Thursday 13 December 2012

P7 Christmas Partay!

Wonderful party with a wonderful year group!

Ms French's 'Islands' game was great fun, where people paired up and tried to balance on an ever diminishing piece of newspaper.



Can you spot the teeny weeny piece of folded newspaper?


Mr Howie and Miss Gaffney span the iPod discs and everyone took to the dance floor.








Primary Sevens really know how to party and throw some moves.
 Very fetching, Mr Howie!




 It was lovely to see Miss Greg at the party. Can you spot her?




 Fabulous Team P7








 Miss Proudfoot joined in the fun.











P7 Christmas Party 2012 from Sciennes Primary School on Vimeo.

Wednesday 12 December 2012

P7 Published Authors!



Six children find themselves in a foster
home - three humans, an alien, an elf and a half-demon. As they get to know each other
they find the house is more magical than they could have imagined. It takes them
on adventures through time and space giving them the opportunity to learn how to work together and trust each other. They learn about life, obsession, discrimination, love, friendship, fear, acceptance, and most of all - hope.
Just being in the house challenges them to see the world in a different way. Can they learn to live together?
.oOo.
This book of short stories was put together through the Pencilling Creative Ideas project. The characters, settings, storylines and conclusions were devised by an inspired group of
pre
-teens from Sciennes
Primary School,
Edinburgh. 
Congratulations to our P7 published authors whose book "Fostering Hope" was officially launched today. Mary Turner Thomson has worked with the pupils for ten weeks, providing workshops which have helped them develop characters, settings and storylines and understand in depth the processes involved in producing a book.
If you haven't done so already, please log on to WisePay to pay for the workshops, launch party and book. 
Additional copies of the book can still be ordered at the discounted price of £5.00 each (RRP £6.99) from school, purchased at Blackwell's or ordered from Amazon.

Here are the representatives from each class who read extracts and gave speeches at the Launch Party:






 

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.

Monday 27 August 2012

Water of Leith - Learning about rivers

Today we went to the Water of Leith visitor centre to do some field work for our river project.

The workshop was led by the lovely Ruth who told us about the source of the Water of Leith and played a water cycle labelling game with us before taking us for a walk along the river.

We learned about lots of things on the walk, including finding out about the smell of otter poo!

We then did some work creating a map of the depth of the river, measuring how fast the river was running and dipping for river invertebrates.  We found all sorts of creatures including mayflies (which indicate that the water is clean), pond skaters, small fish and a horse hair worm.  The horse hair worm is a parasite which lives in invertebrates such as crickets, when it is growing.  When it is big enough it begins eating them from the inside before exiting into water (I thought it looked really creepy).

Back at the centre we tried out some interactives including a flood plain model and a water wheel and watched an information video about the Water of Leith.

Click on this link to see an animated slide show with photographs from the trip.


Tuesday 21 August 2012

Fast Fliers and High Jumpers workshop

Primary 7A had a great time today at the City Arts Centre, taking part in an art workshop.  At first the children were asked to have a look at the exhibition on the Human Race about the history of sports medicine.  They then had to think of different animals and their abilities and imagine that if there had been an animal Olympics which animals would take part in which events.  The class worked in groups and then decided which animal they would like to represent as a sculpture using willow.  The ideas then started flowing as ideas were discussed and choices negotiated.

The final choices were:

  • the synchronised swimming turtle team 
  • the diving penguins
  • a sprinting leopard
  • a swimming duck
  • a swimming duck-billed platypus
The class  learnt about the shapes needed to make animal bodies and limbs and how to use willow for sculpture.  Have a look at some of our work below.

Many thanks to Stephanie for running the workshop and to Anna for being brilliant at helping groups to talk through their ideas.  Sam's mum also took time out of her very busy day to help us negotiate the crowded Edinburgh pavements and buses.