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.

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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.

RME Assessment

This week was our last week for the term in RME. The assessment activity the pupils were to complete was a trailer, advertising one of the festivals they had learned about during the term.

We had looked at Diwali, Hanukkah and Christmas and I let the children choose which festival they wanted to share about in their assessment.

The students then co-constructed the success criteria with me for their work before setting off on the activity.

Our success criteria was;

• Clearly identify which festival they were doing.
• Have the members of the whole group named in the trailer.
• Include lots of facts about their story.

The classes all worked really hard during this activity and although there were some groups that had problems with dynamics, they generally were focused on their learning through the entire session.

After undertaking this activity with the first class last week I realised that the best way of approaching the trailers was to first write out the 'story'. Groups that didn't do this then struggled to focus their work through the task and so I made sure they all completed their storylines before they began to take films and pictures.



I found this a particularly interested assessment activity as it really required the students to think about what they knew happened during each festival. They had to fill in a certain number of spaces in the video and had to think up that many different features of the festivals. Some of the groups retold the stories of the festivals rather than looking at the actual festival, but this also shows a deeper understanding than they had to start.

Buddy Reading

In P1 the children have taken to their new reading programme with great fervor. Now they are developing skills that allow them to buddy read effectively.

This enables children to support each other and model good reading strategies, whilst also developing an enjoyable reading experience as it is something that they are doing with their friends.

We talked about how to sit and behave correctly when buddy reading and covered the EEKK approach.



Then the children spent 10-15 minutes buddy reading in the class. They even got to choose their own buddies!

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Measurement Assessment MNU 1-11a

This term we have been learning about length and weight. I wanted the assessment for this unit to be a practical hands on activity and spent a while thinking about what we could do.

We ended up making a Lego model that met certain requirements. They had to weigh 300g and measure 25cm (height, length or width).

The children seemed to really enjoy this activity and worked hard to meet the criteria for their models. Only three children actually achieved it though.

I wasn't too concerned about the children managing to get their model to weigh 300g and measure 25cm but I was interested in the children being able to show me that they were competent in using and reading scales and rulers correctly. There was a lot of evidence of this through the entire assessment and the students also got opportunities for developing other knowledge and skills too.

Through the morning I had plenty of opportunity to sit with each pupil and assess their understanding of the measurement topics we have covered and have left the information for the class teacher to use in their paperwork.

Student Led Music

For the past few weeks there has been a student in my class who was really keen to teach The Cup Song to her classmates.



On Monday, she got her opportunity.

When the rest of the class were told about this there were some initial issues as they re-adjusted their mindset around their peer. I said they had to treat her as they would a teacher and I was going to be watching to make sure that happened. Once they started learning the song, the class quickly fell into good relationship.

The girl did a great job in sharing with her classmates and managed to teach most of them the whole pattern. She shared the job with a friend who already knew the song and they worked with half the class and smaller groups to support the rest to learn it.

I feel that student led activities are hugely beneficial for the students in a range of ways and hope that this activity will open the door for more requests/suggestions from the children in this class so that they can become more involved and engaged in their learning.

Outdoor Pattern Making

As part of our shape work we decided to go outside and make patterns with the items we found in the playground.

I was particularly impressed with the patterns that the students managed to create which included a lot of patterns with 2 piece repeating pattern but a few 3 part patterns and more.

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RME

This week we have been learning about the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. We introduced the topic last week and got the opportunity to make and play with driedels. This was a great game and the pupils all grasped the concept quickly and enjoyed playing with each other.

We used a template from the BBC website.



This video showed us how to use the driedels and used counters to play.

This week we looked further into the hanukkiah which is a special symbol for Hanukkah. The class discussed the differences between the hanukkiah and menorah, which are two very similar jewish items.

We saw that the hanukkiah had more candle arms than the menorah and also featured a shamash which is the central candel holder that is slightly higher.

We then used paper to create an art piece based on the hanukkiah. The classes did a fantastic job with this and had to solve a lot of problems along the way.