and different Brushes strokes.

When they are finished we will add a slide show. For now here is an example from Mieke.

Friday 14 September 2012

Sarah Beck-Jenkins' Winning Blog

Congratulation to Sarah Beck-Jenkins in P7B who wrote a fantastic blog about our Water of Leith trip. Here is Sarah's blog below:

We arrived at the Water of Leith Visitor Centre at 9.45 on Thursday morning. First of all we hung our coats and bags up and sat down in the work room. Ruth, our team leader, gave us an introduction about the Water of Leith. First of all she told us that the source was in the Pentland Hills and that its mouth is at the firth of forth where it leads into the sea.

After a quick introduction we walked to the river. That day the river was very fast flowing and deep because of the rain the day before. Our first activity was to measure the depth of the water. Anna and I estimated that the water would be 85cm deep. However, we were quite far off as its actual depth was 47cm. Then Ruth measured the depth of the water next to the weir and we estimated a depth of 27cm but it was only 19cm.

Next, we moved further on where was saw a large green pipe going across the river. Anna and I suggested that it was for sewage in the old days and it turns out we were right! Apparently people used to put their toilet water into the river and the green pipe would suck it all up and carry it to the drains.

Despite having to walk for a while, we were happy to arrive at an opening of the river where we performed an experiment on how fast the water was flowing that day. We tested it on how long it took an orange to travel 15 metres along the river. We tested it three times and the fastest time was 14.24 seconds (Robert was in charge of the stopwatch). I found this activity so much fun.

Next, we all got to go pond dipping which I think everyone really enjoyed. When we got down to the river we were all given a net so that we could try to catch some river bugs and hopefully some fish. I really enjoy river dipping because I do it a lot with my dog. Surprisingly, I caught a bull head fish which gave me a fright because it started to shake in my net but I was really happy that I'd caught it!

Unfortunately, we had to put it back because it was too big to take back to the centre. However, Miss Gaffney took a picture of it (I called it Sienna) and by then it was lunch time so we all walked back to the centre.

After our lunch we followed Ruth into the exhibition centre, I thought it was amazing. As soon as everybody was in the room sitting down on the floor, we looked at the creatures we had found from pond dipping. Some of the creatures we found were: Mayflies, leaches, and a bull head fish. Ruth put them under a microscope so we could see them better. One of the facts Ruth told us is that the Mayflies live under water for 2-3 years and then they come out of the river and turn into flies. When they are flies, the have a life-span of an hour, in which they have to mate and lay their eggs, but then they die.

While we were looking at them we got to draw a picture of our favourite creature. Next, we got to play with the water activity games, my favourites were the water wall and the water gates. We also got to watch a video about the water of Leith in our groups. Finally, we headed back to school after our exciting day.

Sunday 9 September 2012

Water of Leith

Just a quick post to put up some of the photos that Anna took while we were on the trip.

Click this link to see them.

Sunday 2 September 2012

P7B Water of Leith

P7B had a great day out at the Water of Leith too and the pupils loved getting in the water to do a bit of pond dipping. We are now writing our own blogs in class and one pupil's blog will be chosen to be written up next week - so keep posted to find out more about the trip.