Measurement

In P1/2 last week we were continuing our measurement activities. The class were to create a body garden using measurements from their body to create the different parts of the picture. The idea came from the NZ Maths Website.

Some of the students really impressed me during this activity and worked hard to measure different parts of their bodies to create flowers and insects in the garden. There were a few pupils who chose to miss out the step of measuring anything and were just sticking any old pieces of wool on their page. Although we discussed the fact that everything had to be measured but these students needed a reminder through the activity.

The students managed to make a lot of mess in the classroom and there was wool everywhere but we managed to clear it up well before Mrs Press came back to class!

We are continuing to make good progress on our height chart in the class. Mrs Whittet has been working hard with the pupils during her time with us.

Active Maths

In P1/2 we have been doing measurement. We're covering the Es&Os MNU 0-11a and 1-11a at the moment.



We are taking an active approach to this class and so far have covered a range of different activities.

In our first week we went outside and used our resources in the playground. The students found an object somewhere in the playground and then in groups ordered them from biggest to smallest.

Then the students worked with a buddy to compare the weight of their two objects. Our final outside activity was lining the children up from tallest to shortest, and we added a little bit of competition with girls against boys.

The students really enjoyed getting outside and I find that this encourages more engagement from the students and a lot more freedom for the pupils that they  might miss out on in the class.

Then we created our own block cities. This was an activity I saw on pinterest. The students were to use blocks and coloured paper to create 4 buildings on their page. They then had to re-measure using the blocks to fill in the information page that was stuck to the top of the page.

The ability of the students in this activity really surprised me and the students all showed a strong understanding of measure using non-standard units and created some fantastic pieces of work. They were all able to talk to me about which building was the tallest and which building was the smallest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have also been creating a class height chart. This was another activity from pinterest. Using our SLA time in class we are adding each student to the height chart. This is a great quick visual way for the students to be able to compare themselves with their classmates. We have already had some discussions about the information we can gather from the students who are up so far.

Our final activity so far has been measuring things around the class. The students really enjoyed this activity but their favourite by far was measuring each other. We had pupils lying all over the floor with their friends creating cube towers next to them so they could count how long they were.

We will need to move on to other measurement types soon and will continue to integrate active lessons for both volume and weight.

Outdoor Education

During the holidays I attended an outdoor education session and having been putting the ideas into action in class.

In P1/2 we went outside to make clocks with the materials we could find in the playground, then showed times on the clocks.

The students seemed to really enjoy the activity outdoors. The children worked well in their groups and showed a good understanding of the o'clock times, which was the learning intention for the activity.

The pupils also got an opportunity outside to use the creativity and imaginations with students finding fossils, spider man's buried arm and other interesting things around the playground.

I felt that the playground doesn't provide the greatest environment for outdoor learning but it is nice to have a change of scenery from the classroom and think that it also benefits the students, whilst getting everybody some fresh air.

• 

Buoyancy

In P5 we are covering SCN 2-08B looking at buoyancy.

We started by looking at how weight effects buoyancy and did so by using a large tub of water and a small tub to float inside.
The students were tasked with getting their tubs to float, hover and sink.

We then discussed how the weight effected the buoyancy and therefore allowed them to achieve the challenge. We didn't manage to find anything in the classroom that was heavy enough to fit in the tubs so we headed out into the playground to find some stones to help us achieve our goal.

The students then completed some reflective questions about the learning covered in their activities.

Shadow Puppet Edu

Last week we had a staff training session on the iPads and were introduced to the app called Shadow Puppet Edu.

Since the training session I have used the app a couple of times during my biology classes. After a quick training session the children were quick to pick up how to use the app and worked away at their tasks eagerly.

In P4 I asked the students to find an image of the arm bones and then to use this in their shadow puppet to label the clavicle, scapula, humerus, ulna and radius.

This required a few different skills from the students as although I had given them the names of the bones I wanted them to label I hadn't told them which one was which. After a little bit of discussion time in their groups the children realised they had to use safari on the iPads to identify which bone was which. They then drew a quick sketch to label as a reference point before completing their videos.

The only setback was setting up the iPads to allow the app to use the camera and microphone as often the children would just click don't allow when the request came up and then wouldn't be able to use the features they needed. Once all the iPads have been used for the app this won't be a problem anymore, and it is easy enough to fix.

The next time I used the app I used airdrop to send out the picture I wanted the children to use for their shadow puppets instead of letting them look online for a picture. This was because I wasn't comfortable with some of the images they were discovering when trying to find anatomical images on google.

Here are a couple of the shadow puppets created by the students during the week.

iPad App Ideas

At school I have taken on the role of iPad coordinator. As part of this I created a document to share with the other teachers at school to show them different ways to use a variety of apps in the classroom.


We have started to receive some iPad training at school that is introducing me to new apps for use in the classroom.  This guide is more of a working document that I will continue to add to as I learn about new apps and other ways to use the ones we already have.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

In P2/3 the students have been learning about Scotland as next week is Burns Night.

I decided to do some Scottish art with them and chose to look at Charles Rennie Mackintosh as his art is so iconic and reasonably easy to produce.

First we talked about who Charles Rennie Mackintosh was and then looking at some examples of his work, which the children were impressed with. We watched a video from YouTube by Nichole Hahn, who sounds like she comes from somewhere over the Atlantic.



The video was really good as it went through the process very clearly and step by step.

We then had some practice at drawing our flowers and using a ruler to draw straight lines before the students were to come up with two different design options. This was an important step as some of the pupils in the class struggled to draw the roses initially but the practice opportunity enabled them to be successful and they ended up creating some fantastic pieces.

Once the class had chosen their final designs they enlarged them onto a nice plain piece of paper and coloured them in. We looked at some more examples of Mackintosh's art and chose our colour palette from them.

Help! My fibula hurts!

We have continued our exploration of the organs and bones in the human body.

First we recapped what we had learnt about lungs and ribs last week - the children needed a bit of encouragement to talk about breathing being important for bringing in oxygen but showed a good understanding of this concept by the end of the lesson.

We then did an activity to see who had the biggest lung capacity in the class. It was important to explicitly tell the students we were talking about lung capacity not just who had the biggest lungs. The idea for the lesson came from some online searching. I found the website blogshewrote and the post about measuring lung capacity. I felt that this was a good activity as we had covered measuring last term and it required relatively little resources.

The students were instructed to use one breath and to fill their balloon as much as they could with that breath. We made our predictions before we started and I said I thought the child who talked the most would have the biggest. After the initial excitement of being given a balloon the class soon settled down to see who had the biggest lung capacity.

They really enjoyed this activity and it was good to see them getting a bit more practice at measuring too. The results ranged from 15cm through to 53cm and it was great to end up with a 'winner' at the end.

Science 1-12a and 1-13a

We started back after the holidays with a bang! In primary 3/4 we are learning about our organs and skeleton and how to keep ourselves healthy.

First we undertook some activities to do with making a ping pong ball hover. We did it in three stages.
1. I gave the students a ping pong ball and asked them if they could make it hover. We talked about what hovering was and told them they couldn't use any other equipment. After they had experimented with this I saw 4 different techniques appearing. Lying and blowing, lying and blowing whilst cupping their mouths, standing and blowing, standing and blowing whilst cupping their mouths. We talked about the different techniques and compared which was the most effective.

2. I then gave the students a straw to use. We had decided that cupping their mouths meant that they were directing the air more towards the ping pong ball and wondered if using a straw would help them to achieve the hovering better or not.

3. Finally we tried using straws and cups together so wee if that was any easier. Before we tried using the equipment the students predicted whether they thought it would be easier or harder and gave reasons for their thoughts.

This activity was used as an introduction to talking about our bodies. Today's lesson was talking about lungs and ribs. We discussed what lungs are for, how to keep them healthy and things that are bad for them.

Then we went outside to try out some activities that would make our lungs stronger. We walked and breathed in for 4 steps then out for 8 steps. The students found this quite hard and seemed to think they were supposed to be holding their breath rather than exhaling for the whole time. Then we did some short sprints until the children became out of breath and talked about how that would make our lungs stronger.